Live Blogs The Great Nitpicky Live Blog of El Goonish Shive

MrAHR

"Damien's influence will be long lasting."

... HOW?

IN WHAT WAY?

In storyline, Grace saw her brother kill himself to kill her a few months ago, at most! I don't remember in all this time a reference to Damien. I could be mistaken, but assume I'm not for a minute here.

In fact, Damien is probably one of the least influential villains of the whole series. He's dead, so he can't do years-long machinations. The other experiment-brothers are never around, so we don't get his indirect influence at all. He wasn't the first of a new breed of serious villains. He was the last gasp of Grace's origin story.

A list of antagonists more relevant than Damien, as of 2011. - The Goo (he was a servant of the series' never seen big bad and he fought the heroes twice. The fights with him helped make Ellen not a villain and resulted in Grace entering the cast.) - The wizard who guards the crystal (indirectly created Ellen because Ted read his journal, then later came along and gave Ellen and Nanase a reason to be romantic and for Nanase to be outed to Nanase's mom) - The Hitleresque principal (created a much longer subplot about the uniforms, harassed the students via poster, attempted to gain an army of goo minions, indirectly monitors their movements and has authority over them to this very day.) - Brain Bug- (more subtle. This is an invisible, never seen character, who has shaped the plot greatly. Any time a character comes out as gay, the Brain Bug erodes their personality until it becomes their ONLY character trait).

See, all of these characters have had way more impact on the plot than Damien ever had. So sorry, Dan, you were wrong.

Oh, and a nice review. I just had to add to the commentary on his... DVD commentary.

Oh yeah. As for your comment about teen pregnancy, I recall that Grace is physically incapable of bearing children. So the main objections are perverse sexual lust... and getting the couch messy.

I believe that when the series was colored, Grace angsted over not being able to save Damien. Yes.

Ah. Well then. I guess that makes me less right, though I maintain that my overall point (Damien hasn't had the impact on the plot implied here) remains.