El Goonish Shive

And when they make the leap from web-novel to professional published novels sometimes the publishers veto the change for a shorter, more condensed format. Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon rather notoriously had the author want to change it to the much shorter "Familia Myth" when it was published but was vetoed by the publisher

Edited to add quote for pagetopper.

Edited by KnightofLsama on Apr 14th 2022 at 5:42:22 AM

Elliott accomplished a Beat the Curse Out of Him.

Good work, team.

Balance 1/α

...wait, is this actually heads-side Robespierre, on a dose of whatever Magus gave Tedd and Ellen?

Who?

Robespierre or Magus?

Robespierre.

"Let's overthrow the palace and cut all their heads off!" said Robespierre, cutting everybody's head off until someone eventually got mad and cut his head off.

Not that one.

... Wait, is it that one? Now I'm hella confused.

Also, Tobias, do you owe Shive cookies?

Mmm. I don't see any inner demon summonings, but it's close enough to warrant some cookies, yes.

Twin Bird is saying that the owl griffin may sincerely share Robespierre’s anti-monarchical sentiments, which were then amplified by magic into a kill-on-sight policy. I think.

Edited by HeraldAlberich on Apr 18th 2022 at 11:54:13 AM

Mentioning "heads-side" Robespierre made me think of some alternate universe Robespierre? Is there a character named Robespierre?

So, if I am reading this right, Mr. Verres is royalty? Or Grace? The mention of a tail makes me think Grace...

Also, Susan trying not to think about hair contact and Ashley, no, it's not like that although Sarah's sidelong look in the second panel does not help.

OT3! OT3! If only because Tedd/Sarah and Sarah/Grace are both vastly more interesting than Tedd/Grace has ever been!

“ So, does Tedd ever get you to um, you know...”

“ ...what?”

(whisper whisper whisper)

“ NO! Tedd has never asked me to clean anything with a toothbrush!”

Edited by PapercutChainsaw on Apr 19th 2022 at 12:45:06 PM

What makes those pairings interesting to you?

Edited by fredhot16 on Apr 21st 2022 at 3:49:36 AM

So, I'm going to kvetch a little.

Edward and Elliot being so very worried about what could go wrong basically meant something had to go wrong. Okay, fine. The fact the the thing that went wrong currently appears to be a near total coincidence is... Irksome. Ell and Ed's concerns, for me at least, went beyond being properly prepared into being pointedly paranoid, perhaps because they went on so long. Maybe it'll read better in the archive, I don't know.

Actually, I do know, it was the whole, 'expect your allies to attack you and have a Dangerous Forbidden Technique ready for when they do' aspect that gave it the over-pre-reacting feel. But all the build meant something had to happen, otherwise why waste the time? And then the thing happens and it's almost, but not entirely, UNRELATED to them being there.

It's like watching a cop show with a character who has never worried about getting shot, in one episode suddenly worry about getting shot, puts on a bulletproof vest for the first time, and gets shot in the vest, not by whoever they were going after that week, but by a stray bullet from a bar fight across the street.

It comes off as a justification for the preparation, rather than a result of the preparation, and ye ken the difference. The one time you expect the unexpected, the unexpected arrives in exactly the way you expected. It feels irritatingly forced.

I would be much more comfortable with this if all the 'be ready for anything' had been pared down to a panel or two of Tedd or Edward (but not both) saying, "Be ready for anything," and everyone else expecting a perfectly nice meeting with some perfectly nice griffons. Then, the perfectly nice meeting going sideways is a surprise, rather than a narrative inevitability. Then, we have some tension, because we know they aren't prepared. Then, the sudden power-up and victory are cathartic rather than mundane.

Alternately, if it had been a deliberate trap by someone, and perhaps the reveal that he had some basis for suspicion, we could admire Edward's keen insight to expect such a thing.

Instead, by being right for no reason at all, we're left to wonder why aren't they this paranoid all the time? Why this one time that it happened to come in handy?

In summation, the preparation was oversold and ruined the potential surprise of a meeting melee, and the unrelatedness of the actual occurrence ruined the point of the preparation.

In my perspective at least. Am I being unreasonable here? I am perfectly open to being told I'm off my rocker and everyone else read this as intended. I could be wrong.

It's been strongly suggested that the group was only in danger because Edward was there; the other two aren't royalty and wouldn't have triggered the griffins attack. Granted, it would have attacked Nanase if she was there instead of Edward.

Edited by thok on Apr 21st 2022 at 11:43:13 AM

There was a whole lot of setup for not much payoff. The ratio was out of whack. It got interesting for like three strips and went back to talking.

Anyway. More griffins approach.

Edited by HeraldAlberich on Apr 21st 2022 at 1:18:18 PM

NP OC 01

Spin off arc from the previous one-shot.

That's...one way to go about it.

Hey, people of the thread, in a strictly binary choice, do you prefer if a writer acknowledges that something is weird by acknowledging it as weird in-universe but still goes on or does the acknowledgement not do much for you and you'd rather they'd not bother with the acknowledgment if they're still going to do it?

Depends on if they can do it in an amusing way that overcomes any potential exasperation.

This feels particularly in character for Ashley. Granted, Ashley is a Base Breaker and this comic just feeds into that.

As a troper, I appreciate such bold and blatant Lampshade Hanging. It’s in our logo and everything.