Monday's comic

[turbobeholder]

The Queen's Henge.It's henge-y. And hedge-y.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20181203

Comments

[murgatroyd666]

Hmmm ... Seems to me that Agatha had what amounted to a second breakthrough when she drank the Dyne water. If she hadn't had to save Gil and Tarvek -- and if she hadn't exploded -- might she have achieved the same state as Albia?

On the other hand, we know she won't do that. "Agatha Heterodyne and the Electric Coffin" is set after the events of Girl Genius, and Agatha isn't a goddess.

(Another Hmmm ... What happens to fish that swim in Dyne water?)

[occams_pyramid]

But that was only the first time.
So did the god-queens drink Dyne water or something similar?

'Broke through again' - so they are Second Stage Sparks?
Why only women? But then Lensmen were nearly all men.

[jbwoodford]

The idea of a second breakthrough explains an old observation about the Other's mechanisms compared to pre-Other Lucrezia's. At the time, there was speculation about Lu using Dyne water to increase her Sparkiness, IIRC.

Nothing, in the modern day.

[themadkansan]

Der Kestle wrings all the sparkiness out of the water to power itself.

Way-Back-When, when Egregious first unleashed the River Dyne?

comic.php?date=20091102

[turk187]

Electric coffin isn't cannon according to the Foglios. I'd have to look to find the bit where they said that, but I'm sure of it.

[murgatroyd666]

I'm pretty sure they said it was the one side-story that is canon.

And notice that Gil, Tarvek, Zeetha, Higgs, von Zinzer, Violetta, and Othar are not in the cast. Also, we never see the ring finger of Agatha's left hand.

[turbobeholder]

We know she wasn't permanently in "god-mode", or at least not yet. She may have taken it repeatedly by that time.

[ffutures]

Looks worryingly like a biohazard symbol

[murgatroyd666]

For a less sinister interpretation, try the Borromean Rings.

[madfilkentist]

Now we're getting into some interesting history, more or less following some speculations here a while ago. There were god-queens a long, long time ago, some of whom corresponded to particular goddesses in our mythologies. There may have been a piece of knowledge that let them do this. Did it work only with women, or were they all god-queens because of the way the information was shared? How was information shared back then between regions as distant as Babylonia and the British Isles?

This isn't the kind of story where I expect a fully fleshed-out answer addressing all the difficulties, but I hope there's enough of an explanation to make sense.

[kelkyag]

What land are they flying over, where they can see the moon and stars, albeit through weird illusions? Are they no longer in Britain, under the waves?

[bat_cheva]

Hundreds of kilometers North. One of the islands off Scotland?

[spectrum_09]

Judging from the map the Foglio's created early on, the British Isles are not entirely submerged. Much of Scotland and Wales are above sea level as well as northern England, some bits to the west and an island containing Oxford.

[katzedecimal]

I was afraid I was the only one wondering about that XD

[bunsen_h]

I pity the poor werewolves. Of course, it's possible that the effect is an intentional trap for (or defense from) werewolves.

It might also be an indication that time is very messed up in that area.

[madfilkentist]

I think you're right that time is messed up, or at least sliced up. The moon is not only in different positions at once, it's in different sizes. Very strange. I took screen shots of a couple of them and pasted them side by side, just to make sure I wasn't being fooled by some form of the "Moon illusion."

[marycatelli]

The larger ones are higher up, which would preclude that too.

It looks larger near the horizon -- especially if there's a lot of stuff between you and it -- because your mind can figure out how far away it is, and "adjust." The higher up it gets, the less context, the less adjustment.

[spectrum_09]

A larger moon, especially one higher on the horizon, would be closer to the planet -as it was in our our history (it has been moving away and slowing us down from the beginning). Are we seeing slices of time that are possibly millions of years apart? Although the horizon is fixed and would change over a large time scale, which it hasn't
in this picture..

[therru]

That looks like a Venn diagram. But of what?

[doc_w_31415]

I think I can safely say this is the biggest surprise in ... years of real time, possibly since the time jump.

[murgatroyd666]

Yup. Certainly since van Rijn's notebook and the discovery of Prende's Lantern and the Storm King.