Girl Genius novels

[lightreads]

Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle, Agatha H and the Seige of Mechanicsburg

4/5. Third and fourth novelizations of the webcomic, which bring us through a bit more than half of the published comic. Delightfully zany, with a lot of heart. And I realized that I am going to be genuinely upset if the comic is not setting up the OT3. Let's get real, I have well-developed skills of consuming media that does not give me what I want, and shrugging, and going to get it on the AO3. I do not generally get upset about these things. But here I really would, because not following through on the OT3 would feel like a betrayal of the terms the text itself has set out. The text is joking about having a love triangle, and the boys sort of playact one on occasion for the look of the thing, but the text is totally uninterested in actual dumb love triangle toxic jealousy crap, and that whole she must choose one and the choice defines everything about who she is thing. In reality, the text is interested in how they all three strengthen and balance each other, and how to become really good friends with your supposed romantic rival while vigorously pretending you aren't, and the three of them caring a lot about each other and showing up over and over again in ways that count. So yeah. If it's not the OT3 I am going to be deeply let down.

Comments

[niqaeli]

My background on my laptop and iPad both has been the OT3 wallpaper for a long time. Given what the comic has been doing recently with the three of them, I'm going to be heartbroken and very upset if they aren't going towards an endgame OT3. I've long thought it intentional and that they do intend to follow through and at this point, if they aren't planning to follow through with the OT3, it really counts as taunting and mockery because I am pretty certain the Foglios know damned well that it's what they've been suggesting.

I mean, I also have pretty well-developed skills of consuming media that don't give me what I want and not particularly caring, and I've only had a few canons manage to circumvent this in recent history. I think that--for me, anyway--the difference is that I have to have gotten invested in a way that I not only care about the characters/world but also I feel that whatever it is I'm hoping for would be a betrayal of the text and also I have to have come to believe that the creators (or some of them, anyway, depending on the type of media and how many people are involved in the creative process) themselves realise that it would be a betrayal of the text before the failure becomes something I personally would feel upset by.

Anyway, I actually hadn't realised the novels were actually novelisations of the comic; for some reason I'd gotten the impression that they were side stories and possibly AU to the comic. I'll have to check them out, because I'm really curious to see the Foglios writing the same story in a different format!

[lightreads]

Yes, exactly, it does seem intentional, and that they must know.

The novels follow the comic pretty closely. Like I can go to the website and look at the menu of comic scenes and pretty much figure out where the novel is. But I suspect they are able to fit in a lot more narrative worldbuilding. There are numerous historical and explanatory footnotes, for example.

The one drawback is the novels are coming veeeeery sloooowly. I read the first two in 2012.

[lokifan]

That makes a lot of sense! Fingers crossed. I do think it sucks when overall themes/focuses of the text seem to make promises to the reader that aren't kept (whether that's shipping or something else).