The Girl Genius Yahoo! group was, according to its own description, "the FIRST Girl Genius fan club on the web." After a long decline in activity, the group completely ceased to exist in 2020 when Yahoo! Groups shut down.
Welcome Page[]
The welcome page goes on to say,
"Join us to discuss all things Girl Genius, from the comics to the card game and codes. We're a fairly easy going bunch, but we do have a few rules here. Don't ramble too far off topic, or flame and you'll fit in just fine! Also, as a courtesy to other members please do not spam the list. This will make your moderator unhappy, and offending members will be banned without warning after the first offense.
I should also note that this list is run by a humble comic books nerd and Foglio fan. It's not an official creation of the Foglios.
Thanks for your interest in Girl Genius and all things Studio Foglio."
History and features[]
The group was first formed in July, 2001, when Girl Genius was still being published as a quarterly print comic. When the Professors made the move to webpublishing almost three years later, the message count began doubling for each successive month for the next three, with a peak in February of 2006 of 2828 messages. The increased traffic from the more regular release of new material caused handfuls of group members to complain that they could not keep up, their inboxes were being overloaded, et cetera and these former regular posters left the group permanently. From that peak, the dull roar has decreased to an average of 800+ messages a month, with some noticeable dips during the holidays when non-canonical or other vacation material is run instead.
The Professora used to post and reply with some frequency under the "studiofoglio" username, with rarer appearances by Professor P. Foglio, Asst. Professor Wright and notable minions/associates/friends Savannah, Alice and Dava. Kaja's appearances dropped off almost completely after webpublishing started due to the changed demands on her time.
Some of the notable features of the group are Crazy Theory Friday (see also: "Wild Mass Guessing", "I Knew It", "Jossed" and "Epileptic Trees"); the Photo Album including fan art and cosplay; and the Eldritch Library, which helped create and document parts of this Wikia.
The list was still active to October of 2019, averaging a couple dozen messages per month, when the announcement came that Yahoo! Groups was being shut down. There was talk on the list of moving the archive to groups.io, but it was never undertaken. The shutdown was completed in stages in 2020.
Spinoffs[]
Groups inspired by the Yahoo! group and its community include, in no particular order:
- On Yahoo!:
- The fan-fiction group, "Girl Genius Fanfic" (very straightforward)
- "Team Dingbot", a kinetic sculpture competition team
- "Sparks RPG", a forum to discuss development of an unofficial D20 RPG set in the Girl Genius universe
- "Girl Genius Game", a group for another unofficial Girl Genius game in Seattle based on the Spirit of the Century rules
- The apparently inert "Girl Genius Mod", a moderated, stricter discussion group formed in August 2005 (it has had exactly seven posts - the last in January, 2006)
- "Rogue Clanks and Escaped Constructs", an offtopic group where subjects breaking the flow of the main GGY!group may be gone into at length (such as where the seven Popes might be from).
- On LiveJournal:
- "Girl Genius Lab:" Agatha's Minions
- The home of the Klaus Defence League, the "Haus of Klaus"
- Fan Constructs: Girl Genius Fanfic
- Brassburg: A Multifandom Girl Genius RPG - an unofficial narrative-style roleplay set in Agatha's universe, in the non-canonical Austrian town of Brassburg. See the invitation for more information