el goonish shive / stargate fan theory #151

spoilers for stargate and egs

also maybe star trek at the end

The immortals in EGS are the same general thing as the Ancients/Ori (ascended beings) in Stargate. It is just that they have different self-imposed limitations and exist in different places.

Part 1

In the main EGS universe, the immortals have the law that they can only empower and guide people, and that they should reset (wipe most of their memories) every so often.

In an alternate EGS universe, these beings are called ancients (iirc) and have a different law thingy. Might reset, idk.

In the main Stargate universe, the Ancients have a similar empower/guide/non-interference rule, but do not have the reset thing.

If the immortals do the memory-wiping, but the Ancients don't, that could be why most of the Ancients are really not feeling mentally up to any task, and why they don't do anything about anything. They've "seen so much in so many places, so many heartaches, so many faces," and they're just depressed.

Part 2

also iirc at least a couple of the Ancients were Greek or Roman gods, the "builders of the roads". it was SG-1 season 2, like The Fifth Race or something

There's an immortal who calls himself Zeus after resetting, presumably every time he resets. It is possible that, long ago, he called himself Zeus and was the real Zeus until he named himself not to be Zeus anymore.

Part 3

In EGS, all magic users are descended from immortals. In Stargate as well, it seems like the magic user (Adria) is a child of the Ori and the human Vala.

Part 4

There's also something up with the Q from Star Trek. Both the Ancients (SG-1 season 7 or 8 finale?) and the Q (in Voyager) have brought humans to a corporeal representation of their reality. DeLancie Q had a child with magic powers, although I'm not sure that we've seen a Q have a child with a human.

also you should read el goonish shive it is good and coming up on its 20th anniversary in like a week

you do not have to read el goonish shive

it is not a requirement

egs had its 3000th story comic today

i tried to read this webcomic thing and the first few just seemed to be bad generic sexism, does it get any better after that?

oh yeah, sorry, it does get better

it becomes more of what it is today story-wise after painted black

i forget when the more blatant sexism things end, and if it matters, the gender transformation stuff doesn't stop. it also has 2006-era terminology for the first few years, and i cannot make that more comfortable, but that does get better too

i don't remember the sexism being worse than in the intro comics

but it has some really good moments too

like in 2014 there was a comic that was found to be the most favorite comic in a 2019 egs community survey

it just takes some time to get there

i have consulted a friend and they said that it could be hard to put down after Night Out, which is mid-2003