#el goonish shive questions
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If you don't mind me asking, how do you pick Tedd's gender on any given part of the comic?
It varies. Sometimes there’s a plot reason, sometimes it’s just vibes.
It can be as simple as “I think Tedd would be feminine right now.”
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On that note, where did you get the name Verres? Most characters' surnames seem to be either fairly common ones or made-up names relevant to their character, I can't find anything about the name 'Verres' except a obscure ancient Roman guy.
Verres is an example of younger me thinking it would be neato to use Foreign words for last names, and trusting that translation was super easy and straightforward.
Basically, I was trying to make Tedd’s last name the French word for “glasses”.
Now, I’m not 100% sure about this, but my understanding is that Verres would be less “glasses on your face”, and more “glasses you fill with wine”.
Which I’m not going to say is UN-fitting, but not what I was going for. Be careful if using words from a language you don’t speak, everyone. Even if you’ve got a dictionary, it can be like a game of telephone, and you might only think you’ve got the right word.
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Which of the EGS crew are the closest to snapping and going on a TF rampage at the mall?
(Main-ish cast only, of course Kitty is probably only held back by not being sure how she changed Felix)
Ellen, mostly due to easy means (she can point her palm at people from a distance and do it on a whim), and inheriting Elliot’s natural desire to both help people, and punish jerks.
(So people who want a morph get a morph, and jerks regret being jerks)
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i just finished reading all of EGS yesterday, and i saw ur pfp on my dash! do you have any other webcomics youre a fan of?
A ton! too many to mention them all, really. I'll be restricting this to 'currently updating stuff', and comparing it specifically to EGS given your ask. That also means that I'll be ignoring some comics that are just completely different (such as any gag-a-day type stuff. XKCD may be a classic of the internet that you should read, but it's a weird recommendation after someone asks about EGS)
The other thing I don't really have recommendations for is if you liked the 'everyone transforms all the time' parts the most. There's a reason I stuck with reading EGS over The Wotch, and it's not just because the latter went on hiatus. I'm sure there's something to that taste somewhere, I'm just not reading it at the moment.
TL;DR: Questionable Content, Dumbing of Age, Paranatural, Gunnerkrigg Court, Girl Genius
For my first recommendation, I'm going with Questionable Content, which is less questionable than you'd assume from the title, and more questionable than you'd assume from this disclaimer. It started as a basic soap opera/endless pit of references to early 2000's indie rock (but there's a funny robot that makes punchlines), and is now a soap opera where the funny robots have feelings (but there's also still punchlines).
for comparison to EGS, I'm going with hammerchlorians as a stand in for the general trend both of them went through, folding early wacky concepts into a whole that can be surprisingly emotional. It's also still wacky fun.
Dumbing of Age is a reboot of the author's earlier webcomics. Instead of taking the above approach and slowly fold the weird aspects into a sense of normalcy for the setting, Willis decided to just do a reboot of the universe, with the same characters, back in college, but no aliens this time (except fictional).
The closest EGS equivalent is end of an era, the arc where Sarah and Elliot break up, but really it's just every bit where magic takes a backseat to relationships, introspection, and growth.
I'd be remiss not to mention the comic being both funny and having action pieces, though. Those are just a lot more realistic. Also, Walky is a trans girl (she just hasn't figured that out yet (and I'm not sure the author has either (I can tell though))).
Next up, Paranatural. I'm actually a bit behind on this one, but it's really really good. It switches from a more traditional comic style to a more illustrated novel type thing partway through, but it's really really good.
It had a lot less 'folding in concepts' to do than my other examples so far, but that's because the author went in with a plan. And that plan was to write the funniest trauma a middle schooler could get. The entirety of the hitball sequence is a sight to behold. If you click on nothing else, read Paranatural.
The closest thing EGS did was Sister 3, my favourite arc. Both do 'set up a magic thing/pay off the magic thing' combined with character growth at the highest quality.
Gunnerkrigg Court is an english boarding school mystery featuring magic and robots and psychopomps and psychic powers. It seems to be nearing completion, with most of the basic mysteries solved and the questions shifting to 'now what'.
There haven't been many real Mystery elements in EGS, at least none where our protaganists are actively trying to solve it. The current Uryoms arc will probably be the closest thing we can currently see by the end, but even that's giving us more answers than it's giving the characters. If you want something Magical, but with a different vibe, read Gunnerkrigg.
Finally, Girl Genius. Girl Genius is about a young mad scientist reckoning with the mad science performed by mad scientists of the past, together with her two boyfriends (who are also mad scientists)
The closest EGS arc is any where Tedd does Mad Science, but especially the last parts of Title Pending, aka party 2. 'some device had unintended consequences and now it's up to our mad scientists to throw science at it until the device does what they want' is a description of half the arcs in girl genius (the other arcs in girl genius have other characters cause the problems on purpose (it's still solved with either mad science or swords (sometimes the swords are mad science)))
This concludes my list. the other thing these comics have in common is being pretty long-running. There's absolutely newer comics out there worthy of reading, and I'm always looking for more recommendations myself.
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still assembling my thoughts about egs and also reading it still but the el goonish shive / questionable content comparisons are forming in my mind
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There’s a connection between big/tall/buff people named Elliot and having short partners I know it I’ve got the two nickels look at egs and qc I know I’m right
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WEEKLY WEBCOMIC ROUNDUP
This is an experiment. I’d like this to be a bLog for analyzing and discussing webcomics. One format that might be a way to prompt that conversation is a summing up of the week in webcomics. We’ll see how this goes!
Careful: spoilers may lurk
ORDER OF THE STICK
(By Rich Burlew; www.giantitp.com; updates infrequently; Full Color, Stick-Figure Art; D&D parody, ensemble, longform closed-ended, comedic action-drama; support)
No. YES! Surprisingly, during the writing of this post! (New page here)
The story is in a bit of a lull, with the party inventorying minor assets in the run-up to a major (possibly climactic?) confrontation with Team Evil. On the previous page they accounted for minor skills, this page minor monsters, specifically five Mimics (D&D mosters that lie in wait in dugeons camoflauged as common objects, in this case, two of the five stools)
EL GOONISH SHIVE
(By Dan slash Dana Shive; egscomics.com; updates daily M thru Sat; Grayscale, fully illustrated; suburban fantasy w transgender themes, ensemble, open-ended, time-dilated, mix of SoL, Soap & Adventure; support)
The M-W-F full-page storyline, “Balance,” wrapped up yesterday after 18 months and 198 pages. The final page resolved so many ongoing mysteries, confirming or debunking so many fan theories, that I have already posted a deep dive into that one page!
Before that, Elliot collapsed, probably of exhaustion and had a vision of himself berating themself as “pathetic,” evidently over having worried Tedd:
Meawhile, the T-Th-Sat comic strip (running concurrently and idependently) is smack in the middle of the “Who Is Ellen” storyline, and the impromptu D&D players are revealing their characters to one another. Rich tries shaming George for playing a woman character. This goes poorly:
The M-W-F comic will be on hiatus for 10 days for the Shive to prep for the new arc, but meawhile the T-Th-Sat storyline will continue!
DINOSAUR COMICS
(By Ryan North; www.qwantz.com; updates M-W-F; Color, Simple Pixel Art, every page identical; observational humor and absurdity; support)
Sometimes a comic panel is best with no context at all:
The context
GUNNERKRIGG COURT
(By Tom Siddell; gunnerkrigg.com; updates M-W-F ; Full Color, fully illustrated; magic-school fantasy, longform drama adventure; support)
(No parethetical explanations, they’d each take paragraphs and paragraphs!)
Jerrek wants to see the “Star Ocean” for himself, but as the train pulls closer, he is growing convinced that it would destroy him. Hilariously, his new “girlfriend” seems oblivious of his distress:
But in the most recent page, she seems to finally notice, break through his indecision and pull him off the train before it’s too late!
QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
(By Jeph Jacques; questionablecontent.net; updates Weekdays; Full Color, fully illustrated; Almost real-world setting with some SF elements, open-ended long-running SoL Soap; support)
Claire (recently graduated library scientist) has been offered a weird and possibly too-good-to-be-true opportunity to build and run an IS dept from scratch for oddball research commune, the Cube. She is on a quest to get all the advice she can, and has finally come to talk to her Mom, who suggests she talk to her nice AI friend Yay. Yay is basically Skynet, if Skynet wanted to integrate into society and live a normal life.
However, Claire’s boyfriend has heard about Yay helping out his best friend’s AI girlfriend, which leads to instant acceptance! But also... misunderstandings
I also read Girl Genius, but the current side story... I’m not really feeling it. Also, I’ve gone on long enough. I hope this prompts some conversation or maybe leads someone to discover a new read!
#order of the stick#el goonish shive#dinosaur comics#gunnerkrigg court#questionable content#webcomics#original content
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At the zoo you can see a couple of disheveled young women glaring at a zookeeper. "Think you so much, I don't know how our prized lockpicking gorilla escaped, but..."
"How do you think?" Alice says, vocalizing the thought that is obviously going through the young women's mind. "Shouldn't you have enough enrichment for a lockpicking gorilla so they don't feel the need to go out for a stroll? Forcing you to engage these two -- who, honestly, are you out of high school?" she adds in their direction. "Because you look quite young."
#~M: I want some questions! now! (ask)#~M: grin without a cat (anon)#~V: Cuddlepile#~T: Welcome To PTA Hell#prized lockpicking gorilla#~C: Alice Liddell#((hah I remember that El Goonish Shive strip#no Alice they are NOT out of high school#but on the other hand this is kind of the least of the bullshit they put up with))#~M: with this hand I will lift your queue
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I know I've said things like this before, but
WEBTOONS IS JUST ONE COMPANY'S WEBSITE
TAPAS IS JUST ONE COMPANY'S WEBSITE
There are THOUSANDS of webcomics that are not! On! Those! Websites!!!
There are webcomics that have run for over twenty years! There are comics about a TON of different genres and in different formats! Find things to read that aren't on one corporate-owned bullshit site!
Read Kill Six Billion Demons! Read Girl Genius! Read El Goonish Shive and Freefall and Twokinds and Questionable Content and Forward and spread your literary goddamn wings a little!
There are even people publishing webcomics primarily here on Tumblr, goodness knows why!
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El Goonish Shive is a webcomic about wacky gender-bending transformation shenanigans and also, increasingly, about just how creepy it would be to have a Secret Government Organization which exists for the express purpose of hiding the existence of magic from the general public.
"ACAB includes me", Edward Verres is starting to realize, months after he's been fired from the "cop" part of his job and is now a full-time diplomat. (That's the least-realistic part of EGS's plot -- that a head honcho faced negative consequences for using excessive force against a perp.) Even people who are in-the-know are starting to question it. And dear lord, Agent Bishop.
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are we going to get to watch another tournament like we did in squirrel prophet?
We will, at a minimum, see some moments from it, and they will be presented with fantasy visuals.
In part, this is because fantasy visuals are fun! But it's ALSO in large part because it's a big crowd of players sitting at tables in a comic shop with a bunch of cards, counters, dice, etc. everywhere.
Not only are fantasy visuals more visually interesting, they're actually easier for me to do (once the designs are done, anyway).
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Are there any plans to bring back Kitty and Felix in the future?
Not very specific plans, no, BUT I ALSO know how exactly they’ll be reintroduced into the story.
It’s a bit of a paradox, I know, but think of it like this:
Were the story a puzzle, I already have the piece with their reintroduction set aside. I’m just not yet sure where exactly it goes in the puzzle yet.
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Trans and nonbinary webcomic character tournament nominations are closed! The following characters (sorted by webcomic name; links to character introductions added as they go up) received three or more nominations and qualified for the tournament:
Aurora - Dainix
Charity Case - Julie
Clover & Cutlass - Maggie
Court of Roses - Merlow the Rose
Cucumber Quest - Rosemaster and Bacon
Dumbing of Age - Carla Rutten
Earth 2068 - Vermillion Gacutan
El Goonish Shive - Tedd Verres and Ellen Dunkel
Experience Boost - Zhusen
Feast for a King - Knife
Four Leaf - Lupe Jara
Friends With Benefits - Eri McCure
Goodbye to Halos - Fenic
Heartstopper - Elle Argent
High Class Homos - Lucas
Homestuck - Davepeta
I Want to Be a Cute Anime Girl - Cheryl
Kill Six Billion Demons - 82 White Chain Born in Emptiness Returns to Subdue Evil (White Chain)
Lavender Jack - Johnny Summer
LoveBot - Xada
Magical Boy - Max Owen
Nasty Red Dogs - Gaueko
Never Satisfied - Lucy Marlowe
O Human Star - Sulla Pinsky
Out of the Blue - Eddie Kaspbrak
Paranatural - Penny Spender
Questionable Content - Claire Augustus
Rain - Rain Flaherty and Kylie Coven
Rectify - Fleet
Shootaround - Chau Le
Sister Claire - Magpie
Sleepless Domain - Zoe Blecher
The Order of the Stick - Vaarsuvius
Tiger, Tiger - Luck
Val and Isaac - Space Dread
White Noise - Teige Carroll and Yoshi
Widdershins - Eliza Swift
I'll be posting character introductions over the next couple weeks as time permits. If you’d like to suggest an alternate picture/description or if there’s any missing or incorrect information in the introductions, let me know!
Since no comic had three or more characters with at least three nominations, there will be no preliminary rounds, and we'll jump straight into the round robin group stage around the middle of July as soon as character introductions are finished.
#sticking a tag here so tumblr doesn't constantly remind me to do it#I have edited this post so many times
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Multiple Births
Round 1 Poll 3
Read El Goonish Shive
Read Schoolbus Graveyard
Submitted context (including spoilers) and propaganda under the line
Ellen and Elliot : While they are twins, they aren't technically "same-birth" because Ellen was a duplicate of a gender-bent Elliot created by a magical artifact.
So, for context, one day Elliot got hit with a magical beam of "turns-you-into-a-hot-girl". In an attempt to disenchant Elliot using the magical artifact the "dewitchery diamond" the enchantment on him was actually extracted and transformed into a whole new person with an entirely new soul: a girl named Ellen, who has all of Elliot's memories, but is her own person. Ellen later gets a second set of fake childhood memories from a non-existent dream alternate universe where, among other things, she was raised as a girl, which helps her personality grow beyond just being a female duplicate of Elliot. All of this to say that the answers to the question "is Ellen Trans?" is "by any real-world definition, technically no. But beyond that, yes, very much so". (Side note: Elliot would later figure out that's he's "gender casual", in part because of Ellen asking him "haven't you ever wondered about the fact that I was able to adjust to being a girl so easily despite having all of your memories?")
Anyways, Elliot immediately viewed Ellen as his sister, and Elliot's parents immediately accepted Ellen as their daughter. Elliot/Ellen's friend Tedd's dad (who works for the part of the government that covers-up the existence of magic & hides it from most of society) used his authority/resources to make it so that all legal documentation says that Ellen is Elliot's twin sister, with the "official" cover-story that:
Mr. And Mrs. Dunkel couldn't afford to support themselves and two children, and could barely afford to keep one (Which. Technically, would have been accurate [since we later find out Mrs. Dunkel had to drop-out of college at 21 when she got pregnant with Elliot]). As a result, Ellen wound up in foster care. Now that the family is financially secure, she's been reunited with them
Regarding the "They fall in love with the same person" cliché, at the start of the comic, Elliot was dating Tedd's cousin Nanase. However, unbeknownst to both Elliot & Nanase at the time, Nanase was actually a Lesbian. Even though she really liked him as a person and they got along really well, she just wasn't interested in him romantically and was going through the motions trying to make the relationship work. She broke up with him when she realized that he had unresolved feelings with one of his childhood friends, because she knew he would be too passive to act on those feelings himself.
Flash forward to the storyline of Ellen's creation, and picture this: You're Nanase, you've recently broken up with the person who was the closest you've been able to get to really feeling something romantic for a guy, and after telling your gay best friend Justin this fact, he starts needling you about the about the possibility that you might be a lesbian, which you deny. But lo and behold, you are face to face with someone who is literally just said ex-boyfriend, but a super hot girl. You get close because you are one of the only people able to comfort her through the very traumatic experience of "being brought into existence with only memories of a life that aren't your own". And you feel things with her that you've never felt before.
Long-story-short, Nanase and Ellen develop mutual feelings for each other, confess said feelings, and become a couple."
Taylor and Tyler : They are each other's whole family (well their mother is alive but not very present since the death of their father). As of the last chapter, one might end up being used as a tragic backstory for the other.
#tournament polls#round 1#indie webcomic#webcomics#webcomic#indie comics#comicblr#el goonish shive#schoolbus graveyard#school bus graveyard#multibirth tournament
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My two favorite magic systems are the El Goonish Shive system and the Cosmere system (which I'm counting as one massive magic system because of all the overlap).
El Goonish Shive strikes a perfect balance between unexplainable, a wizard did it, etc., and well organized, understandable rules. It's incredibly inconsistent, but that's explained. It is researchable, and it has set ways it works. Due to how it works, it is incredibly unpredictable, but not completely. The personalized spells are also a great touch.
The Cosmere does magic beautifully. It is a collection of completely different magic systems that have consistencies between them, like how metals work. Each of the metals has a certain thing they do, and this is consistent between magic systems. There are what I call the "Pillars of Investiture", rhythm, metal, color, tone, and maybe a couple I forgot about. The systems are INCREDIBLY researchable. Everything is very consistent, and any time there's an inconsistency it's a major plot point, and it can be figured out. It's so consistent that we can ask ridiculous "what if" questions and try to solve them. I love it so much.
I have three hyperfixations at the moment: EGS, the Cosmere, and my own fictional world of the Realms of Chaos. The Realms of Chaos has a magic system where it has consistent rules and emergent behavior based on those rules. I sometimes slightly tweak the rules in order to allow certain things to happen, but usually I don't. There have been quite a few times when I've realized that, based on how the rules of a certain magic type work, a character would be able to do something I'd never thought of. For example, a character who can absorb energy and release it in other forms absorbing light energy and using it to shoot massive lightning bolts. I probably need to figure out a way to balance that.
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OKAY SO
In El Goonish Shive right now (egscomics.com, specifically in the EGS:NP side-strip) Ellen is running a DnD campaign. Dan's rendering her like this, like an Exposition Fairy.
Or. Like... Navi.
So that raises the question: Is Navi the DM of Ocarina of Time? Is Link that one player who keeps going off to do weird shit like smashing pots?
Because if so, I think I like Navi now.
(Also look at her. She is adorable. I love this design.)
#El Goonish Shive#Ellen#DnD#Dungeons and Dragons#Or another similar rpg#DMing#Fairies#Legend of Zelda#LoZ#Navi#OOT
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