Girl Genius discussion OPEN SPOILERS

[Róisín]

Friday’s page is interesting. Have Agatha’s little clanks been replicating themselves to work on this fascinating new machinery?

[Jitter]

Looks like they have!

Now while I love the little clanks I have to say something. I hate replicators. I do. It goes wrong every single time. It’s one of the classic apocalypses.

(I went to check the plural for apocalypse and disappointingly found that the Merriam-Webster has it, and it’s the boring standard form).

[thorny]

I wouldn't put it at all past Agatha's little clanks to bring on some sort of apocalypse.

Especially while led by the Castle and the Train!

[Jitter]

Yeah, so, that’s fixed now!

Do you suppose it could be coming to the end? It looks like several main arcs nearing conclusion?

[thorny]

Coming to the end?!

Wow, that would be weird. I guess I've come over the years to think of Girl Genius as just wandering down interesting byways forever.

[Jitter]

I’m not saying it is! But there’s a lot of stuff seemingly coming together. A way to Skifander appears quite suddenly along with the Luci arc.

[thorny]

It will presumably come around to the early scenes of cross-time windows seen from the other end. So it does have somewhere that the story's headed to.

Whether when (if?) those are tied up that'll be the end is, I suppose, another question.

[wavewright62]

I will believe you that the comic is ending, only if Barry shows up.  Even then, that could take months! 
(I don't think it's ending - the Foglios seem to have their machine running smoothly; even the Experiments are starting to join the family business.  No signs of burnout either from what I can tell.)

[Jitter]

Well, now we have a highly interesting turn of events. Not the Lucrezia-gun (although I didn’t guess it would be happening like that) but the fact that not everything goes according to her plans.

[thorny]

"And then, ascension, godhood, and drinks all around."
"Yessss..."

Ruh-roh, we know what happened to the last set of minions who believed in that. 

And apparently Dr Monahan also had similar suspicions.

I will believe you that the comic is ending, only if Barry shows up.  Even then, that could take months! 
(I don't think it's ending - the Foglios seem to have their machine running smoothly; even the Experiments are starting to join the family business.  No signs of burnout either from what I can tell.)

Are the Experiments getting old enough to read XXXenophile, though?

And if so, might Phil want to end this and turn more in that direction?

(Or, I suppose, take Girl Genius in that direction --)

[Lenny]

I've just spent a day catching up on 7 years of updates and oh boy I forgot how much I absolutely adored all the interactions in this comic<3

It does seem like a few plot points that have been hinted at for yeeeears are finally showing up, but I don't think it's ending. I think it's more likely that we are finally almost to the point where all the main players will be introduced and all hell will break loose again. Unless they decide to introduce even more! Which would also be fun (and likely). I like this comic and its organised chaos. Back when I discovered it all those years ago in my local public library I was a bit put off by the art, and how Agatha was everything I'd been told not to be, but I'm glad I stuck with it regardless<3 I'd like minions, too, for my crazy spark moments... I'd get SO much done, mwahahaha.

Either way before Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek have a big polyamorous wedding I refuse to ever believe it's ending, heehee.

Now excuse me while I go reread it from the beginning!

[thorny]

I like this comic and its organised chaos.

Yeah.

I think somebody said, on some other board, that they'd quit reading it because it didn't seem to be getting anywhere (I think it was during the long stretch when they kept not getting to Paris); and I replied that I didn't care whether it didn't get to someplace specific as long as it kept going interestingly sideways.

  Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek have a big polyamorous wedding

Hope that happens! I'm definitely on Team She Gets To Have Both, on this one. (And they do love each other, though I don't know whether there's anything sexual about that.)

[Róisín]

That’s how I would love to see it end, with some sort of Gil/Agatha/Tarvek wedding, plus a truce or alliance and trade agreement with Skifander, brokered by Axel Higgs after he and Zeetha marry (of course he will have to tactfully fight Zeetha’s mother to a draw rather than outright defeating her). Who knows, Klaus may even get to see his wife again (remember way back, when Klaus is complaining about his life to Othar and remarks that he ‘hasn’t seen his wife for years’?). My guess would be that Gil and Zeetha are full siblings, Gil being the older, because the kid we see Klaus carrying in a backpack in the flashback to when he is conquering Europa looks to be a toddler rather than a baby.

Maybe the usage in matriarchal Skifander is that if the first child of a ruler is a boy he may be allowed to survive either until a female heir is born or he himself fathers a female child? I wonder whether the birth of a girl child leads to the son being killed or sent into exile? In either case Klaus fleeing Skifander with the young Gil may have saved the boy from a bad end.

[thorny]

I got very much the impression that Klaus fled with Gil in order to save Gil's life; but don't have the time to hunt up the page right now.

[Róisín]

I agree, that was how I read it also. Plus Klaus telling Gil to beware of this greenhaired girl with two swords who is probably there to kill either Gil or both of them. Of course Zeetha knows nothing of this, having no idea, after barely surviving illness and pirates, of who Gil is, if indeed she ever knew that detail. She was meant to be on an exploratory and diplomatic expedition, I think?  Zeetha and Gil seem to get on quite well just as people, and both seem fond of Agatha.

I wonder how much of this, if anything, Boris knows? Remember Boris, Klaus’s four-armed secretary? Skifander does seem to have both natural and synthetic four-armed people. I wonder if Boris was a natural four-armed child who was the son of somebody important enough that his being male was a problem, and whom Klaus rescued along with his own son, Boris being somewhat older than Gil at the time, maybe an early teenager?