Discussion for comic for 2018-10-31 (Wednesday) ✣ .
The wiki pages don't just write themselves, join in on the fun.
This doesn't really advance the plot; it just sort of rubs in that Bang knows Gil wouldn't want to be stuck in the middle of her fight with Zeetha even though she'd happily drag him into fights with other people. Happy halloween. Bkharvey (talk) 04:07, October 31, 2018 (UTC)
- Yeesss... every single page has to advance the plot... --Kuopiofi (talk) 05:04, October 31, 2018 (UTC)
- Of course this isn't the first such page ever, and I do remember that there were plenty of X-Files episodes that didn't advance the plot, just for example. But I reserve the right not to count such pages among my favorites, especially when there are so many loose plot threads. Bkharvey (talk) 05:11, October 31, 2018 (UTC)
- Let me put it this way: it doesn't really advance this common discussion of the wiki community, when you complain the page doesn't advance the plot every time a page doesn't advance the plot. We can see that too, there's not much anybody can answer to that, and by now it's got a bit repetitive. How about sticking to stuff we can exchange about and is more interesting? MasakoRei (talk) 11:18, October 31, 2018 (UTC)
For anyone wondering, today's (human) guest is a homage to the character of Dina Saruyama from the webcomic Dumbing of Age. --Geoduck42 (talk) 04:12, October 31, 2018 (UTC)
"Captain Dupree is well-equipped to take care of everybody else." My (adult) kid is like that, so this slipped right past me on first reading. But it's a funny thing for Gil to say about Bang. Who else, besides Klaus and Gil, does she take care of? Mostly she thinks she's taking care of someone if she refrains from killing him. And, until this situation, she's always been very capable of taking care of herself. I'm inclined to think that the professors are aware of all this, and deliberately show Gil seeing Bang in a way nobody else would ever see her. (Even Klaus -- can you imagine him saying this?) (Yes, Bang saved Tarvek from Jaron, but that was because it was an assignment from Gil, not because she otherwise cared one way or another about Tarvek.) Bkharvey (talk) 04:33, October 31, 2018 (UTC)
- I think you're misunderstanding the joking irony here. Gil means that Bang can 'take care of' (i.e. kill, disrupt, dismember, etc.) everybody else; 'take care of' not 'care for'. She doesn't care about taking care of herself or anyone else in the traditional sense... Autoch (talk) 15:37, November 9, 2018 (UTC)
"There were times when she was the only friend I had." This doesn't really make sense either. When would that be? In Paris? Did Bang know who Gilgamesh Holzfäller was? If so, I guess Bang could be said to be the only friend of the real Gil, even though everyone in Paris seems to have been friends with him under his assumed identity. Bkharvey (talk) 04:45, October 31, 2018 (UTC)
- He had Colette and Wooster during Paris, and we know he considers both his friends (despite the spy complication in Wooster's case). He means during the timeskip, I expect. There's a lot we don't know about those two and a half years, but we do know everything went to hell, some incarnation of the Other tried to use wasps to take control of the Empire, and Gil fought tooth and nails to keep his crumbling Empire together. Gil has many people around on Castle Wulfenbach, but they're not friends. They're employees, and they can be bribbed, they can betray him, they can quit, there's no personal relationship. Most of the people he did have a personal relationship with are stuck in Mechanicsburg (von Pinn, Theo, Sleipnir) or not around (Wooster, the other students he grew up with). It's not a stretch to conclude that, for a while, there was no one in the vicinity he could trust but Bang. MasakoRei (talk) 11:17, October 31, 2018 (UTC)
- The novel has Klaus assigning Bang to watch Gil in Paris and teach him self defense. --Fred1740 (talk) 20:40, October 31, 2018 (UTC)
I dunno, Gil and Bang looked to be somewhat close in Paris (Next to last panel and just to 'rub it in' on the following page). SillyOne (talk) 15:08, October 31, 2018 (UTC)
You know, reading just three pages a week gives one a plot that goes Drip...Drip...Drip. The story reads better in the collections. You don't spend over three years in Castle Heterodyne (it's a few days in story time). It takes awhile to get used to it. I, myself, had become impatient with the story's pacing in my first year. --Fred1740 (talk) 20:40, October 31, 2018 (UTC)
- Yeah, what he said. And it was okay reading online when I first discovered GG, until I caught up. But, the trouble with the collection approach is you have to wait an entire year between updates! That would be even worse. :-/ Bkharvey (talk) 01:51, November 1, 2018 (UTC)
- You miss my point. I'm not saying you should only read the collections. My point is the plot advances just fine as long as you don't have to wait two, three days for the next page. Then it seems disjointed. By the way, I have a friend who only reads Girl Genius once a year because of this. --Fred1740 (talk) 19:30, November 1, 2018 (UTC)
Speculation alert: What if Bang is noticed breaking into the dome, and Trelawney is notified about it (on her Dick Tracy wrist radio, or something), and told to get over there and help catch Bang, and she brings Gil along, and this leads to a big confrontation in which Gil finds out about Zeetha, and Agatha finds out about Bang's connection to the pirates in Zeetha's story, and... I don't know what comes next, but it's really hard to imagine either Zeetha or Bang being killed at this point -- they're both needed. I'm trying to figure out some Comte de Monte-Cristo sort of resolution in which Zeetha and Bang both find ways to reimburse each other, at least symbolically, and end up friends. I guess that's kind of juvenile of me. In real grownup literature, they both wind up dead, like Romeo and Juliet. But, maybe Violetta will show up with some news about the real bad guys, and Zeetha and Bang agree to a temporary truce while they deal with that, and then gradually they come to like each other, as in a buddy movie. (Or as in Gil and Tarvek, I guess.) On the other hand, if Trelawney's assignment is to keep Gil occupied, maybe they'll start looking for information about what Bang is up to, and they'll find Ulysses Bonny or something like that. But I'd rather have all the main characters back together. Bkharvey (talk) 02:16, November 1, 2018 (UTC)
- Grown up doesn't necessarily mean grimdark everyting sucks all the time storytelling. An awful lot of people on the internet and in Holywood seem to think so, but it's not true.65.92.33.104 06:25, November 1, 2018 (UTC)
- I'll give you Huckleberry Finn (about a teen, but for adults), but generally even adult comedy is pretty grim. (I'm thinking of John Irving, whose works I love, but they're not entirely pleasant reading.) I'd be very pleased if you could recommend some fiction that isn't mystery or SF or explicitly aimed at kids that has happy endings. I grant you, everyone doesn't always die; sometimes they're just blinded (Lear) or crippled (A Separate Peace). Bkharvey (talk) 03:55, November 2, 2018 (UTC)
- Pretty much anything by P.G. Wodehouse. He's one of the Foglio's influences; Wooster is named after one of his most famous characters. --Geoduck42 (talk) 20:51, November 2, 2018 (UTC)
- I'll give you Huckleberry Finn (about a teen, but for adults), but generally even adult comedy is pretty grim. (I'm thinking of John Irving, whose works I love, but they're not entirely pleasant reading.) I'd be very pleased if you could recommend some fiction that isn't mystery or SF or explicitly aimed at kids that has happy endings. I grant you, everyone doesn't always die; sometimes they're just blinded (Lear) or crippled (A Separate Peace). Bkharvey (talk) 03:55, November 2, 2018 (UTC)