Gender and Sexuality Representation in OOTS

[Raineh Daze]

Hmm, I like to think that the value of an art piece can and usually should stand independent of the story behind its creator, author intent, its time period, and the culture it is written in, (with the obvious exception of true parody and direct social commentary.) You can sometimes get more out of a work if you understand the authors story and the culture, but I view all of that as distinctly separate from the work itself. It's why I don't accept Word of G-d as the end all canon. It may be the authors intent and the authors interpretation, but every other interpretation is just as valid.

... that viewpoint makes no sense. :/

[SowZ]

... that viewpoint makes no sense. :/

Why not? A story should contain everything you need to know to understand the story. If I read a book and say, "Wow, Heathecliffe is a real douchebag." And the author says, "No, he is actually a good guy, deep down." the author isn't right and I'm not right. We both have our own belief on the work.

Similarly, since the story is self contained, and I read the book and gather from it that Huma-Hina-chan is going to end up with Yara-Kama-Sama, and the author says, "No, Huma-Hina-chan gets with Tetsu-Hotsu-Matsu," but that isn't in the book, the author isn't right just by virtue of being the author. Just like Lucas saying 'Greedo shot first' isn't correct.

Basically, it is a philosophy which accepts content in a book over intention. Ultimately, all storytelling is cooperative. So I see no reason why the authors interpretation is the correct one.

While what I am about to say next isn't true evidence for the validity of my viewpoint, it is actually extremely common in literary circles.

[rodneyAnonymous]

The problem with "Han shot first" is that it implies Greedo shoots at all ;)

[137beth]

She was the Leader though. Samantha didn't do much leading in the Bandit group, she just told them to kidnap cute guys. The actual engagements (and probably the rest of the logistics, she doesn't seem the type) were left up to her not-loony-teenager Neutral father. She was the Leader though. If nothing else, Haley did have the position.

group of herself, Belkar, and Celia (Celia is not even a member of OOTS) < Azure city resistance

She was the Leader though. Samantha didn't do much leading in the Bandit group, she just told them to kidnap cute guys. The actual engagements (and probably the rest of the logistics, she doesn't seem the type) were left up to her not-loony-teenager Neutral father. She was the Leader though. If nothing else, Haley did have the position.

Roy dies in 443. Haley is the leader of the unified OOTS until the split, at the end of 468. That's 25 strips, plus the last panel of strip 443. That is more than Samantha did. Even after they split, Haley is still the leader of the Order of the Stick until Roy is resurrected. It was her idea to split up and try to find each other, remember? She was still the leader. Unless you are under the impression that someone can only "lead" a group if they are in the immediate vicinity, in which case V was not a member of the OOTS when on another plane, (or now, for that matter), since he/she/ze/it was not near Roy.


Yes, the assumption of heteronormitivity does bother me. It bothers me enough that I'm going to skip getting involved in the argument...

[Raineh Daze]

Ah, it's that ludicrous part of literary criticism that thinks that the person behind the world is wrong, got it. Never been able to understand that argument, since I sure as hell know what I mean when I write something, so I don't see why Random Person X should be considered just as likely to be right. Pretty much the same reason why I would put someone that read the whole story or the original version (assuming translations etc., not revisions) before someone that never finished.

In short: sounds like an excuse to keep talking about something that should be a closed case.

Roy dies in 443. Haley is the leader of the unified OOTS until the split, at the end of 468. That's 25 strips, plus the last panel of strip 443. That is more than Samantha did. Even after they split, Haley is still the leader of the Order of the Stick until Roy is resurrected. It was her idea to split up and try to find each other, remember? She was still the leader. Unless you are under the impression that someone can only "lead" a group if they are in the immediate vicinity, in which case V was not a member of the OOTS when on another plane, (or now, for that matter), since he/she/ze/it was not near Roy.

Eh, seems more like she was still second in command, then, if being on another plane doesn't matter. Roy never explicitly vacated the spot, he just went to the LG afterlife for a bit.

[Shadowknight12]

Ah, it's that ludicrous part of literary criticism that thinks that the person behind the world is wrong, got it. Never been able to understand that argument, since I sure as hell know what I mean when I write something, so I don't see why Random Person X should be considered just as likely to be right. Pretty much the same reason why I would put someone that read the whole story or the original version (assuming translations etc., not revisions) before someone that never finished.

In short: sounds like an excuse to keep talking about something that should be a closed case.

Which is a shame, really, because the original intention of that form of literary critique was not to tell the author that he was wrong, but to try and extract additional enjoyment, food for thought, meaning or speculation from the text. It was, in a way, formalised speculation, a way to turn what would otherwise be a very cut and dry story into a starting point for philosophy, social analysis, literary analysis and so on.

It has its uses, but saying "the author is wrong, nyeh nyeh!" does give the method a bad name.

[Raineh Daze]

Which is a shame, really, because the original intention of that form of literary critique was not to tell the author that he was wrong, but to try and extract additional enjoyment, food for thought, meaning or speculation from the text. It was, in a way, formalised speculation, a way to turn what would otherwise be a very cut and dry story into a starting point for philosophy, social analysis, literary analysis and so on.

It has its uses, but saying "the author is wrong, nyeh nyeh!" does give the method a bad name.

I don't mind the talking about it so much. That's fine. Allegory is fine. Saying, however, that personal opinion is just as correct as the opinions that created it is too presumptuous.

... well, unless the author can't stick to one opinion.

[Lvl45DM!]

Ah, it's that ludicrous part of literary criticism that thinks that the person behind the world is wrong, got it. Never been able to understand that argument, since I sure as hell know what I mean when I write something, so I don't see why Random Person X should be considered just as likely to be right. Pretty much the same reason why I would put someone that read the whole story or the original version (assuming translations etc., not revisions) before someone that never finished.

In short: sounds like an excuse to keep talking about something that should be a closed case.

Well you have to remember that your intentions and your results might not match. For instance, I'm pretty sure that comic writers in the 50's and 60's were trying to make Batman heterosexual but some people consider him to be gay based on reading those comics. James Cameron meant for the Humans to be bad in Avatar and the Aliens to be good, but plenty of people felt that the humans were justified, or that both were evil.

Using it to say that "Batman never actually did anything he fell into a PTSD induced coma and has hallucinated his whole life after his parents died" would perhaps be an overuse of Death of the Author. But saying that Batman is actually a barely functioning sociopath wouldn't be. Remember one would still have to provide reasonable evidence.

[Shadowknight12]

I don't mind the talking about it so much. That's fine. Allegory is fine. Saying, however, that personal opinion is just as correct as the opinions that created it is too presumptuous.

... well, unless the author can't stick to one opinion.

Philosophically, strong proponents of Death of the Author subscribe to the notion that literary works exist independently from the creator, and that it is possible to derive additional meaning that the author did not intend. Again, this isn't about telling the author that he is wrong, it was mostly used to speculate about the work like... well, like the example Lvl45DM! just gave you, for instance.

It was very crass to say "the author is wrong" though. Or at least that's what I was taught. It was more of a "sure, we know what is canon, but wouldn't it be interesting if..." thing.

[Mutant Sheep]

Roy dies in 443. Haley is the leader of the unified OOTS until the split, at the end of 468. That's 25 strips, plus the last panel of strip 443. That is more than Samantha did. Even after they split, Haley is still the leader of the Order of the Stick until Roy is resurrected. It was her idea to split up and try to find each other, remember? She was still the leader. Unless you are under the impression that someone can only "lead" a group if they are in the immediate vicinity, in which case V was not a member of the OOTS when on another plane, (or now, for that matter), since he/she/ze/it was not near Roy.


Yes, the assumption of heteronormitivity does bother me. It bothers me enough that I'm going to skip getting involved in the argument...

thank you for saying what I meant to say, but in a way where it's actually readable. (I was trying to say that if we can take Samantha's "leadership" as her being the leader of a group, Haley definitely counts. Because she has the actual title of Leader (that's what second in commands do, after all) and she was actually leading the united Order (minus Roy, naturally) before the boat split. )

Ok. That made even less sense. Eurgh.

[Raineh Daze]

You can sum up my preferred phrasing as: "Hey, you can read it as this," without then going and saying it's just as valid as whatever other random thing.

Like saying something's an allegory for an even that happened after it was written. Seriously, sometimes people need to check dates.

[SowZ]

Ah, it's that ludicrous part of literary criticism that thinks that the person behind the world is wrong, got it. Never been able to understand that argument, since I sure as hell know what I mean when I write something, so I don't see why Random Person X should be considered just as likely to be right. Pretty much the same reason why I would put someone that read the whole story or the original version (assuming translations etc., not revisions) before someone that never finished.

In short: sounds like an excuse to keep talking about something that should be a closed case.



Eh, seems more like she was still second in command, then, if being on another plane doesn't matter. Roy never explicitly vacated the spot, he just went to the LG afterlife for a bit.

It's not that the author didn't have intent, or didn't know what he was writing. It is more like, "Why does the authors intent supercede my interpretation?" Since, ultimately, all story telling is collaborative, I see no reason why this should be the case.

Further, as has already been explored, the literary work is its own thing. It exists whether or not its author does. An author could always rewrite his work or postulate that he or she meant something that they never did originally. But that wouldn't change the original story. The original story would still be a story. It would create a new story. Which is fine, but the other story still lives on with or without author Word of G-d.

Whenever I am at a writing workshop, and someone says they interpreted X plot event or X personality trait from a character that I didn't mean, I would never tell the person they were wrong. That was the story they got out of it and that's just as valid as the story I crafted in my own head.

The problem with "Han shot first" is that it implies Greedo shoots at all ;)

Fair enough.

[137beth]

Eh, seems more like she was still second in command, then, if being on another plane doesn't matter. Roy never explicitly vacated the spot, he just went to the LG afterlife for a bit.

See strip 455, where Haley explicitly states that she is "current leader of the Order of the Stick."

It is pretty clear cut, Haley was the OOTS leader.

[Raineh Daze]

It's not that the author didn't have intent, or didn't know what he was writing. It is more like, "Why does the authors intent supercede my interpretation?" Since, ultimately, all story telling is collaborative, I see no reason why this should be the case.

Because the author's intent is actually important to the way the story turned out as it did, and is therefore necessary for it to exist? Seems a simple enough thing to explain. Without that intent, there'd be no story, therefore the intend is more important than what you read into it.

Also because that intend affects more people. Not hard to grasp.

See strip 455, where Haley explicitly states that she is "current leader of the Order of the Stick."

It is pretty clear cut, Haley was the OOTS leader.

Look, my reasoning against listing it like that boils down to this:

1) She didn't really lead the whole Order properly. Battle was going on, group fell apart. Such great leadership.

2) The Order wasn't really important to the story whilst she was in charge (as a group, not as individuals: five people and a corpse in disparate regions of the world and doing different things do not really comprise a group in any sense of the word), so shouldn't be listed.

3) False impression of equality.

[SowZ]

Because the author's intent is actually important to the way the story turned out as it did, and is therefore necessary for it to exist? Seems a simple enough thing to explain. Without that intent, there'd be no story, therefore the intend is more important than what you read into it.

Also because that intend affects more people. Not hard to grasp.



Look, my reasoning against listing it like that boils down to this:

1) She didn't really lead the whole Order properly. Battle was going on, group fell apart. Such great leadership.

2) The Order wasn't really important to the story whilst she was in charge (as a group, not as individuals: five people and a corpse in disparate regions of the world and doing different things do not really comprise a group in any sense of the word), so shouldn't be listed.

3) False impression of equality.

Without the authors mother and father meeting up, the story would have been equally impossible. There are countless factors that effected the story. The authors nationality, religion, etc. etc. But those aren't part of the story anymore than author intent is part of the story. Author intent helped create the story, but it isn't part of it.

[oppyu]

Re: Most important group led by a woman being OOTS

My reasoning is that Haley was fulfilling her duties as the second-in-command; at no point in the story did the Order go "Ok, forget about the old guy who used to lead this team, I'm the new head honcho and we're going to kill Xykon." Her entire modus operandi as leader was to survive long enough to find Roy, and put him back in charge so they could continue on his mission. She was just a temporary fill-in.

[Raineh Daze]

Without the authors mother and father meeting up, the story would have been equally impossible. There are countless factors that effected the story. The authors nationality, religion, etc. etc. But those aren't part of the story anymore than author intent is part of the story. Author intent helped create the story, but it isn't part of it.

Extract all authorial intent from the story and tell me how much story you have left.

[Shadowknight12]

3) False impression of equality.

This, pretty much. Belkar even goes out of his way to mention to Roy how she couldn't lead anyone (which presumably also includes the Azure Resistance). While this is obviously not intended to be sexist at all, and instead is meant to tell Roy that he has valuable leadership skills and that the team would fall apart without him, it really drives home that Haley simply did not have leadership capabilities and worked best on her own.

Which is why it's very disingenuous to portray her as a leader.

[Xacal]

Hmm... I know that this has already been discussed at length throughout several of the previous pages...
But maybe it would be more useful to categorize Xykon as "formerly" living and straight, currently undead and, as the character's portrayal stands so far, effectively asexual?

[SowZ]

Extract all authorial intent from the story and tell me how much story you have left.

100 percent of it is left from the readers POV. Most people read most things with little to no knowledge of the authors life, so they fill in any holes left by not knowing 'intent' with personal life experiences or viewpoints, which make the reading experience personal. All storytelling is cooperative.

If you are saying, "Subtract authorial intent from the writers process," we are no longer talking about the story anymore. We may as well say subtract all pens and pencils from the authors house and there is no story.

[Shadowknight12]

All storytelling is cooperative.

You have said this over and over, and while I neither agree nor disagree with you on that, I would merely like to remind you that not everyone shares that idea. Some people believe that, in non-interactive media, the audience is passive.

Neither view is better or worse than the other (that too is subjective, like all forms of opinion), but I bring that up to prevent a lengthy argument that might lead nowhere.

Invoking Death of the Author is fine, but so is rejecting it.

[Raineh Daze]

100 percent of it is left from the readers POV. Most people read most things with little to no knowledge of the authors life, so they fill in any holes left by not knowing 'intent' with personal life experiences or viewpoints, which make the reading experience personal. All storytelling is cooperative.

If you are saying, "Subtract authorial intent from the writers process," we are no longer talking about the story anymore. We may as well say subtract all pens and pencils from the authors house and there is no story.

Subtract all authorial intent from it and you're left with nothing, because it's interwoven with the story itself. That is why I say it's more important than your interpretation, because it's just as important to the story as the characters are.

As you may have guessed by now, I don't subscribe to the idea that just because the author will one day no longer be around, their opinions don't matter.

[jere7my]

I don't mind the talking about it so much. That's fine. Allegory is fine. Saying, however, that personal opinion is just as correct as the opinions that created it is too presumptuous.

Authors are not always the last word in what's going on in their own work. I've lost count of the times I've heard an author say, "Wow, I never noticed that" after some fan pointed out a cool resonance between two elements of their work; I've also lost count of the times I've seen an author bullheadedly insist that they were trying to say X when their story, for whatever reason, supports Y. Sometimes an author's hindbrain makes connections that their forebrain doesn't, and it takes a reader to see them; sometimes an author has blind spots because of the culture they're embedded in at the time, or because of their personal history; sometimes an author just fails to notice something, or forgets to put something in. In my experience, professional writers tend to be excited and pleased when someone notices something they didn't intend. I know I've written things and not noticed that something was obviously true until the fifth reread.

(A semi-related story: A director was adapting one of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels to the silver screen. Confused about who, exactly, committed one of the murders, the director called Chandler, who angrily shouted into the phone, "It's right there on the page!" and hung up. Two hours later, the phone rang. It was Chandler, who said, "Never mind—I've just been rereading the book, and I can't figure it out either.")

(A semi-related Mister Boffo comic: A sculptor standing next to a lumpy stone ovoid, saying, "I originally planned to title it 'The Incarnation of All Evil in the
Universe,' but then I realized not everyone feels the way I do about potatoes.")

Anyway, I think an author's exegesis is a worthwhile resource when trying to study a work, and I don't see any reason to ignore it if we have access to it, but it certainly shouldn't be taken as holy writ.

[WoLong]

This, pretty much. Belkar even goes out of his way to mention to Roy how she couldn't lead anyone (which presumably also includes the Azure Resistance).

Yeah. There hasn't been a competent female leader for the entire comic, as far as I can remember. There is an instinctive impulse (in men and women) to categorize women as relatively childish. Women have even evolved physically to reinforce this (narrower eye canals, more likely to cry than males even when they've produced fewer tears.) This doesn't necessarily affect Mr. Giant, but it's interesting nonetheless. I would quite like to see an extremely competent female leader introduced in the near future.

[Raineh Daze]

Authors are not always the last word in what's going on in their own work. I've lost count of the times I've heard an author say, "Wow, I never noticed that" after some fan pointed out a cool resonance between two elements of their work; I've also lost count of the times I've seen an author bullheadedly insist that they were trying to say X when their story, for whatever reason, supports Y. Sometimes an author's hindbrain makes connections that their forebrain doesn't, and it takes a reader to see them; sometimes an author has blind spots because of the culture they're embedded in at the time, or because of their personal history; sometimes an author just fails to notice something, or forgets to put something in. In my experience, professional writers tend to be excited and pleased when someone notices something they didn't intend. I know I've written things and not noticed that something was obviously true until the fifth reread.

First point: uh, what? I'm not sure how lacking effective omniscience makes any difference.
Second: Great, you've found an author that can't write what they mean. Congratulations, they're bad at getting a point across.
Third: Umm... irrelevant.

(A semi-related story: A director was adapting one of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels to the silver screen. Confused about who, exactly, committed one of the murders, the director called Chandler, who angrily shouted into the phone, "It's right there on the page!" and hung up. Two hours later, the phone rang. It was Chandler, who said, "Never mind—I've just been rereading the book, and I can't figure it out either.")

Also irrelevant.

(A semi-related Mister Boffo comic: A sculptor standing next to a lumpy stone ovoid, saying, "I originally planned to title it 'The Incarnation of All Evil in the
Universe,' but then I realized not everyone feels the way I do about potatoes.")

Now I'm just getting confused. :/

Anyway, I think an author's exegesis is a worthwhile resource when trying to study a work, and I don't see any reason to ignore it if we have access to it, but it certainly shouldn't be taken as holy writ.

I'm just going to assume you realised I was talking about saying your interpretation is just as important, and add this: who said holy writ? I've been saying that the author's intent is more important than your opinion, and acting different is arrogant.

[SowZ]

Subtract all authorial intent from it and you're left with nothing, because it's interwoven with the story itself. That is why I say it's more important than your interpretation, because it's just as important to the story as the characters are.

As you may have guessed by now, I don't subscribe to the idea that just because the author will one day no longer be around, their opinions don't matter.

The authors intent is not part of the actual story itself. Here's an illustration. Two authors who've never met both write a 100 word story. By coincidence, they write exactly the same story. The same exact words in the same order, same names, and each has their own motivations for doing it. Each has separate intentions. Despite each work having different intentions, a reader would get the exact same thing out out of both works. Author intent is not part of the story itself.

If you say that the illustration couldn't happen, do the same thing with a shorter work. A Haiku, even.

An authors opinion matters. Just not more than anyone else, because everyone has a hand in creating the story. Every time a story is read by a new person, a new version of that story now exists, because everyone makes different value judgments or assumptions from that story.

You have said this over and over, and while I neither agree nor disagree with you on that, I would merely like to remind you that not everyone shares that idea. Some people believe that, in non-interactive media, the audience is passive.

Neither view is better or worse than the other (that too is subjective, like all forms of opinion), but I bring that up to prevent a lengthy argument that might lead nowhere.

Invoking Death of the Author is fine, but so is rejecting it.

Rejecting Death of the Author is fine, sure, but I disagree with anyone saying that all storytelling isn't cooperative. There is no such thing as a truly passive listener, because it is impossible with words and images to perfectly transcribe an idea to someone else, not to mention a story which is a combination of hundreds or thousands of ideas.

There will always be holes in every story that the listener or reader has to fill in for themselves, so no two people will ever draw exactly the same thing form a given story. That is what makes it cooperative. If it were possible to transfer complete ideas between two people without any personal take on it, I would agree that a reader or listener or viewer could maybe be passive. But I don't think it is.

[Shadowknight12]

Yeah. There hasn't been a competent female leader for the entire comic, as far as I can remember. There is an instinctive impulse (in men and women) to categorize women as relatively childish. Women have even evolved physically to reinforce this (narrower eye canals, more likely to cry than males even when they've produced fewer tears.) This doesn't necessarily affect Mr. Giant, but it's interesting nonetheless. I would quite like to see an extremely competent female leader introduced in the near future.

Yeah, though a lot of that can be explained by epigenetics and polymorphisms that we can hope to revert in the future (even the oft-cited adage that men are unchangeably stronger than women could be, in fact, changed, if we were to raise our children differently).

I completely and wholeheartedly agree that it would be magnificent to see strong, competent women in positions of leadership. Having a Tarquin-like woman (in terms of physical and mental competence, not morality) in the story would fill my heart with glee.

Rejecting Death of the Author is fine, sure, but I disagree with anyone saying that all storytelling isn't cooperative. There is no such thing as a truly passive listener, because it is impossible with words and images to perfectly transcribe an idea to someone else, not to mention a story which is a combination of hundreds or thousands of ideas.

There will always be holes in every story that the listener or reader has to fill in for themselves, so no two people will ever draw exactly the same thing form a given story. That is what makes it cooperative. If it were possible to transfer complete ideas between two people without any personal take on it, I would agree that a reader or listener or viewer could maybe be passive. But I don't think it is.

The problem is that you are conflating two different kinds of cooperative storytelling. One is the kind you are describing, where the author sends one half of the message and the audience makes up the other half in their own minds.

The other kind of cooperative storytelling is the one where the audience feels entitled to dictate what happens in the story, to alter the canon as they see fit, and to loudly complain when things don't go their way. I have a feeling that's what Raineh Daze is trying to explain, that asserting that your opinion has the same validity as authorial intent is presumptuous and arrogant.

I tend to agree with her, though I do acknowledge that one shouldn't outright discount personal interpretation in the audience. It's just that she does have a point: it's rather rude to presume that your own thoughts and feelings on a story are just as important (if not moreso) than the author's.

[SaintRidley]

Extract all authorial intent from the story and tell me how much story you have left.

I'm going to preface this by stating my hope that I might clarify some things about literary criticism and its relation to intent here. I deal primarily with texts of an age where there are few known authors, and little is known of the few known authors we have. The language is also archaic enough that it needs translation to even be comprehensible to your average person. With that said, allow me to give your question a shot.

But can you, the reader, absolutely glean authorial intent?

The thing about literary criticism and analysis is that it is not a science. It is not searching for The Answer. Assuming that there is, in fact, The Answer, is pretty much right out at this point. There are multiple answers, and multiple lines to get to those answers. The author may intend one thing, but there is far more at work in language than that. A poem may have been intended to say one thing, and that's fine. However, language doesn't really allow for that. The precise wording, the precise turns of phrase, may have intended one thing, but if they point also in another direction, then that's also a valid reading. There are a number of things that construct the author, whether the author is aware of them or not, and which subtly touch the product.

An author's intent is an interpretation, and one of many. An author may intend one thing, but the result might be different. Or the result might be that thing. But there are always other things. Chaucer may have only intended to tell a bawdy tale or twenty, but he gave us a number of other things in the process. Rich may have given us what he intended as a critique of several attitudes prevalent in role-playing games and gamers in general, but he's also giving us new formal problems in terms of how a comic on the internet should and could work, critiques of gender roles on a larger level, and (this through characters like Elan) an exploration of just what makes a narrative function. Shakespeare may not have intended to advance a serious argument for Jewish personhood and Jewish rights, but a number of critics have found Shylock to be just that. These may all have been intended to some degree or another, but they are part of a large tapesty of ideas that go into making a story or a poem, and the author makes one part of that tapestry consciously. A work of literature is more than the sum of its parts.

Now, I know of no serious scholars who argue that any text is an allegory for an event which took place after the text was written. Indeed, there aren't many serious scholars who argue that a text is an allegory for anything anymore. It's a pretty weak form of criticism. I'm guessing that you're seeing largely untrained people online making such arguments, and you should consider them as such.

The field of translation is one of the great proofs of the postmodern critical perspective regarding the variety of answers as opposed to one, totalized Answer. Every translation is inherently an act of criticism, an act of attempting to access what seems to be the mind of the author. And yet you will find that different translators understand that mind differently. There's more to a work than the creator's intent. Indeed, look at the translator's work and you'll see just as clearly that the translator's mind is very much at work, often in very subtle ways.

Trust me as a professional when I say that Rich's intent and its attendant interpretation are very important. He certainly isn't wrong about his story (Ray Bradbury might be, but he can't seem to make up his mind just what his intent was. But that gets us to memory and reconstructing intent, which is what all statements of intent boil down to once the work has been deemed finished). Trust me also when I say his intent does not by any means contain the whole range of possibilities. Nor is it terribly interesting (unless it can be used to support a different interpretation) precisely because it's already said. We're in the business of finding all the things that make the story what it is, and simply repeating the author isn't very helpful there. It's not a science, after all.

[rodneyAnonymous]

Token concession to something that was clearly (I thought) a joke? Okay. :)

[137beth]

Look, my reasoning against listing it like that boils down to this:

1) She didn't really lead the whole Order properly. Battle was going on, group fell apart. Such great leadership.

2) The Order wasn't really important to the story whilst she was in charge (as a group, not as individuals: five people and a corpse in disparate regions of the world and doing different things do not really comprise a group in any sense of the word), so shouldn't be listed.

3) False impression of equality.

1 and 2: Samantha is listed as a leader, though. And the bandit camp was still substantially less important than the order was in DstP
3: I'm not sure what you mean...