The section titles (also known as chapter titles) that make up most of the table of contents entries for the chronology pages on this wiki come from the very, very long pop up/drop down navigation menu on the Girl Genius website. This menu appears near the bottom of each web page displaying a page of the comic.
Usage on the Girl Genius website[]
The purpose of the section titles is to divide the comic up into much smaller, more manageable chunks (usually between one and half-a-dozen or so pages) than the division into volumes does, to allow for more useful navigation. This menu was created and is maintained by Kaja Foglio, who usually waits until several months have gone by before adding a new batch of section titles to the navigation menu all at once.
As has already been mentioned, this menu appears near the bottom of each web page displaying a page of the comic, below the bottom navigation buttons. As of April 2023, the navigation menu has the appearance displayed in the screen capture below.
The navigation menu is displayed in the lower left corner of the image. The menu's default text "---Jump to a Scene---" is visible. This default text is displayed if you are viewing the latest page of the comic or any recent page which has not yet been assigned to a section. If you navigate back to reach a page which is part of a section, the title of that section will be displayed in the menu at the bottom of that webpage rather than the default text.
The navigation buttons and menu at bottom of the comic-displaying webpages may be below a set of ads and announcements; if so you will have to scroll down quite a bit to see them. If you use the menu to navigate to another section, you will see a security warning, which you can ignore.[1]
The navigation menu also has entries for the start of each volume of Girl Genius, in a format starting with three dashes (hyphens), for example:
---First Page of Volume 23 (Act 2: BOOK TEN)
There are also menu entries for web pages that display things other than pages of the comic, such as filler art, ✣ book covers, ✣ and announcements. ✣ In addition, there are entries in the navigation menu for the side stories that occasionally interrupt the main Girl Genius narrative.
There are a few errors in the navigation menu such as redundant entries, entries linked to the wrong page, and broken links. These have all been brought to the attention of Kaja, who also serves as the webmistress for the Girl Genius website, but she hasn't been able to find time to fix all of them yet.
Use on the Girl Genius wiki[]
For the tables of contents for chronology pages[]
The section titles are used in the wiki to create the table of contents for the chronology pages because they are quite useful for navigation purposes and, having been created by one of the Professors, are considered canonical. On the current chronology page, the table of contents uses an arbitrary division into weeks until Kaja had had time to create section titles for a new batch of pages, at which time those titles are used to replace the weekly division entries.
However, sometimes Kaja creates very long sections or forgets to indicate a transition from a portion of the main story to a side story or an art interruption, or (more commonly) a transition back to the main story from such an interlude. In such cases, additional entries in the chronology table of contents may be added. These added sections are considered non-canonical, being of non-Professorial origin, and are labeled as such by having "(non-canon)" added to the end of the title, along with a footnote explaining what this means.
As a source of information[]
Rarely, a piece of information may be revealed in one of the section titles before it is incorporated into the story itself. The two most well-known (and perhaps only) examples of this are Karl Thotep's name, which was revealed in a section title ✣ long before it was ever used in the comic ✣ (although it had been changed to Kjarl Thotep by that time), and the name of ✣ Tweedle's cat (and weasel substitute), The Empress. Since the name "The Empress" has not yet been used for this character in the comic, her fan-coined name, "Rita", which was coined before the section title in question was posted, remains her semi-official name on this wiki.
See Also[]
References
- ↑ The warning will tell you that the information you have entered is being sent sent over an insecure connection and ask you if you are sure you want to send it. You should always pay attention to such warnings, but in this case, since the only information that is being sent is the page you want to view, it is innocuous if others can see it. This warning is due to errors in coding of the Girl Genius website. Hopefully it will be fixed one day.