-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Something to mention, the clan council meeting doesn't seem like it's part of regular Dwarven Law, but it's own specific thing, and it wouldn't surprise me if an organization full of old people who would most likely not care to change things had a rule book full of still full of old arcane rules.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AstralFire
... right, it's a straw man to point out that Terodil is saying a law is bad by only enumerating very specific examples in which it fails, which is what I said?
No, it is a strawman to claim that my or anyone else's position is that the vampires are relying on "Air Bud" law tropes. Which is what I quoted you saying.
Grey Wolf
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Grey_Wolf_c
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AstralFire
Quote:
Originally Posted by
terodil
If a law enumerates several ways of tampering with votes and outlaws each, instead of going to the principle and outlawing any tampering, it's a terrible law/law system.
Being able to detect tampering is another matter, granted, but THIS loophole at least should definitely not exist.
Direct quotation.
The direct quotation in no way defend the claim "Terodil is correct. Full stop.". As Jadoif keeps reminding everyone, the context for this conversation is the fact that the voting enforces all laws via petrification. A general law such as "you can't tamper with the vote" would mean council heads turning to stone in every vote.
(Assume I said something clever about missing the "s" in my name.)
I did miss that post of terodil's, and it's an interesting point: If the dwarves do have a general law about tampering with the vote, but it calls for detecting/reporting/adjudicating/something-ing that can't be done at the meeting itself, then that's a loophole as far as the vampires are concerned: They don't have to outrun the dwarven legal system, they just have to outrun the destruction of the world (and the dwarven legal system with it). To that end, the dwarves very well could have such a general law.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Resileaf
Something to mention, the clan council meeting doesn't seem like it's part of regular Dwarven Law, but it's own specific thing, and it wouldn't surprise me if an organization full of old people who would most likely not care to change things had a rule book full of still full of old arcane rules.
Yes, the institution does seem to mostly to exist for Davlin's sake now, maybe for other ceremonial reasons too. We were told before Roy left the Godsmoot that the Council of Clans is not the current Dwarven Parliament.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Resileaf
Something to mention, the clan council meeting doesn't seem like it's part of regular Dwarven Law, but it's own specific thing, and it wouldn't surprise me if an organization full of old people who would most likely not care to change things had a rule book full of still full of old arcane rules.
The feeling I'm getting is that the government-by-clan-chiefes got toppled and a different one based around a parliment got established but that like, say, in the Roman Empire the old system (clan chief/senate) was never officially disolved, it just stopped having any power, other than status and occasionally having to vote on whatever Dvalin feels he needs to ask. Status being important in its own right, it was an easy way to keep the clan chiefs happy even after political power was taken away from them.
Grey Wolf
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Grey_Wolf_c
No, it is a strawman to claim that my or anyone else's position is that the vampires are relying on "Air Bud" law tropes.
Grey Wolf
Air Bud: The rulebook doesn't say a dog can't okay basketball. So it must be okay.
Vampires: The rulebook doesn't say dominating people is against the rules, so it must be okay.
Both are facially ridiculous situations. Both are based on something that does occur (a law that enumerates only things that are specifically banned and does not include any sort of reasonable person catch all or unlisted exception). In what way is this a vast misrepresentation of your point? If you take exception to it because it's belittling, I actually liked the first Air Bud. It's still kind of a ridiculous situation, as mentioned within the narrative. (Ridiculous and breaks suspension of disbelief are not the same here).
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jasdoif
(Assume I said something clever about missing the "s" in my name.)
I did miss that post of terodil's, and it's an interesting point: If the dwarves do have a general law about tampering with the vote, but it calls for detecting/reporting/adjudicating/something-ing that can't be done at the meeting itself, then that's a loophole as far as the vampires are concerned: They don't have to outrun the dwarven legal system, they just have to outrun the destruction of the world (and the dwarven legal system with it). To that end, the dwarves very well could have such a general law.
I don't really have any issue with that! I don't feel strongly about the issue itself within the story. I agree, that's completely possible.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AstralFire
Peelee, I'm not a practicing attorney. But I've been to law school and I've got enough experience as a legal assistant to feel confident with that statement in most fields of law outside of contract and IP law. This in no way means that you can take a lawyer off one specialty and have them do well in another; procedure is a huge percentage for a good reason, and one quarter of the remainder is quite a lot. But most cases the law needs to be applied, the law is actually quite simple to follow since it necessarily has to be followed by lay persons.
I would like to establish that you have roughly infinite more knowledge and experience than I here, but I still doubt most law (except maaaaaaaaaybe criminal law) is simple enough for the lay person to be able to follow it. And even criminal law I have my doubts on, thanks in no small part to Harvey Silverglate and Alexandra Natapoff.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jasdoif
That said, vampires plotting to end the world is probably the more realistic scenario.
Vampires willfully depriving themselves of unlife, and their food sources, strikes me as profoundly against their own self interest.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Grey_Wolf_c
That said, I am by no means an expert of military history, and this is cobbled together from a bunch of less-than-stellar sources plus filtered through my memory, so take with a very large pinch of salt.
Mostly on target with that (I am very familiar with that campaign) as well as some other things.
The Germans/Wehrmacht had a particular vigor in execution that is, from an objective military perspective, quite admirable and impressive. Far more importantly, they (1) were ahead of the French in Command and Control techniques of combined arms warfare, and (2) practiced a thing called Auftragstaktik which allowed for a lot of decentarilized execution of orders while the French were far more centralized for that campaign. This allowed the Wehrmacht to "get inside the French decision cycle" which decision making model we see once again a generation later with John Boyd's treatise in tactical air-to-air combat ... and that is still being taught in at least one major alliance's military doctrine ... (3) the Germans did a much better job of training for combined arms warfare (unifying the tactical application of combined air, armor, infantry, and artillery) even though the best medium tank in the world, at that time, was of French manufacture.
All of that let to not just the Ardennes piece working well beyond even German expecations, but a number of other sectors haveing more favorable outcomes.
Sorry for the derail.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Grey_Wolf_c
The feeling I'm getting is that the government-by-clan-chiefes got toppled and a different one based around a parliment got established but that like, say, in the Roman Empire the old system (clan chief/senate) was never officially disolved, it just stopped having any power, other than status and occasionally having to vote on whatever Dvalin feels he needs to ask. Status being important in its own right, it was an easy way to keep the clan chiefs happy even after political power was taken away from them.
I could swear that we have seen this post and this point of reference before in the not too distant past. And I think it's roughly on track.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peelee
I would like to establish that you have roughly infinite more knowledge and experience than I here, but I still doubt most law (except maaaaaaaaaybe criminal law) is simple enough for the lay person to be able to follow it. And even criminal law I have my doubts on, thanks in no small part to Harvey Silverglate and Alexandra Natapoff.
If it matters, I primarily have worked in criminal and constitutional law, so I am necessarily biased towards views of those fields. And also one is inclined to think something is simpler if one has done it. So that is fair.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AstralFire
Terodil takes exception to a very specific point: that the vampires flat-out take advantage of an "Air Bud" exception, "the law doesn't say a dog can't play basketball".
I don't really have much to add to the discussion, but I just wanted to say that the fact someone seriously brought up the "Air Bud exception" in a debate about a stick figure comic is one of the many reasons I keep coming back to this forum. A hundred internets to you!
Also, they apparently made like 27 "Air Bud" sequels spanning multiple different sports. You'd think after the first movie people might amend the rules to say, "Dogs can't play [insert sport here]," but that's Hollywood, I guess.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
The Aboleth
I don't really have much to add to the discussion, but I just wanted to say that the fact someone seriously brought up the "Air Bud exception" in a debate about a stick figure comic is one of the many reasons I keep coming back to this forum. A hundred internets to you!
Also, they apparently made like 27 "Air Bud" sequels spanning multiple different sports. You'd think after the first movie people might amend the rules to say, "Dogs can't play [insert sport here]," but that's Hollywood, I guess.
Yeah I enjoyed the first movie enough, think I saw it on a date. I... did not think it merited the vast quantity of sequels it got and I try to only remember that the first existed. :P
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AstralFire
If it matters, I primarily have worked in criminal and constitutional law, so I am necessarily biased towards views of those fields. And also one is inclined to think something is simpler if one has done it. So that is fair.
That's where most of my experience is as well. We're counting Law & Order as experience, right? McCoy is my boy!
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AstralFire
Yeah I enjoyed the first movie enough, think I saw it on a date. I... did not think it merited the vast quantity of sequels it got and I try to only remember that the first existed. :P
The first movie is a fun, ridiculous romp that doesn't take itself too seriously but is also not overly campy to the point of annoying the viewer. I loved it as a kid and found it amusing as an adult watching it with my nephew.
I think I saw one of the sequels long ago, but I can't remember anything about it. Maybe I just saw the box art and went, "Nope!"
ETA: A quick search has revealed the sequel in question to be "Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch." I remember the raccoon (yes, a raccoon) and nothing else.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
KorvinStarmast
Vampires willfully depriving themselves of unlife, and their food sources, strikes me as profoundly against their own self interest.
All true...yet still more realistic than more people putting time and effort into finding out why their "easy" ideas aren't actually easy, when they can task other people to implement those ideas instead.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
KorvinStarmast
This allowed the Wehrmacht to "get inside the French decision cycle" which decision making model we see once again a generation later with John Boyd's treatise in tactical air-to-air combat ... and that is still being taught in at least one major alliance's military doctrine ...
He's the OODA loop guy, right?
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peelee
That's where most of my experience is as well. We're counting Law & Order as experience, right? McCoy is my boy!
Oh God don't get me started. At least it's original recipe and not extra spin-off.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AstralFire
Oh God don't get me started. At least it's original recipe and not extra spin-off.
You'd think if they were going to take a cop-and-law show and reduce it just to a cop show, they'd at least get a cop good enough to rival Briscoe, but nope!
Oh, also, I think My Cousin Vinnie is the state film here. That counts as an entire class of trial prep, doesn't it?
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
A problem with any kind of law about when the Council decision is valid is that there must be a judge. Maybe Dvalin didn't want to be that judge because he feels it would invalidate his vow to follow all Council decisions if he could decide "this one is not valid". That would be kind of stupid in this concrete situation (IMO), but very lawful. Maybe there is an independent court installed, but I rather doubt it and in this case its decision would come too late anyway. My theory is that Dvalin said "let's try to prevent tampering as well as we can, and that's good enough".
If Dvalin would really abide by the decision to send all dwarves to Hel even if he knew that the Vampires dominated the clan elders is something we'll probably never know. Hel seems to think that either he would or that he won't know about the domination.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AstralFire
Air Bud: The rulebook doesn't say a dog can't okay basketball. So it must be okay.
Vampires: The rulebook doesn't say dominating people is against the rules, so it must be okay.
Both are facially ridiculous situations. Both are based on something that does occur (a law that enumerates only things that are specifically banned and does not include any sort of reasonable person catch all or unlisted exception). In what way is this a vast misrepresentation of your point?
This is a vast representation of my point because it is not my point at all. I.e. a strawman.
Grey Wolf
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
The Air Bud thing always makes me think of my soccer referee training, where we were asked as a serious question "What if an emu escaped from the zoo and ran across the goal, blocking a shot from going in?" It was a thought exercise in "What do you do if the utterly ridiculous happens" that has stuck with me.
By the way, the answer was a drop ball where the shot was blocked. After you red card the emu and send it to the stands for unsportsmanlike behaviour.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Grey_Wolf_c
This is a vast representation of my point because it is not my point at all. I.e. a strawman.
Grey Wolf
Alright, then why do you feel I was quoting your argument when i said that terodil was arguing about an Air Bud exception in the law? Because... they are. That is literally what's in the original story we're discussing. That is what I believe is their very first post in the thread, the one I quoted, is talking about.
How else would you describe the original story element which we are discussing?
Or are you going to say it's a mischaracterization of the story as well?
If it's not a mischaracterization of the story that we're discussing, and it doesn't represent your point, it wasn't about your point but about the story we're discussing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rodin
The Air Bud thing always makes me think of my soccer referee training, where we were asked as a serious question "What if an emu escaped from the zoo and ran across the goal, blocking a shot from going in?" It was a thought exercise in "What do you do if the utterly ridiculous happens" that has stuck with me.
By the way, the answer was a drop ball where the shot was blocked. After you red card the emu and send it to the stands for unsportsmanlike behaviour.
Emu are nothing if not unsportsmanlike.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rodin
The Air Bud thing always makes me think of my soccer referee training, where we were asked as a serious question "What if an emu escaped from the zoo and ran across the goal, blocking a shot from going in?" It was a thought exercise in "What do you do if the utterly ridiculous happens" that has stuck with me.
By the way, the answer was a drop ball where the shot was blocked. After you red card the emu and send it to the stands for unsportsmanlike behaviour.
So you're going to completely ignore the protective gear violation on the emu, then?
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rodin
The Air Bud thing always makes me think of my soccer referee training, where we were asked as a serious question "What if an emu escaped from the zoo and ran across the goal, blocking a shot from going in?" It was a thought exercise in "What do you do if the utterly ridiculous happens" that has stuck with me.
By the way, the answer was a drop ball where the shot was blocked. After you red card the emu and send it to the stands for unsportsmanlike behaviour.
I see your emu shot-block and raise you one bird exploded by pitch:
https://youtu.be/1PyCpG06138
I think the umpire ended up calling that a fowl ball.
(I know, I'll see myself out.)
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
The Aboleth
I see your emu shot-block and raise you one bird exploded by pitch:
https://youtu.be/1PyCpG06138
I think the umpire ended up calling that a fowl ball.
(I know, I'll see myself out.)
Oh cmon, that was terrible.
The pitchers team clearly got a birdie.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Four words turned out to be three words.
Tarquin's defeat will be a mystery we'll never see.
Andi turned out to be a jealous and crazy teenager.
Andi don't know the ship's secret defense system.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
martianmister
Four words turned out to be three words.
Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo is four words, just not four unique words. Which nobody ever promised.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peelee
Oh cmon, that was terrible.
The pitchers team clearly got a birdie.
True, but only after the batting team was found to be Robin the catcher's signals.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
I remain hopeful that Tarquin gets dealt with in a Scouring of the Shire scenario. He is my favorite villain in the strip; Xykon isn't very deep and while Mr. Burlew has done some fantastic things with Redcloak I'm just not that inherently interested in the Goblin story.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AstralFire
I remain hopeful that Tarquin gets dealt with in a Scouring of the Shire scenario. He is my favorite villain in the strip; Xykon isn't very deep and while Mr. Burlew has done some fantastic things with Redcloak I'm just not that inherently that interested in the Goblin story.
To be fair, Tarquin isn't very deep either. Not saying you can't like him, just saying that was an odd complaint against Xykon.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peelee
To be fair, Tarquin isn't very deep either. Not saying you can't like him, just saying that was an odd complaint against Xykon.
That's fair.
Tarquin isn't very deep.
Xykon aspires to the depth of a sidewalk puddle on a sunny day in Arizona.
-
Re: What plot twist most disappointed you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AstralFire
That's fair.
Tarquin isn't very deep.
Xykon aspires to the depth of a sidewalk puddle on a sunny day in Arizona.
I like how poetic that was. It reminds me to never go back to Arizona.