Parson's Klog, Page 3

[Iggero]

Since we probably still have quite a lot of story to go I would say that at the very least Parson must survive. And while I will admit his terminology and grasp of world history are a little off, we haven't seen him fail at an actual battle yet. Leave the guy be until we see him fail or some such. Besides, the hero has to look bad in the begining so he can shine in the end.

Finally, I am reminded of texts I have read where a normla person is transported into a world of magic just like parson. Usually they begin as a horrible geek stereotype, but by the end of the text they are still a geek, jsut a slightly wiser one. watch Parson, he'll shape up.

[Callioope]

First time I've ever posted for Erfworld... I wasn't too interested at the beginning but it's definitely drawing my interest as it gets further in the story. I like the logs :)

and I LOVED the reference to Ender's Game. We just finished discussing it in my sci fi class. Amazing book.

As to the reference of the getting troops close enough to get an arrow to hit... I think that's a legit connection to EG. Because what Ender did in the final battle was submerge his troops within the enemy until they got close enough to shoot the MD device so that it would hit the planet.

I don't know anything about strategy but I think the comic is amusing :)

[Caledonian]

There can't be classic sieges in modern warfare. Stalingrad is probably the closest thing we can manage - and that's a scorched-earth strategy if there ever was one.

[theStorminMormo]

I guess I'm just annoyed that it was such a cheap-shot reference to Ender's Game. The point of Ender's Game was so far removed from being about military strategy. As Orson Scott Card signed my copy it's a "Survival guide for nerds", among other things, and a philosophical look at the relationship between understanding and love (especially obvious if you read Speaker for the Dead).

I'll be honest, it just really hit my nerve that someone who clearly knows so dirt little about warfare or world history is making such assinine assertions (that "Call the Cavalry is a valid strategy is still my favorite - is "load your weapon" also one?) and then has the gall to drag one of the best science fiction books of all time into it.

May as well have him much some idiot observation about desert survival and call it "The Dune Strategy".

[Iggero]

Please remember sir, that the author of a text is considered dead for purposes of it's meaning. Tehrefor, the Ender Strategy is whatever a reader says it is. Cavalry is a vadil strategy, since he is woring froma fantasy perspective and fantasy s littered with moments of last minute rescue.

[Demented]

What is this "Ender's Game style of assault". It's like you people never read the freaking book. Unless Parson has an MD device tucked away, there's no "Ender's Game style of assault". It's not even a "style of assualt". It's just suicide bombing with a really big bomb.

You want suicide bombing with a really big bomb, go play Wing Commander.

Ender's game was lots of suicide bombing with lots of bombs. Only, not really bombs. More like en masse game exploitation. "I don't really know what this does, but I'm going to apply my remaining forces like a garden hose at the enemy and hope the results go boom."

Most RTS games would scoff at such a tactic. Most real world generals, on the other hand... would not only scoff at the tactic, but ridicule the tactician!

[theStorminMormo]

There can't be classic sieges in modern warfare.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege

See "Modern Warfare". Most recent example is Fallujah. There are plenty of others.

[theStorminMormo]

Ender's game was lots of suicide bombing with lots of bombs.

Only the last mission was a deliberate suicide mission, and the fatal shot was just that *a* shot. So - *a* bomb is more appropriate than lots of bombs. The MD device was only used against planet in that final example, in all other cases it was used as conventional ship-to-ship weapon.

Most RTS games would scoff at such a tactic. Most real world generals, on the other hand... would not only scoff at the tactic, but ridicule the tactician!

Right, and in Ender's Game the tactician was a kid who thought he was still in training and only chose "the Ender's Game strategy" because he wanted to stop playing the game. It wasn't a conscious strategy at all.

Clearly this was lost on Parson.

[theStorminMormo]

Please remember sir, that the author of a text is considered dead for purposes of it's meaning. Tehrefor, the Ender Strategy is whatever a reader says it is.

Thanks for the lesson in literary theory, but no thanks. Some interpretations of a book are less valid than others based on failing to accurately relate to the text as a whole.

Ender's Game was not a book about strategy, and there was nothing original in the use of the MD device in the end. It was just a suicide mission + doomsday device. Neither original nor the point of the book. So naming it after Ender was just a silly attempt to make a literary reference.

Cavalry is a vadil strategy, since he is woring froma fantasy perspective and fantasy s littered with moments of last minute rescue.

So now "get rescued" is a strategy too?

[Caledonian]

May as well have him much some idiot observation about desert survival and call it "The Dune Strategy".

The Dune Strategy: utilize your superior survival and ecological knowledge to build your forces in an area considered uninhabitable by your enemies, then use aspects of the natural world and superior planning against them.

Works fantastically in Alpha Centauri.

We have enough wanna-be tacticians in the comic. We don't need more in forum threads.

[theStorminMormo]

The Dune Strategy: utilize your superior survival and ecological knowledge to build your forces in an area considered uninhabitable by your enemies, then use aspects of the natural world and superior planning against them.

Works fantastically in Alpha Centauri.

We have enough wanna-be tacticians in the comic. We don't need more in forum threads.

No, see that actually has something to do with the book Dune. My point wasn't that you can't name a strategy after a book, but that the particular attempt to do so with "Enders Game" as a reference to "kill the boss" is stupid because there's nothing about Ender's Game that made that strategy new or original *and* it misses the point of the book.

[Iggero]

Post mdern deconsturctionism, a valid form of interpretation, states taht anything can be the meaing of any work, if that thing coems to you while experienceing any of the work. Therefor, this discussion could be about peanut butter, adn I could write a scholarly paper on it. However, in general the most famous thoughts on any work come from focusing on one portion of a work. A single line in the Great Gatsby can change the entire text, without looking at anything else. The narrator: "I find myself to be an honest person". Believeing or disbeleiving this line can be a topic in itself. Beyond that, Parson may still feel he is in a coma or some such and that a suicide would get him out, just like Ender leaving the game.

And yes, getting rescued is a strategy. A really bad one, but possible within the universe we are set with. Or they may have some hidden aid that Parson is unaware of and the Tool is to stupid to use properly. Finalyl, if you dislike Parson, Erfworld, and what people are saying, why do you read it and continue this conversation? Just asking.

[pclips]

...Clearly this was lost on Parson.

It's kind of an interesting position I am in, because Parson exists in my head and I know that he would leap at the chance to debate these critiques of him. Unfortunately he is in an alternate universe, or an altered state of consciousness, or something even weirder than that, and is unavailable for comment.

However, as author I would like to thank you for directing the criticism at the character and at least leaving me the benefit of the doubt as to my own grasp of military strategy, vs. Parson's.

Would you mind if I asked how your own strategy brainstorming notes would read in Parson's place, though?

[Walpurgisborn]

Sorry Stormin Momo and Spec, I'm gonna have to disagree witih you on this. Stalingrad included a siege, guerilla warfare is an example of assyetric warfare and in the original short story, it was a single brillaint stroke that won the war for for Ender, when he was facing insurmountable odds.

Now am I saying we should shower Parson with praise for his amazing grasp of real world strategy and history. No. I'd say he air battles over Britain would probably be a better real world analogy for the type of siege he'd be seeing, but other than that, criticizing Parson because he's not the greatest arm chair general kind of strikes me as a little too much like Mr Pot commenting on the unbecoming hue of Senor Kettle.

[Umbral_Arcanist]

Heh, WWED? (What Would Ender Do?), that's a good motto, Giant's Drink anyone?

[Iggero]

Excellent question. First off: To my mind, as soon as a comic is posted, you re dead for reasons of understanding it. YOur opinion is jsut as valid as everyone elses. Other than that: I would probably swear repeatedly, panic slightly, then start writing what I knew,muchlike he did, but less organized. Finally, I would eat, come up with some really strange plan that will come to me right after I log off, and execute it. Even if the plan didn't work it owld surprise the enemy. In games my offbeathead has saved me before. It might this time. Case in pint: a totally unstoppable beingthat is about to kill an entire party of level 22 chracters. Solution: Throw down a smokestick and run. Later, get together with old adventureing party adn kill.

[Strategos]

I thought what he meant by the "Ender's Game Strategy" was Ender's winning tactic in his last game at Battle School. You know the one where he was up against Griffin and Tiger armies and won by ignoring the armies and sending a small group of soldiers to take the gate? The one it imples in the "Fools Mate" Section of the Klog?

[Caledonian]

Nah, that'd be too obvious. He must have meant something obscure and stupid, otherwise we wouldn't be able to criticize him.

[Demented]

I can only recall three "Ender's Game" strategies in Ender's Game...
The two so far mentioned, and that third no-victory option, where he dug his way through a giant's eye.

Nonetheless, they were all a "single brilliant stroke".
Of course, they're only brilliant if you measure a means by its end.
Otherwise they were all futile and stupidly lucky, rather than brilliant.

[EdgarVerona]

Love the references to Ender's Game, best book EVER.

Aye, I agree... I was really bummed out seeing what he's been writing lately though... to put it mildly. It's very contradictory to the viewpoints he expresses in Ender's Game and Speaker of the Dead. (EDIT: and I'll leave it at that for the sake of not redirecting the conversation ;) )

[ziggurat]

Love the references to Ender's Game, best book EVER.

Wow, you're unfamiliar with great literature...

[EdgarVerona]

Wow, you're unfamiliar with great literature...

I might not call it the BEST book ever, but I definately think it was an awesome book (Ender's Game... and Speaker of the Dead as well)

[Strategos]

Sorry, I was simply trying to understand why people thought that "Ender's Game Strategy" automatically meant 'use the MD device on the planet and watch it go boom!' When it was only one of the listed options under the heading. I think there is enough in Ender's game to cover all the things in the list, maybe not on such a grand scale as the MD Device but there nonetheless.

Superweapon: The aforementioned MD Device
Fool's Mate: My original example.
Hidden Weakness: The Giant's Drink, no matter which drink the Giant offered the player would die, but it couldn't stop Ender's attack on it.
Big Deception: A little bit of a stretch here, but Mazer, Graff the Teachers, the Hegemon, Polemarch and Strategos deceived most of the world into thinking Battle School was to find the next defender of the world if that doesn't count as a 'big deception' nothing does.

[Emperor Tippy]

I might not call it the BEST book ever, but I definately think it was an awesome book. The only thing that let me down, as I posted above, was that the writer has apparently become a raving extremist lunatic-for-hire, writing what amounts to political smut to make a quick buck. It's a real shame. =(

To be fair, what Empire posits isn't entirely crazy.

[Aevii]

As soon as he mentioned Ender's Game, I concocted mental images of the Dr. Device slamming into Ansom, and I smiled.

That being said, I'm pretty sure there's little to no way to win this battle. Parson himself noted that he may have been thrown into the unwinnable situation he had planned for his group.

I got the impression that his group was supposed to have the advantage, and that the challenge was on himself to beat them all anyways, since he was whatever passes for a dungeon master and he already admitted to like playing the bad guy, no matter what Stanley may have said about it.

[EdgarVerona]

To be fair, what Empire posits isn't entirely crazy.

I don't know... it's pretty far out there.

EDIT: I'll leave it at that, didn't mean to go on such a large tangent. ;) But suffice to say, I love what OSC used to do... and I have less than enthusiastic feelings about his latest work, unless it turns out to be satire... which is the only thing I can think of that would explain the sudden apparent shift in worldview.

[benthehater]

I think Parson is in a really unfair position, honestly. I don't think Stanley really wants a victory as much as he wants the Arkenpliers. So any scenario where Ansom falls and/or loses the Arkenpliers so that Stanley can get them, is acceptable to Stanley, up to and including losing Gobwin Knob.

Likewise, Parson's options are really limited when that's taken into account. Successfully defending Gobwin Knob from seige until a lengthy stalemate commences would be a kind of successful defense, but not by Stanley's terms, since he wants the Arkenpliers. Once Stanley has them, I can't see him even caring about the battle's outcome.

[Blackeagle]

I can't help but wonder, is this comic supposed to make us believe that Parson is a brilliant tactician, or just a fat slob who believes his fantasy games have relevance to modern strategy? His analogies for military strategy are waaaaaay off, and make me wonder if Erfworld is more of a satire than I originally suspected.

It's a place where they fight battles in turns, how realistic do you expect it to be?

Erfword is a giant wargame (albiet an unusually cute one). Stanley didn't need a great military strategist, he needed a great wargamer, and that's exactly what Parson is.

[ryos]

@StorminMormo: You're mistaking a brainstorming session for a serious plan and then blowing it way out of proportion.

@EdgarVerona: must...restrain...self...from...derailing...thread ...!!

[asqwasqw]

Ahh, Ender's game, good times. From a tactical standpoint, it seems like he is screwed. I don't think retreat is an option.