El Goonish Shive III - Totally Adorkable!

[Qwertystop]

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Hm. Can't get a handle on its thought process. It seems to recognize "German dark" as referring to a last name, where I personally would have read it first as beer and second as ethnicity, but it doesn't get that it only fits as a name of translated.

[Dusk Eclipse]

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If the cloaked figure is indeed looking for the Griffin, perhaps it is a Manticore? It does fit the scorpion-like tail.

[Gadora]

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I took that to be the cloak, wrapped around a long lion tail? The bifurcation need not be part of the tail itself, I mean. But I might be doing that thing where I go 'oh, hey the beak says it's a griffon, which totally fits with what others have said' and then looked at the tail and found a way to make that fit.

[Lissou]

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I took that to be the cloak, wrapped around a long lion tail? The bifurcation need not be part of the tail itself, I mean. But I might be doing that thing where I go 'oh, hey the beak says it's a griffon, which totally fits with what others have said' and then looked at the tail and found a way to make that fit.

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Oh yeah, picturing a griffin under it, I can totally see that. The beak is open, the eye placement is correct, and I can see the head feathers and the wings... Could be a lion's tail then I guess but on the other hand the position of the tail seems pretty weird to me, and the bifurcation is sharp. Still, looks more like a griffin than a manticore

EDIT: EGS NP

Well, someone got restyled. With that make-up on and the face being smoother, he looks way more like a girl, and... way less like himself. I didn't recognize him right away, and wasn't sure until I read the commentary.

[Rater202]

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Griffons are sometimes depicted with a snake for a tail.

Maybe in EGS, it's a case of Sexual Dimorphism.

[Lizard Lord]

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Griffons are sometimes depicted with a snake for a tail.

Maybe in EGS, it's a case of Sexual Dimorphism.

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I thought that was chimeras.

[Rater202]

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I thought that was chimeras.

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Traits are not mutually exclusive. Just because one thing has a thing, that doen'st mean other things can't have the same thing.

Also, mythologically speaking, a Chimera is a fire breathing creature with the head and forequarters of a lion, the hindquarters(and sometimes horns) of a goat, and the tail of a serpent. Not a snake tail.

It's only modern fictionalized depictions of Chimera that depict them with multiple heads and snake for a tail(and having dragon parts instead of or in addition to the snake parts)

[Lizard Lord]

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Traits are not mutually exclusive. Just because one thing has a thing, that doen'st mean other things can't have the same thing.

Also, mythologically speaking, a Chimera is a fire breathing creature with the head and forequarters of a lion, the hindquarters(and sometimes horns) of a goat, and the tail of a serpent. Not a snake tail.

It's only modern fictionalized depictions of Chimera that depict them with multiple heads and snake for a tail(and having dragon parts instead of or in addition to the snake parts)

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Fair enough, though I had also heard that the origin of the griffin was noble houses combining the two animals that best symbolize nobility (the eagle and the lion) and use it as their own banner.

[Hytheter]

Also, mythologically speaking, a Chimera is a fire breathing creature with the head and forequarters of a lion, the hindquarters(and sometimes horns) of a goat, and the tail of a serpent. Not a snake tail.

It's only modern fictionalized depictions of Chimera that depict them with multiple heads and snake for a tail(and having dragon parts instead of or in addition to the snake parts)

Um, that's totally wrong.
This is from 400 BC. You can also just image search "ancient greek art chimera" to find a whole lot of stuff that looks like that and very little that doesn't.
The ancient greek poem Theogony also describes it thus: "[Echidna] was the mother of Chimaera...who had three heads, one of a grim-eyed lion; in her hinderpart, a dragon; and in her middle, a goat, breathing forth a fearful blast of blazing fire." The Bibliotheca says the same.

It's worth noting that the Greek word for dragon also means snake, which may explain that part of the interpretation.

[Rater202]

Um, that's totally wrong.
This is from 400 BC. You can also just image search "ancient greek art chimera" to find a whole lot of stuff that looks like that and very little that doesn't.
The ancient greek poem Theogony also describes it thus: "[Echidna] was the mother of Chimaera...who had three heads, one of a grim-eyed lion; in her hinderpart, a dragon; and in her middle, a goat, breathing forth a fearful blast of blazing fire." The Bibliotheca says the same.

Do you have the entire quote? Because the way it looks now, it looks like the stuff after the ellipses is referring to Echidna, rather than the Chimera.

I'd like to have the entire relevant part of a quote before responding to it.

Regardless, my initial education about the mythology used the "one headed" variant, and as that is a statue, not a myth...(and as stories and depictions change over time...)

[Hytheter]

You can read the whole thing here. The part I ellipsed out was just more description of Chimera but that wasn't relevant to my point.


It's not describing Echidna because Echidna is described in the previous passage as a half nymph half snake creature.


Like you said, myths can vary over time and from place to place. But your initial comment was stated as an absolute, when in fact a good deal of available material contradicts it.

edit: "and as that is a statue, not a myth..." is a pretty poor argument, by the way; clearly the statues and artworks depicting chimera are inspired and based upon the myths and stories that tell of it. And in turn they probably inspired retellings of the stories. You can't just divorce the images from the text and say that only the latter matters.

[Rater202]

There are however plenty of cases where the images are based on the artists interpretation of the text, and sometimes the artist may misunderstand.(I have seen illustrations on books or films based on books where the description is nothing like the image.)

But yes, I assumed that how I had been educated was the absolute truth.

[malloyd]

You can read the whole thing here. The part I ellipsed out was just more description of Chimera but that wasn't relevant to my point.

I'd say that description doesn't actually tell you anything about the body or tail at all. It describes the heads, a lion, goat and dragon, arranged front to back, nothing at all about the body they are somehow mounted on. You might be able to read it as the dragon head faces backwards (i.e. replaces the tail), but that's about it.

[Hytheter]

I'd say that description doesn't actually tell you anything about the body or tail at all. It describes the heads, a lion, goat and dragon, arranged front to back, nothing at all about the body they are somehow mounted on. You might be able to read it as the dragon head faces backwards (i.e. replaces the tail), but that's about it.

My point was that it does indeed have multiple heads, whereas rater claimed that it had only one.

Besides, as I stated already, a significant amount of period artwork does in fact depict it with head replacing the tail.

[The Mormegil]

I totally want a cookie now.

[Lizard Lord]

Huh, it has a non-lion cat tail. Lots of people called it being a griffin, but did anyone call that?

[Mith]

Considering that Dan wanted to make it clear that this was a different griffin entirely, the tiger body was probably the clearest that he could do to make the point that this was a different griffin.

[Lissou]

Well, we can't see the end of the tail, so there might still be a tuft of fur there (I actually assumed there was until your comment). I took the tiger thing to be a pattern but yeah, come to think of it, could be a tiger's tail too I guess.

[Lizard Lord]

Well, we can't see the end of the tail, so there might still be a tuft of fur there (I actually assumed there was until your comment). I took the tiger thing to be a pattern but yeah, come to think of it, could be a tiger's tail too I guess.

Regardless of whether or not it is fluffier at the end of the tail than the rest of it, what is shown is still not a lion tail.

[Lissou]

Regardless of whether or not it is fluffier at the end of the tail than the rest of it, what is shown is still not a lion tail.

True, it's a griffin tail.

[Lizard Lord]

True, it's a griffin tail.

Heh.


But, you know what I mean, right?

[Lissou]

Heh.


But, you know what I mean, right?

Yeah, I do :P. If it has the shape of a lion's tail and the marking of a tiger's tail, it's really neither. But it could also be considered both. What I meant was that we're not entirely sure of the shape of the tail, since we didn't see the end of it. When she was cloaked, her tail seemed bigger towards the end, so I'm waiting to see if that's the case or if it was just the way the cloak wrapped around her tail or something.

Not that this is terribly relevant, but the shape of the tail did cause some speculation at the time, as it looked a bit scorpion-like, so I'm curious what the tip of it looks like.

[halfeye]

.....and with monday's comic I just realized:

there are technically as of this moment four different lesbian couples in El Goonish Shive:
fem-Elliot and Ashley
fem-Tedd and Grace
Ellen and Nanase
Rhoda and Catalina

now you may argue, that Elliot is straight, but at the moment she seems to not have much of a problem with kissing Ashley while in female form, and Tedd is gender-fluid. this comic is already the gay singularity that Homestuck wishes it was.

And counting.

[AGD]

Another Thing. After the reveal of Elliots Gender...somethingness the most important white male Cis-Hetero Moperville Student in the Story is... Noah.

[Yuki Akuma]

I think this is mostly because there's a slight imbalance towards female students as secondary characters for whatever reason.

EGS still has plenty of white cis-male heterosexual characters. They're just not students.

[malloyd]

I think this is mostly because there's a slight imbalance towards female students as secondary characters for whatever reason.

EGS still has plenty of white cis-male heterosexual characters. They're just not students.

Glancing over the minor characters list, there may be as many male students as female ones who have gotten on panel names - Noah, Tony, Ronin, Matt Cohen, Cecil, both Toms, Erik, Gary, Gerald, Victor, Matt and Rat - though none of them have had a lot of lines, which makes orientations a little hard to assign.

[Radar]

Good Tom has a girlfriend and bad Tom was a manipulative skirt-chaser (or how should I call it), so in their case we can at least say, they are attracted to women. Where they exactly fall on scale is up in the air though. The awful duo from the comic book store are supposedly interested in women as well even if all women around wished they weren't (see latest card tournament).

[Qwertystop]

Oh, Dan.

Oh, Susan.

[Lizard Lord]

Y'know I can't help but wonder if Tiger Griffin is an abusive spouse that Other Griffin is trying to escape from. Other Griffin seemed to be rather polite, but this one is all set to dispel and kill rather than just explaining the situation and asking for help.

Though I suppose the other possibility is that Tiger Griffin thinks Eliot kidnapped Other Griffin. That would also explain the reaction while not being quite as dark.

[The Mormegil]

Y'know I can't help but wonder if Tiger Griffin is an abusive spouse that Other Griffin is trying to escape from. Other Griffin seemed to be rather polite, but this one is all set to dispel and kill rather than just explaining the situation and asking for help.

This was my first thought upon hearing that she was looking for her wife. If someone could do that storyline while maintaining a light tone it's probably EGS, so here's hoping.