Girl Genius XXVIII: Dancink! Ve is here for de dancink!

[Gez]

with three different hairstyles to boot!

Well to be fair the first page is when she's getting her hair done so it doesn't count as an hairstyle. The second is the whole confection thing accidentally introduced by Xerxsephnia von Blitzengaard. The third is presumably her regular hairstyle -- it actually looks like a combed version of the first.

[wingnutx]

I see that The Queen expects her princesses to go forth and at least attempt to be productive.

This is not the first klutzy assistant we've seen, so maybe she'll get over it.

[Rogar Demonblud]

And linear A.

And Linear B, which was the first translated (Ventris may have been a real world Spark).

[DavidSh]

And Linear B, which was the first translated (Ventris may have been a real world Spark).

You write that as if Linear A had been translated later. While various people have proposed interpretations of the Linear A texts, as far as I know none have achieved widespread acceptance.

[keybounce]

As far as "who has more princesses" goes, every time Disney acquires new property, they get new princesses. Leia is now up there with the princess of that african country with the unobtainium metal.

(Star Wars and Marvel. What else have they gotten? Did they ever get WotC and all those old school properties?)

[Rogar Demonblud]

You write that as if Linear A had been translated later. While various people have proposed interpretations of the Linear A texts, as far as I know none have achieved widespread acceptance.

I was thinking of cuneiform but true. And Linear B is hardly the stuff of poets.

[theangelJean]

Was Higg's "If you know what I mean" in today's comic an innuendo? Because if it isn't, I have no idea what he and Gil are talking about.

[Shining Wrath]

It could be educational in a variety of ways. Higgs is a spy master, and he can probably read Bang better than most. He may have detected some level of hostility above and beyond her normal desire to kill everyone and everything ... well, that would be difficult.

Put me down for "They have so much Ovalform 27 stuff that being able to read it is very important to SCIENCE!".

And (sorry to make Manga work), but "Fight delayed on account of science." is a thread title candidate.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Fight delayed on account of SCIENCE! is probably the GG-verse equivalent of 'board game called on account of cat using the board as its latest bed'.

[wingnutx]

"Fight delayed on account of science." is a thread title candidate.

Absolutely

[Manga Shoggoth]

And (sorry to make Manga work), but "Fight delayed on account of science." is a thread title candidate.

Noted. You are tied with Rockphed for number of titles proposed...

[Traab]

It could be educational in a variety of ways. Higgs is a spy master, and he can probably read Bang better than most. He may have detected some level of hostility above and beyond her normal desire to kill everyone and everything ... well, that would be difficult.

Put me down for "They have so much Ovalform 27 stuff that being able to read it is very important to SCIENCE!".

And (sorry to make Manga work), but "Fight delayed on account of science." is a thread title candidate.

But again, even if it IS important for SCIENCE reasons, once she translates a few they can build their own dictionary just fine. They just need the equivalent of "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" to be able to do it all themselves and zeetha becomes nothing more than a time saver.

[Rogar Demonblud]

You're remarkably optimistic about this. They're dealing with both an unknown alphabet AND an unknown language. Remember when we were discussing Linear A and Linear B above? Linear B is Early Greek with a different alphabet, so it could be translated fairly easily once you swap the letters. Linear A is apparently an unknown language in an unknown alphabet. They still can't do anything with that, even after they tried replacing the letters with English Standard. Because just knowing what letters are where don't help you figure out 'spasiba' is 'thank you' or that 'cachalot' means 'whale'.

Zeetha basically needs to create a real dictionary from memory.

[Radar]

But again, even if it IS important for SCIENCE reasons, once she translates a few they can build their own dictionary just fine. They just need the equivalent of "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" to be able to do it all themselves and zeetha becomes nothing more than a time saver.

Still, if they can have Zeetha for long enough, they will at least get as much vocabulary out of her as possible, as particular words might be difficult te deduce on their own. Getting down the grammatic, pronunciation and so on would also help greatly. It is one thing to be able to decipher some text and it is something completely different, when you can learn the language first-hand. I also can imagine that the scientists will petition to Albia for funding for an expedition to find Skifander, if they find some clues in those old texts. Lost kingdoms might be dime a dozen, but this one has been ruled by an ascended queen.

[Shining Wrath]

Still, if they can have Zeetha for long enough, they will at least get as much vocabulary out of her as possible, as particular words might be difficult te deduce on their own. Getting down the grammatic, pronunciation and so on would also help greatly. It is one thing to be able to decipher some text and it is something completely different, when you can learn the language first-hand. I also can imagine that the scientists will petition to Albia for funding for an expedition to find Skifander, if they find some clues in those old texts. Lost kingdoms might be dime a dozen, but this one has been ruled by an ascended queen.

I think the point is "long enough" is likely to be "longer than Agatha is willing to wait", and Zeetha finding Skifander is likely to be priority #1 for her. OTOH, Zeetha has never willingly separated from Agatha that I can recall; she takes training her student seriously. But I think "Bang gets Zeetha without protection" is a likely development.

[Rockphed]

Noted. You are tied with Rockphed for number of titles proposed...

No, this cannot be! I alone must select thread titles. In the "would make a fine thread title" pile I would like to add "Mysteriously Activated, set loose, or broken" from Friday's comic.

Have all ancient languages been deciphered using Rosetta stones, or have we figured out any by other means? I know the oldest name we know is some Babylonian camel merchant who cheated someone enough that they wrote a letter to complain, but besides hieroglyphics, I don't know the story if how we figured it ancient alphabets.

[Mechalich]

Have all ancient languages been deciphered using Rosetta stones, or have we figured out any by other means? I know the oldest name we know is some Babylonian camel merchant who cheated someone enough that they wrote a letter to complain, but besides hieroglyphics, I don't know the story if how we figured it ancient alphabets.

Some writing systems (slightly different from ancient languages, since an unknown writing system might potentially represent multiple languages) have been deciphered using statistical comparison techniques or reference to existing writing systems. Characters in the oracle bone script, for example, can be identified by working backwards from other early forms of written Chinese, or determining the pictographic origin of the character.

Most remaining undeciphered scripts are linguistically isolated from modern languages (often due to lack of descendants), which makes it essentially impossible to decipher them without finding some sort of Rosetta Stone to bridge the gap.

Zeetha, essentially could operate as a sort of living Rosetta Stone for Ovalform 27, since even if she can't actually read more than a few words, just being able to assign meaning to the characters is a huge step forward in cracking the writing system's overall structure. For example, the key in deciphering Maya script was apparently figuring out that it was a syllabic script.

[Fyraltari]

I know the oldest name we know is some Babylonian camel merchant who cheated someone enough that they wrote a letter to complain,

Are you thinking of Ea-Nasir the man apprently collected complaint letters about the crappy copper he sold? If so that's only XVIIIth century BCE old while Cheops (of the Great Pyramid fame) lived in the XXVIth century BCE. And if you mean somebody else, the babylonian civilisation only got it start around the XIXth century BCE so they're still beaten.

I'm not sure we can ever say with certainty who is the oldest real person whose name we know because the line between history and myth becomes really blurry. Maybe there really was a King Gilgamesh whose life was heavily mythologized until we got his famous Epic?

[Vinyadan]

I'm not sure we can ever say with certainty who is the oldest real person whose name we know because the line between history and myth becomes really blurry. Maybe there really was a King Gilgamesh whose life was heavily mythologized until we got his famous Epic?

The ancients wondered about that too (Euhemerism).

[Shining Wrath]

Are you thinking of Ea-Nasir the man apprently collected complaint letters about the crappy copper he sold? If so that's only XVIIIth century BCE old while Cheops (of the Great Pyramid fame) lived in the XXVIth century BCE. And if you mean somebody else, the babylonian civilisation only got it start around the XIXth century BCE so they're still beaten.

I'm not sure we can ever say with certainty who is the oldest real person whose name we know because the line between history and myth becomes really blurry. Maybe there really was a King Gilgamesh whose life was heavily mythologized until we got his famous Epic?

Are you saying Civilization 6 isn't historically accurate? I may have to lie down for a while.

Another possibility is that a number of different people had their stories combined and enhanced to become Gilgamesh.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Sumeria started around 4500 BCE, and the earliest writings there (from Uruk) date to over 5000 years ago.

[keybounce]

Title proposals:
"Thread delayed due to SCIENCE!"

"Too educational to miss"

As for the meaning of "too educational", you are seeing two top fighters, sparring. You are not only seeing fighting styles that you can study, and learn from, you are learning the techniques of people you might have to fight with, or fight against.

No innuendoes, unless fighting is something that ...

[Rockphed]

Title proposals:
"Thread delayed due to SCIENCE!"

"Too educational to miss"

As for the meaning of "too educational", you are seeing two top fighters, sparring. You are not only seeing fighting styles that you can study, and learn from, you are learning the techniques of people you might have to fight with, or fight against.

No innuendoes, unless fighting is something that ...

I can get behind either of these.

And now that everyone has shown that what I said was wrong (about the seedy camel merchant being the oldest name we know), I am left wondering how I arrived at having that factoid in my brain. It could be benign deception practiced by school teachers. It could be mishearing something on the radio. It could be that there is another set of clay tablets that is even older. It is probably that the seedy copper merchant is the oldest name of someone who wasn't royalty that we know.

In a different tangent, the Motel of Mysteries was discovered by a spark, wasn't it.

[memnarch]

Definitely static. Vague sneaky gate comment go!

[Rogar Demonblud]

Given how the collegiate-level academic system works, rockphed, maybe the better question might be "How much did you drink that week?"

[theangelJean]

Title proposals:
"Thread delayed due to SCIENCE!"

"Too educational to miss"

As for the meaning of "too educational", you are seeing two top fighters, sparring. You are not only seeing fighting styles that you can study, and learn from, you are learning the techniques of people you might have to fight with, or fight against.

No innuendoes, unless fighting is something that ...

It could be educational in a variety of ways. Higgs is a spy master, and he can probably read Bang better than most. He may have detected some level of hostility above and beyond her normal desire to kill everyone and everything ... well, that would be difficult.

Put me down for "They have so much Ovalform 27 stuff that being able to read it is very important to SCIENCE!".

And (sorry to make Manga work), but "Fight delayed on account of science." is a thread title candidate.

See, "educational" I get. Watching Zeetha fight, and watching Bang fight, could both be instructive. But the two things that stood out to me and muddied the picture were:

1) Of all people, why would he have this conversation with Gil? I mean, he's using it as an excuse for not being present - except he's not accountable to Gil. It made me wonder if this were a continuation of a previous conversation, if there's any reason Gil would be interested in Higgs's desire out of seemingly nowhere to be informed about Zeetha or Bang's fighting style. Because Gil seems to be impressed by this, in some way?

2) The emphasis. "Too educational to miss" would be one thing, but "It was too educational to miss, if you see what I mean" just suggested a hidden meaning to me for some reason. (My brain actually thought there was an ellipsis there, as in "It was too ... "educational" to miss. If you see what I mean".) And we've seen Higgs's interest in Zeetha's fighting already.

But having re-read, I'm wondering if what they were most keen on was actually the outcome. Gil has the most experience with Bang, Higgs with Zeetha, and the comparison between them would probably be interesting even if we didn't have plot reasons unbeknownst to both.

[PraetorDragoon]

Yup. Static. Definitly static.

[Shining Wrath]

My mother used to use "static" to mean "backtalk", so the idea of associating static with pain resonates.

Anyway, it's nice to see Violetta being smart in front of her cousin. All the sparks are using the Madness voice, although only Agatha seems to be doing anything.

[Radar]

One thing has to be said: Agatha truly is a Heteordyne.

[sihnfahl]

One thing has to be said: Agatha truly is a Heteordyne.

A spark.

How many pies were thrown before he figured out what went into a 'calming pie'?