El Goonish Shive

Comic QA8 10

Who's the special? Your first 3 guesses are wrong.

...I can't believe I didn't notice Amanda and Lisa slowly shrinking last strip until this one. Lisa even lampshades it with her comment about "platform shoes."

I feel like this comic would have been simpler if the last panel had come first (well, okay, second).

Meanwhile, in the commentary, Shive debates with himself on whether giving everybody yet another way to change genders is a good narrative idea.

Did she have to grab his tongue to get him to make that face? Oh wait, she can bodyswap, nevermind.

NP NanaseCraft 70

The love shack
is a little old place where
We can get together
Love shack baby
A love shack baby...

I think Dan lost the plot somewhere.

So Standard Operating Procedure still running going strong then.

Eeyup.

Shive's aversion to writing villains has turned this from a dramatic confrontation with Nanase's shadowy benefactors to a gaggle of schoolgirls screaming "EEEEEEEEEEE SLUMBER PARTY!!!"

Eh, Diane was never intended to be a villain in this. Villains have a big sign saying "I'm Evil!" over them.

Does that mean the storyline is over? Can we have a different one now?

Meanwhile, the logistics of teleporting away piercings or implants.

Honestly, I would probably just put in a rule against teleporting away things under someone else's control outside of very specific circumstances (like being able to recall a marked personal item to hand even if it's held by someone else). I mean, Dungeons and Dragons puts limits on teleportation for exactly the reasons Shive worries about.

NP.

Darn, would these scales have helped me get a better grade in Calc II?

That is peak Shive right there: feeling compelled to go waaaay too much in-depth about an artifact's innermost workings, when said artifact is a simple mcguffin that bears little to no importance in the small, non-canon side-plot it's featured in and will most likely never be mentioned again.

Until it is mentioned again because why let all that perfectly good lore building go to waste?

Some day, El Goonish Shive is going to end.

And after that happens, I fully expect a Lord of the Rings style Appendix exploring all the myriad magical mechanics Shive created but never had a chance to exposit about in the story.

You tell all the excruciatingly detailed minor mechanics and all the forgotten characters that.

Don't get me wrong, I know they might all be used in the future, but Shive's not had the best track record with this stuff as of yet.

Also, that scale is, as far as we know, non-canon, so I really don't expect to see it ever again.

True. Hanma became canon though, barely. Not saying he has a good track record, just that it is in the realm of possibility.

Also, you just reminded me of Lord Tedd. When, Shive, when?!

Some day when you least expect it, Lord Tedd will arrive.

To check his email.

Then he'll go right back into Character Limbo for another ten years.

Didn’t Nioi come back recently? It’s always possible.

Nioi has been hinted for a possible return recently. Nothing's been confirmed thus far. Yes, it's more than likely that it's her, but who knows when or how.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Apr 4th 2019 at 7:25:49 AM

QA8 #12

This is a question I’ve had for a while (again, not as a complaint). LGBT characters seemed remarkably frequent in this comic.

Edited by KOman on Apr 5th 2019 at 1:09:20 AM

This strip essentially says there's no Watsonian explanation for the question ostensibly asked, especially since I sincerely doubt Elliot and Sarah were supposed to be anything but straight back when Dan was using "[Sarah] you're a lesbian" as a punchline.

So Sarah's making out with Diane now? Really? Sometimes I feel like Dan found his sex drive in his early thirties...

Edited by TwinBird on Apr 5th 2019 at 1:43:58 AM

Huh. Sarah also made out with Diane off-panel in Grace-ah-monsters, but the two have never canonically met as far as I know...

I guess Dan wants Sarah's bisexuality to be more than an Informed Attribute ("I'm at most a two on the Kinsey scale"), but she's still repressed as hell and nowhere near ready to consider dating a woman in canon ("Not this thought again!") hence this kind of nonsense in the non-canon to demonstrate it. It's not really a very plausible ship given Diane just got a girlfriend and all though.

Come to think of it, both Sarah/Diane moments were brought up shortly after the strip or commentary acknowledged some fans thinking Diane and Sarah look similar. So... maybe a pseudo Screw Yourself thing going on there too for the people into that kind of thing?

Come to think of it, the only girl we've ever seen Sarah show attraction to in canon, apart from transformed Elliot (who might not even identify as a girl) is fantasy versions of herself, like the sexy vampire.

Which is odd to me since Sarah doesn't seem the type you'd expect to have a selfcest or lookalike fetish (despite the Covert Pervert tendencies). I'd have thought having a sibling of the same gender would kind of put a damper on that.

Side note: Dan's commentary on Sam not wanting to come out again reflecting Dan's own experiences with people assuming he's gay, and not wanting to hear the inevitable "I told you so" from certain people... well, I think he's also kind of put Sarah in that position of not wanting to tell her friends she's bi after all those shitty jokes Tedd used to make. I mean, Tedd did show that he wanted to apologise to her about it during the birthday party, but we didn't get confirmation that he actually ever did.

Edited by PapercutChainsaw on Apr 5th 2019 at 2:54:28 AM

I don't think there's ever been any canon indication that Sarah isn't straight. Like said, she's self-evaluated herself as a two on the kinsey scale, and hasn't shown anything but a schoorgirl crush on a few girls, generally due to traits that she seemed to want for herself, at least as far as I remember. I'm pretty sure this falls under Informed Attribute, yeah.

Shive also mentions this on the commentary:

Which means very little. I can find men very attractive, but I still don't have any particular intention of doing anything with them. I'm probably a bit higher on the kinsey scale than Sarah sees herself, but as far as I care, I'm straight, and feeling fine enough about that that I can see how attractive people of my own gender are. So I don't think "can find their own gender attractive" means much in this if you're still not actually physically attracted to the gender in question.

I mean, clearly Sarah is bi, since Shive is the author and gets the final say in this, I just think the argument that is being used is a bit flawed.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Apr 5th 2019 at 11:15:02 AM