Elves and fridgehorror in OotS

[SPoD]

This isn't an unsound theory, can you please link to the debate on some other message board that you are referring too? If not, I'm afraid all you really have is speculation and it still won't stand up to evidence.

And if you had evidence, that would be true. You don't. You have speculation, same as me. You just find your own speculation more credible. I don't.

Do I care enough about this to spend my time searching for it? No. Especially since I know that the message board that I first saw Rich posting OOTS on doesn't even exist anymore. Or the conversation could have taken place on this forum but in a separate thread; all other threads from that time period have been purged. Or maybe it was among his personal friends, at his weekly D&D game, in a chatroom, or anywhere. All that would be required would be for there to be two people to discuss it and Rich present to hear it.

The absence of written proof for my theory doesn't make your theory correct by default. You can't prove that he didn't spark that debate elsewhere, because you can't prove a negative. The only defense for that would be a positive statement by Rich where he says, "It was strip #9 that I was talking about." Which you don't have. Without that, neither position is proven or disproven. We just don't have the proper evidence.

The links seem to indicate otherwise.

Not unless you want to interpret them that way. And that's all it can ever be, an interpretation. Not fact.

If you have to use the word seem in relation to your evidence, then you don't have evidence. You have conjecture. Because how something seems to you is not going to be the same as how it seems to someone else. That's called an opinion, not a fact.

Unless you (or someone) can produce an earlier point of contention, then there is absolutely no reason to think the debate which Rich refers to precedes the first time the issue was debated on the official forum.

There is every reason to think it, if one is attempting to actually weigh the facts and not read meaning into statements that may not be there. Especially since in those days, there were MORE readers on other forums than on this one. "Official" means nothing when there are less than 100 people reading your site, but hundreds are reading it somewhere else.

I'm going to PM Rich about this, not because I expect him to answer (I don't), but because him answering is the only possible resolution to this discussion and I have things to do today.