Erfworld 9; the discussion thread

[Gygaxphobia]

What is a "tcotchkes" ???

I'm thinking it's a clan of woad covered highlanders, any ideas?

[Haarculaneaum]

Oh, the tcotchkes -- they're a little of this and a little of that. You know, whatev.
H

[Manga Shoggoth]

Hmmmm. References upon references. Orly owls following a flying thing based on an old French animation....

You wouldn't be talking about Shadoks, by any chance? I loved that series!

[Daraniya]

I didn't get the ORLY? owl in the strip either. I just figured that someone reads a lot of fark.com (I do only because I get bored at work...) After seeing the ORLY? owl, I expect to see the BUTTSECKS owl... I then read some of the posts and re-read #9, in the first panel, you see the owls in the trees, and in #8 panel 8, Prince Ansom tells Jillian to take some Orlies with her, that they will only slow her down by 8 move.

This is definitely a strip where you will have to go back and re-read strips to help you continue the saga... The creator has wanted the ORLY? owl in there for a while. Otherwise, I don't think they would have been called "orlies". All the little background details remind me of a Monty Python movie. It took me a long time before I noticed the lady "beating" the cat on "Quest for the Holy Grail". Sure you hear the cat go "RAWWRRR", but there is so much going on in the movie detail wise, you might miss a few things unless you pay good attention.

All in all, I am still making up my mind on the comic. I mean, I found OOTS when it was in the hundreds, so I had a hundred or so comics to read, instead of the trickle that I am receiving with Erfworld.

**EDIT: The "blank"amancer thing is okay. very cutesy. Not my cup of tea, but at least you didn't try and re-invent the wheel by calling them something totally off the wall...**

[Tekar]

I think it's a little more dynamic than that.

We've had the first camp of people who did not use turns, and as we know from the cast page they are not heavily strategic characters.

Now we move to the good guys, with a largely regimented and strategy minded commander. He is the one giving the order to being and end turns, so I think more that the "turn based" style is his management preference.

This might prove to be humorous in the future, the opposition attacking more than once a turn etc since they're not bound by his rules.

We'll see!

Now you mention it, this might be a throwback to the many action players vs turn based players debates. The action players just like to crush as many things as possible while the turn based players like to show off with their 'strategical excelence'.

[IronMouse]

on the pluss side...the letter "W" appeared only four times

[Gnomish Lab]

Hmmm...
Those these are the orlies he convinced/ordered her to take with her.
Pretty expendable.

[Kuldace]

The whole 2 times a week thing might overtest my moderately short attention span, especially for a more plot-driven comic.

[Jefepato]

Huh. I'm still annoyed with Erfworld in general, but the orlies may save the comic for me.

[CockroachTeaParty]

O RLY?

Wow, the long hand of YTMND reaches even here, in what I once thought sacred ground. Weep, ye children of the playground, for there are few giants here...

[Dawnstrider_Moogle]

"Oh, I am. Even as we speak" gave me a chuckle.

[JosephD1014]

I liked this one better... I picked up on the orlie joke right away after seeing them.
The hat joke said HOMM to me but I can see that it could be any number of games.

You have me interested for a bit more... keep up the good work :)

[Jacklu]

Honestly, I can't understnad why people are having such a strongly negative reaction to erfworld. I think the comic is great. The artwork is amazing, the jokes are great (if a little hidden at time but then again, one of my favorite webcomics is Irregularwebcomics and I wouldn't get half the jokes there if not for Wikipidea) As for todays strip, I loved it. Now I know what orlies are and why they are so expendable.

[Calin]

With appropriate apologies, I'll be joining the chorus of those saying "thumbs-down" to the comic in the future. Rather than list a litany of complaints, I'll admit that the whole thing simply doesn't appeal to me. For instance, I can grant the high-quality of artistic ability that goes into the panels, while admitting freely the style annoys me for a webcomic (which doesn't really allow for appreciation of the skill alone). As for the writing...well, I can put it this way: the plot has not been great enough to overcome my groans at some of the Spongebobish humor. Hard to knock it, I suppose someone makes a lot of money off that kind of humor. Good luck to both creators, but I'll not trouble you anymore.

[Cipher]

Oh, come on guys. You've got to at least give the strip time to really get a grip on the type of humour it really wants to convey.

Me personally, I died laughing at the O RLY owl. Maybe it was the look on the owl's face. Maybe because it was because it was so bloody out of the blue (which, ironically, I saw that it was one of the reasons some of you DIDN'T like the joke).

Maybe it's not as polished as OotS. Yet. But by damn, it shows promise in my book. Can't wait for page 10.

[Ikkitosen]

Yep, keep it coming for me. I don't OoTS-level love it, but then it's 9 pages in and still finding its feet. IMHO it is a significant increase in the coolness of this site and the owners, which was the whole point!

[TO_Incognito]

I havn't really enjoyed Erfworld yet, but I'm startled at the number of people who are convinced that the details of the comic were just thrown in and barely thought out at all. It seems perfectly clear from the odd feel established by the comic and from the author's comic that pretty much everything we've noticed was a deliberate artistic choice.

[Maxymiuk]

My understanding of the "o rly?" origin is as follows.

The original picture featured an orly owl and the words o rly? which is a contraction of the phrase "Oh, really?" while at once being a play on the name of the owl's species.

Yes, it is/was funny before the internet killed it through overuse. And yes, for me at least, it's funny the way it works in the comic - when I looked at that panel for some reason I immediately thought about a Finding Nemo seagull yelling "Mine!" In that context, it isn't important to me whether the owl is actually responding to anything. It's more of its callsign, really.

[fwiffo]

I don't mind a big overreaching plot. I like plot-driven narrative instead of a gag-a-strip like most newspaper comics or short plot bursts like PVP. The thing is that it is difficult to serve two masters - making the short episodes to be both self-contained stories satisfying by themselves and painting the bigger picture.

But it can be done. Take Babylon 5 for example. Most early episodes were satisfying by themselves, while full of details that eventually were woven into larger narrative. Giant followed that pattern where early strips were appealing individually by themselves and eventually came to a large single narrative where they only exist as part of the whole.

Or, I don't know if anyone here read web-published novels while they are being published. I followed one such, called Simon of Space (by Cheeseburger Brown), reading each chapter as it was being written and posted. And pretty much from beginning, each chapter was satisfying by itself.

That's what I don't get so far from Erfworld. Each strip is adding to the narative, but I can't say that each is all that satisfying by itself. It might be a reasonable approach in a book novel, where the reader can decide to follow the initially unclear narrative at his own pace, till it comes together and fills in the meaning of introductory chapters, till they are as interesting as further ones. But it doesn't work as well for the serially published work, and that is where Erfworld suffers thus far.

[ZombieWomble]

The original picture featured an orly owl and the words o rly? which is a contraction of the phrase "Oh, really?" while at once being a play on the name of the owl's species.

There is no such thing as an "orly owl", the bird in the most famous picture is a snowy owl. The whole "o rly" image came (allegedly) from 4chan, where the word "repost" was replaced by "owl", and random zaniness ensued.

But neh... definately not feeling it in that context. Given a different prompt it could probably have worked, but there it was just "hey, look at this meme!" Shame, that lil guy usually cracks me up. (He's dead now, you know.)

[darkninjaoflight]

The orlies' bird call is "ORLY". You can see them squawking it as they fly away. The bird was just startled, he wasn't saying "Oh really?" to what Jillian said.

[Mewtroid]

I think I see why that goddamn owl makes sense here. Pretty much anything drawn in this art style is going to look cute enough that you aren't going to want it to die, and yet you want something expendable that nobody will mind seeing die, and the death of will in fact PLEASE your readers. The solution? Pick something that is going to piss everyone off by being there.

I demand the O BLAAARGAG owl appear. It must happen.

WARNING. PICTURE IN SPOILER TAGS (o blargag owl) MAY CAUSE NIGHTMARES.

Spoiler

Show

[LurkerBeneath]

I think Prince Ansom would be quite happy to skip the engagement...
Critically failed my Spot (or is it Sense Motive?) check on O RLY - GroanOL...
Seven heavies = seventh heaven?
-LB

[Acanthus]

Concerning the ORLY owl... there is actually a whole company named O'Reilly (publishes a lot of tech books, btw) which - iirc - also featured an owl among its logos. I always understood the ORLY owl as a little parody.

Hth,
Acanthus

[Drakuul]

Had to have the ORLY owl explained to me on this forum, but still loving it all.

A quick piece of wisdom : You can please all the readers some of the time or some of the readers all the time. But you'll never please all the readers all the time.

Keep it coming and myself and the rest of the fanbase for Erfworld will keep on coming back for more :)

Personally I don't understand people who make snap judgements on a few pages. If everyone was like that then virtually nothing would ever get done, no films, no books, no industry (think of the opposition to the steam engine initially).

Let Erfworld go forth in strength!

[faerwain]

Hmpf. I still don't know what to think of it(but will keep reading it). Made me actually feel a little dumb this time, and this thread is reaching the same effect(Hopefully it's only the early time causing this). Needed ORLY explained, had to google YATMND and All your base, could TBS guess somehow from the context..and what the Nazgul is a SRPG? [mother]Speak full proper words, lazy kid[/ mother]. Yeah, I can guess RPG, but what's the S? You all know that you are depressing me, right?
I'm afraid after WampaX's post that this strip might not turn out to be something for me if he is right, as I actually really didn't get the FF references in OOTS(never played any of them).
But I keep a little hope that there will come more than net and/or old video games references, and the comic in fact made me chuckle at several occasions until now. Though I repeat from an earlier thread, what I really like about erfworld until now are the interesting camera angles.
Will gratefully end my rant now
Good night everyone!

[Nazzo, the 102nd]

I totally agree with WampaX. It's a new world, a new system. If we don't get some of the jokes (if any) now, they will be explained later, when we have more understanding of the world's mecanics.

Personally, I like it. As an RTS lover, FF lover and Turn-based games lover, I find this vewy cool.

[Nitan]

I laughed at the ORLY joke, as I'm not a cynical aged web user who has to shout "shenanigans" every time a good joke/piece if humour is re-used

Ditto. It was pretty funny to me. Though, the cries of "O RLY" as they flew off didn't do much for me. Seeing the owl in the beginning, though, cracked me up.

Now all we need is the bucket seal and this comic will be ultimate!

[Vance_Nevada]

I figured that ORLY was the name of the creature, and that was all it could say. The "joke" being a reference to Pokemon where all the creatures can only say variations on their own name.

[Wallyz]

I figured that ORLY was the name of the creature, and that was all it could say. The "joke" being a reference to Pokemon where all the creatures can only say variations on their own name.

That works, too.