Only the honor of a paladin is unbreakable.

[Callista]

Seppuku was supposed to be ritual suicide, but sometimes--like in battle--there wasn't time for any ritual. The term eventually covered these acts as well.

[SquireJames]

The bouncing ball is a questionable use of D&D rules at best. Rich being the equivalent of a DM playing out a fight between NPC's in his mind, he can do what he wants. Still, he is publishing it to a world full of DM's, so he should expect some criticism for his treating his villains with kid gloves.

The worst thing, though, is that the strip is essentially trying to make cop-killing funny. If outrage is the desired reaction, then I guess Rich succeeded. If he thought that people would enjoy seeing the paladins lose their dignity as well as their lives, well I think he was a bit off. Another 2-3 depressing strips like this and the last one will likely drive me away.

[Grasilich]

Another 2-3 depressing strips like this and the last one will likely drive me away.

I'm just glad that Rich is telling the story he wants to tell rather than pandering to people that take Paladin-killing in a stick figure comic a bit too seriously. Authors that try to please everyone end up pleasing no one. You not reading the comic isn't going to make this comic any less awesome for all the rest of us.

[SPoD]

So Deus Ex Machina, then? (which is the very definition of magic, especially as you've described it). Hmm... No wonder why lots of people were so disheartened by that strip. It works in the context of "magic" ("a wizard did it." Literally!) but is completely against all logic of human emotion and mind. And makes me look down on D&D as a whole anyways. Because disguising Deus Ex Machina as "magic" and saying "it's allowed because it's magic" in the most plot-related of things (emotion and mentality) shows that D&D makes for absolutely horrible storytelling in this regard (this is a criticism of D&D, not Rich, who was simply legitly going by said flawed D&D conventions, ignoring the question of legality of using a seal on a bouncy rubber ball). If people criticize authors for using such cheap cop outs as "A wizard did it" deus ex machina in other storylines, I hardly see why D&D itself should be exempt from such criticism for having such a blatant example of that built in.

A wizard DID do it—Xykon is a sorcerer!! You can't have sorcerers in your story and not expect them to use magic! You wouldn't read Harry Potter books and get upset because Snape cast a spell—it's what he DOES, he's a WIZARD! And so is every character in that series. In OOTS, only some characters are spellcasters, but those that are, use magic every single day. As long as they use them within the expected rules of D&D, it's not Deus Ex Machina, anymore than it is that Roy knows how to use a sword.

Magic is not inherently a cop-out or a deus ex machina if both sides have access to magic in the setting. Vaarsuvius can disintegrate black dragons or banish elementals, Durkon can control the weather and raise the dead, Elan can create illusions, Nale can control minds, Redcloak can kill hobgoblin leaders with his index finger, Xykon can summon meteors or drive paladins insane. These are all established parts of the setting, whether or not you're familiar with it.

It would have been far cheesier to have every paladin in that room make their Will saving throw just because they were disciplined, regardless of the huge gulf in the numbers. For D&D players, that would have strained suspension of disbelief even more than the bouncing ball trick!

EDIT:

You not reading the comic isn't going to make this comic any less awesome for all the rest of us.

OK, that is now sig'd, with your permission.

[Grasilich]

Heh, go ahead. That's a pretty high compliment. :P

[teratorn]

You not reading the comic isn't going to make this comic any less awesome for all the rest of us.

I think this was an awesome strip, but I understand the kind of reactions it is getting. I also decided I would stop reading OOTS after Roy insulted and beat Miko after the fall. I managed to keep that resolve for about two hours after I knew a new strip had been posted.

[Ubiq]

D&D must have some pretty poorly thought out game mechanics if a class specifically devoted to honor, loyalty, faith, and discipline gets swayed so easily by symbols. In fact, I think a better punchline for the Saphire slaughter strip would have been Xykon saying "It's almost like the universe is trying to force some form of arbitrary balance between those who can bend reality to their will and those who can not, but FAILED MISERABLY!"

Look at this way: paladins have a fairly well defined sense of Good and Evil. As such, they have a rather concrete notion of the universe and how it works. The downside of this is that people with especially strong convictions have difficulty coping with things that directly challenge their perceptions of how things. Their minds lack flexibility when it comes to certain things because so much of their mental outlook is based on those beliefs; if those beliefs are disrupted or challenged in a manner that they cannot disregard, then their entire self-image is at risk.

An especially traumatic event is going to be perceived differently by somebody who has upheld a particular moral code than somebody who hasn't simply because they don't think such things should happen to them. After a while, they are going to begin seriously questioning notions that are central to their personality. In this situation, the two most likely results are a mental breakdown (how bad can vary) or crippling despair. Some people can deal with it, but most can't... at least not right off the bat.

As a result, we get things like the Guard who commits suicide after she comes to her senses. Did the Gods help her or her friends? Did her paladin training help her in any way? Did it help anybody in the room? That's a lot to deal with, especially when you have blood on your hands.

I could see paladins being adept at resisting temptation because of their beliefs (if they aren't, then the system simply doesn't make sense), but they should be especially susceptible to going insane because of those same beliefs. On the other end of the spectrum, someone with a more flexible mind should be more resilient when it comes to dealing with insanity, but more likely to give in to temptation. It's a trade-off.

[Bogardan_Mage]

Soon certainly didn't think that one through, that's for sure! You'd think the guy would have known about his own class's will saves better.

There were a lot of things Soon didn't think of. He seems a generally stereotypical paladin, close-minded and utterly convinced of his own class and alignment's superiority. Of course, he's not the only member of the Order of the Scribble to share that quality. Dorukan seems equally convinced of his class's sole ability to defend weaknesses in the fabric of the universe (rather reminds me of something Roy says in Origins, and Eugene's amusing response).

But Soon did get one thing right, even if it was for the wrong reasons. There was a reason Roy didn't specify Azure City as a potential target to the Oracle (although I'm not convinced it was a good one), being that it's a city. Serini (in homage to Kraagor) and Dorukan's rifts were each in dungeons, and Lirian and Girard's were in similarly out of the way areas. Adventurers delve into places like this on a daily basis! It'd be difficult, sure, but by no means impossible for an evil force to infiltrate the dungeon and prepare the week long rituals Xykon says are necessary to open the gate in a controlled manner. With a city, you've got to conquer the entire city. It's a bigger and better defended place than your average dungeon, and it's defences can all rally at once rather than being spread out through the long and twisting corridors. Opening Azure City's gate requires a large army. Opening any other gate requires a party of adventurers, and possibly a few minions to secure the surrounding area against any remaining monsters or a ragtag group of unlikely heroes.

[Setra]

Am I the only one who thought the Symbol of Insanity turned all the Paladins into Miko?

[Icewalker]

Am I the only one who thought the Symbol of Insanity turned all the Paladins into Miko?

hahah! I never considered it that way, but yeah, there is a resemblance..

[Ubiq]

Am I the only one who thought the Symbol of Insanity turned all the Paladins into Miko?

No, I thought the same thing and started to mention it in my earlier post (as the third option of how to cope with a rude awakening, namely: blame everyone else), but decided against it.

[Whamme]

A wizard DID do it—Xykon is a sorcerer!! You can't have sorcerers in your story and not expect them to use magic! You wouldn't read Harry Potter books and get upset because Snape cast a spell—it's what he DOES, he's a WIZARD! And so is every character in that series. In OOTS, only some characters are spellcasters, but those that are, use magic every single day. As long as they use them within the expected rules of D&D, it's not Deus Ex Machina, anymore than it is that Roy knows how to use a sword.

Magic is not inherently a cop-out or a deus ex machina if both sides have access to magic in the setting. Vaarsuvius can disintegrate black dragons or banish elementals, Durkon can control the weather and raise the dead, Elan can create illusions, Nale can control minds, Redcloak can kill hobgoblin leaders with his index finger, Xykon can summon meteors or drive paladins insane. These are all established parts of the setting, whether or not you're familiar with it.

It would have been far cheesier to have every paladin in that room make their Will saving throw just because they were disciplined, regardless of the huge gulf in the numbers. For D&D players, that would have strained suspension of disbelief even more than the bouncing ball trick!

EDIT:


OK, that is now sig'd, with your permission.

I think you're missing the point:

He's complaining that the rules promote a stupid outcome.


It should be easier to kill a Paladin than make him kill his sworn comrade, not the other way around. That's what they are supposed to be LIKE.

It's like the other problems with the rules Rich makes fun of.

[Callista]

I'm getting tired of people saying that a "stick-figure comic" shouldn't be taken at least as seriously as a book or a movie. Comics aren't just the Sunday funnies anymore, you know--many serious stories have been told in graphic-novel form. OotS has grown from mainly humor to a serious story with a lot of humorous moments in it, and it deserves to be taken seriously.

Secondly, just because the characters are stick figures doesn't mean we shouldn't care about them. The way they're depicted doesn't really matter... after all, a character in a book has no visual depiction at all; but people don't say, "They're just text characters; you can't take them seriously." Rich chose to use stick figures. That doesn't mean that anything he does with the stick figures is automatically trivial.

Xykon's killing paladins, especially in such a flippant and disrespectful manner, is meant to anger us. When you refer to it as "cop-killing", you're spot on; that's basically what paladins are, in a medieval, charge-and-destroy sort of way. Xykon's the bad guy. He's supposed to do bad things. Actually, I'm really rather glad Rich has decided to do something like this; Xykon in the past has almost made evil look like innocent fun.

I like it that Xykon kills his enemies in a way calculated to destroy honor and hope, rather than the cliched way a lot of people play Evil: Kill people, then play with the guts. Because, eww, it's gross, so it must be more evil than just killing them! No. That's not more evil; it's just gross. What Xykon did was true evil.

[Setra]

I'm getting tired of people saying that a "stick-figure comic" shouldn't be taken at least as seriously as a book or a movie. Comics aren't just the Sunday funnies anymore, you know--many serious stories have been told in graphic-novel form. OotS has grown from mainly humor to a serious story with a lot of humorous moments in it, and it deserves to be taken seriously.

Very good point

Secondly, just because the characters are stick figures doesn't mean we shouldn't care about them. The way they're depicted doesn't really matter... after all, a character in a book has no visual depiction at all; but people don't say, "They're just text characters; you can't take them seriously." Rich chose to use stick figures. That doesn't mean that anything he does with the stick figures is automatically trivial.

Again, good point. I'm pretty sure people reacted heavily to Roy's death.

Xykon's killing paladins, especially in such a flippant and disrespectful manner, is meant to anger us. When you refer to it as "cop-killing", you're spot on; that's basically what paladins are, in a medieval, charge-and-destroy sort of way. Xykon's the bad guy. He's supposed to do bad things. Actually, I'm really rather glad Rich has decided to do something like this; Xykon in the past has almost made evil look like innocent fun.

Agreed.

I like it that Xykon kills his enemies in a way calculated to destroy honor and hope, rather than the cliched way a lot of people play Evil: Kill people, then play with the guts. Because, eww, it's gross, so it must be more evil than just killing them! No. That's not more evil; it's just gross. What Xykon did was true evil.

Again, agreed.

I mostly posted to back up your first point.

[mikeejimbo]

True, Paladins are not unstoppable killing machines and in fact the Paladin class does depend on its mount.

Except for Kore.

[Setra]

Except for Kore.

Yeah but Kore is like.. Epic.

Well maybe not Epic. What would you consider the CR on the room fulla orcs he killed?

Whatever it was, let's just presume he was 10 levels higher than need be.

[mikeejimbo]

Yeah but Kore is like.. Epic.

Well maybe not Epic. What would you consider the CR on the room fulla orcs he killed?

Whatever it was, let's just presume he was 10 levels higher than need be.

Yeah, I'll grant that. I don't think the Orcs were necessarily that high a CR.

Though if the rumor that he's destroyed ARMIES is true, he must be Epic.

Anyway, that's a bit off-topic.

[EvilElitest]

You have to willingly commit acts against the Code or for Evil to Fall.

The suicide in this case traces to Japanese honour, which I've never really understood entirely. But I'm fairly certain she was wrong to kill herself right there. Her first task was to guard the gate, so she should have used her moment of lucidity to attack Xykon. Then, once she had won, she then kills herself to regain the honour she lost in attacking her allies.

I think Japanase honor is about one's life being inherintly meanenless save for honor, duty, and loalty, failing any of those means that your life means nothing

As for the bouncy ball, i think every time it bounced, it counts as looking at it again
from,
EE

[taraxia]

The bouncing ball is a questionable use of D&D rules at best. Rich being the equivalent of a DM playing out a fight between NPC's in his mind, he can do what he wants. Still, he is publishing it to a world full of DM's, so he should expect some criticism for his treating his villains with kid gloves.

The worst thing, though, is that the strip is essentially trying to make cop-killing funny. If outrage is the desired reaction, then I guess Rich succeeded. If he thought that people would enjoy seeing the paladins lose their dignity as well as their lives, well I think he was a bit off. Another 2-3 depressing strips like this and the last one will likely drive me away.

Wow. Remind me never to let you people read comic books like Sin City, or listen to mid-'90s gangsta rap.

I'm really becoming quite scared by the degree to which people are unable to engage with fiction as fiction rather than reacting as though the characters were somehow real.

[taraxia]

I think you're missing the point:

He's complaining that the rules promote a stupid outcome.


It should be easier to kill a Paladin than make him kill his sworn comrade, not the other way around. That's what they are supposed to be LIKE.

It's like the other problems with the rules Rich makes fun of.

It would've been easier to kill the paladins than to make them kill their sworn comrades. Xykon's plan required that he spend 5000 gp on a Symbol spell and go through the whole rigmarole of bouncing the ball around and seeing if they look.

It would, indeed, have been both easier and cheaper to fly over the throne room and spam Meteor Swarm or Incendiary Cloud or any number of other spells. Xykon probably has enough low-level Fireball and Magic Missile spells up his sleeve to do a Paladin turkey shoot.

Xykon chose to go the more circuitous route of psychologically torturing the Paladins because it's *fun*. And because he's high enough level that he really can do anything he wants -- playing with the Sapphire Guard is, for him, like a kid playing with ants.

[Callista]

I'm really becoming quite scared by the degree to which people are unable to engage with fiction as fiction rather than reacting as though the characters were somehow real.

1. In a way, they are real--not as people, but as characters... concepts... even archetypes. They and their stories represent things we feel strongly about in real life.

2. Reacting as though they were real is a lot of the fun in fiction. "Suspension of disbelief" is exactly that: While reading, you deliberately forget that what you're reading isn't real; and your intellectual and emotional reactions are the same as though it were real (though not as intense). The mark of a good story is that suspension of disbelief is incredibly easy; characters become friends or enemies, liked and disliked the same way as real people. People come back to the story for the atmosphere--the setting--because it feels like a real place. While you're reading--while you're "there"--it feels like home.

Anyone who's ever been addicted to stories--books, movies, TV shows or graphic novels--knows what it's like to forget you're sitting in your chair and be drawn into a world different from your own. That's the beauty of a story; and I wouldn't give it up no matter how many people told me it was silly.

[taraxia]

1. In a way, they are real--not as people, but as characters... concepts... even archetypes. They and their stories represent things we feel strongly about in real life.

Good. Then when you feel horror and outrage, the story is doing its job.

2. Reacting as though they were real is a lot of the fun in fiction. "Suspension of disbelief" is exactly that: While reading, you deliberately forget that what you're reading isn't real; and your intellectual and emotional reactions are the same as though it were real (though not as intense). The mark of a good story is that suspension of disbelief is incredibly easy; characters become friends or enemies, liked and disliked the same way as real people. People come back to the story for the atmosphere--the setting--because it feels like a real place. While you're reading--while you're "there"--it feels like home.

And once you stop reading, you remember that it is just a story, and you don't do things like tearfully accuse Rich Burlew of being a murderer or having a grudge against paladins.

It's this total failure to keep the two levels of story separated that bothers me. You can't blame Rich Burlew for doing something bad, because he exists in *our* world and in *our* world this is just a story. When you're in the story, you can find what Xykon did horrifying and shocking, sure, but getting upset about that because it "shouldn't have been possible" makes no sense -- when you're in the world you *know* it's possible because it happened.

I don't understand the attitude that leads one to get mad at a tragic story for being tragic. The point of stories is to let you get caught up in emotions that aren't real so that you can feel them safely. Removing that safety by actually getting angry or indignant or depressed over something that happens in a story destroys the point of fiction.

Anyone who's ever been addicted to stories--books, movies, TV shows or graphic novels--knows what it's like to forget you're sitting in your chair and be drawn into a world different from your own. That's the beauty of a story; and I wouldn't give it up no matter how many people told me it was silly.

I think it reaches nasty proportions when you actually get mad at a character in a *real-life* way -- when you petition the author to make Harry marry Hermione rather than Ginny because you just *know* that one relationship is better than another, when you call an author a murderer for causing a character to die for dramatic purposes in a story, when you accuse an author of being misogynist or sadistic or whatever because he's created a *character* who is, etc.

[Renegade Paladin]

Well said. If this had been some goody-two-shoes fairy-tale, where all the good guys have character shields, it would become a rather bland story pretty quickly.

I'm glad Xykon disposed of the paladines in the cruelest possible way, it ads flavour and tips the scales back to neutral after all the dead hobgoblins we have seen. Besides, Paladines killed Redcloak's family, so they only got what was comming for them.

Redcloak's family had it coming in the first place, being evil cultists. I get the whole desire for gritty storytelling (hell, I'm a fan of Warhammer 40,000; I'd be a poor one if I didn't), but the kind of depravity it must take to actually prefer would-be destroyers of the world over people who literally give their all to protecting people they likely will never know even at the cost of their lives is something I'll never understand.

Shedding tears for NPCs who knew they were going to fight a lich sorceror many times too powerful for them to even slow down... strange.

Actually, no it isn't. Heroic self-sacrifice is held as a high act of nobility in Western culture and has been for centuries; it is not strange in the least that people would feel for characters who did that.

And once you stop reading, you remember that it is just a story, and you don't do things like tearfully accuse Rich Burlew of being a murderer or having a grudge against paladins.

If anyone's accusing Rich of being a murderer I missed it, but I begin to have the sinking feeling that he does have a grudge against the paladin class for whatever reason. It comes out in the way they're treated so cavalierly in the story. Not that there's anything particularly wrong with that; I find it unfounded (a properly played paladin, as opposed to the lawful stupid archetype, shouldn't be irritating to anyone who doesn't have a problem with fundamentally good people in general), but it's easy to subconsciously translate irritation with players to irritation with the class they play, if the same roleplaying flaws are consistent enough.

[Grasilich]

I'm getting tired of people saying that a "stick-figure comic" shouldn't be taken at least as seriously as a book or a movie. Comics aren't just the Sunday funnies anymore, you know--many serious stories have been told in graphic-novel form. OotS has grown from mainly humor to a serious story with a lot of humorous moments in it, and it deserves to be taken seriously.

When I said that people took Paladin-killing too seriously I was saying that in reference to people comparing it to cop-killing (hell, in the main thread someone compared it to Auschwitz). THAT is taking it too seriously. Mourning the loss of the SG? Sure, that's cool. Complaining about the author because the story didn't go the way you wanted and threatening to not read the comic anymore? That's just silly.

That said, I think the fans of this comic act a little oddly. The Paladins didn't have names. They were extras! They were classic red shirts! I don't know if it's because people are in love with the Paladin class or because every single minor character that appears in the comic seems to manage to get its own personal fanclub or because the whole thing upset the rulemongers (Perhaps it's all three), but the massacre of a bunch of nameless 'elite' guys by the Big Bad in a fantasy setting should NOT come as a surprise to anyone remotely familiar with the genre.

Edit:

If anyone's accusing Rich of being a murderer I missed it, but I begin to have the sinking feeling that he does have a grudge against the paladin class for whatever reason.

The only bad Paladin we've had is Miko. The rest of the Paladins have all been decent folks. If Rich actually disliked Paladins, I think he'd not have made a whole city of the things.

It's silly to think that just because you're a Paladin you deserve to die heroically. If you aren't strong enough then, regardless of how holy and upstanding you are, you're still going to be humiliated and massacred by the immensely powerful Lich.

[Hyrael]

This is magic we are talking about. Magic. How else could you explain how a big burley barbarian who never backed away from a fight in his life would turn around, run, and scream like a little girl after having Cause Fear cast on him? It simply isn't the same as normal fear or normal insanity.

The reasons paladins are immune to fear is because they literally radiate bravery. I mean, it's called, Aura of Courage, after all. It's not because they went through years of mental conditioning, or anything. If someone cast fear on them, the aura would counter it, just like any other countercasting.

Prescisely. Fear effects reach right into your brain and twiddle that little lever labeled "Primal, shrew-being-attacked-by-a-big-scorpion-while-giant-lizards-stomp-around-above- style fear". You need mental strength to resist it, not courage. Courage is not the same as mental strength. Lets take, for example, some cocky 20-year old jock in a barfight. He's brave enough to fight, but dumb enough and easily swayed enough to be easily provoked into fighting. Hell, having courage would make you even easier to manipulate, because your sense of self-preservation doesnt get in the way of you doing really stupid things.

I'm not personally sure that the entire sapphire guard are just palladins. they seemed like a pretty diverse group. look at miko, a palladin/monk. Wind-tossed-hair Girl seemed pretty Arcane to me, as well, and some of those guys could have been Palladin Gishes, or Pal/Fighters, or Pal/rogues. maybe they all had custom MC Stack feats (stuff like Acetic Knight, Devoted Tracker, Ascetic MAge) to support such builds, but my point is that these werent just a bunch of 4th to 8th level Pallies with predictable saves.

[Renegade Paladin]

That's not courage; that's foolhardiness. Take a nice, long look at my sig.

[Mummy king]

Their honour is unbreakable. Their bones? Not so much.

[Irbis]

Redcloak's family had it coming in the first place, being evil cultists. I get the whole desire for gritty storytelling (hell, I'm a fan of Warhammer 40,000; I'd be a poor one if I didn't), but the kind of depravity it must take to actually prefer would-be destroyers of the world over people who literally give their all to protecting people they likely will never know even at the cost of their lives is something I'll never understand.

Excuse me? How do you know that? For all we know, she might just have had different skin color than them. They're not Kore, but close enough to him when it comes to dealing with presumably 'evil' races.

[taraxia]

Redcloak's family had it coming in the first place, being evil cultists. I get the whole desire for gritty storytelling (hell, I'm a fan of Warhammer 40,000; I'd be a poor one if I didn't), but the kind of depravity it must take to actually prefer would-be destroyers of the world over people who literally give their all to protecting people they likely will never know even at the cost of their lives is something I'll never understand.

I guess someone picked up several dozen ranks in Knowledge (What You're Talking About) without the rest of us, because we have no information on what the Crimson Mantle is, what Redcloak's family were doing when Miko killed them, and whether Miko's cause was truly righteous. (Miko? Make a snap judgment and let other people suffer for it? Naah...)

Actually, no it isn't. Heroic self-sacrifice is held as a high act of nobility in Western culture and has been for centuries; it is not strange in the least that people would feel for characters who did that.

Sure. I feel some sympathy for the paladins, though not that much because they are, after all, fictional characters I know nothing about.

If anyone's accusing Rich of being a murderer I missed it, but I begin to have the sinking feeling that he does have a grudge against the paladin class for whatever reason. It comes out in the way they're treated so cavalierly in the story.

He doesn't have a "grudge". There is a story reason for the Paladins of Azure City to fall, because *in the context of the story* Soon Kim had an irrational belief that total moral purity was more important than any other considerations when it came to power, and *in the context of the story* Soon Kim needs to be proven wrong. We need to be shown up front why having a dedicated array of warriors with iron self-discipline and total commitment is still *not* by itself enough to stand up to any threat. Why Azure City *needed* a ruler with a Chaotic alignment to make its decisions and suffered when they lost that ruler -- and why Soon Kim *needed* to hang out with a dispassionate mage, a sneaky illusionist, a simple goodhearted halfling, a nature-loving druid and a wild raging barbarian in order to accomplish his original goals, and trying to guard his Gate using nothing but people who shared his own personality was a drastic failure.

Not that there's anything particularly wrong with that; I find it unfounded (a properly played paladin, as opposed to the lawful stupid archetype, shouldn't be irritating to anyone who doesn't have a problem with fundamentally good people in general), but it's easy to subconsciously translate irritation with players to irritation with the class they play, if the same roleplaying flaws are consistent enough.

Yeah. I think the whole Miko/Hinjo dichotomy was meant to demonstrate that. Rich is perfectly aware that Paladins can be spun as horrible annoying stereotypes or as decent characters, and Miko and Hinjo are meant to reflect that. The fact that Miko is very unpopular among her fellow Paladins and that we *don't* see the majority of Paladins act that way is a sign that Rich does, in fact, understand what you're talking about.

[taraxia]

By the way, since y'all are referencing Goblins, I'd be amazed if all the people who are moaning and groaning now about OotS could make it through the first few months of Goblins at all. Goblins is way, way more uncompromising about creating sympathetic characters and having them be brutally humiliated and destroyed than OotS is. And that's the main reason I liked it (after seeing the first scene with Kore I knew I had to keep on following this comic).