OOTS #1066 - The Discussion Thread

[nocoolnamejim]

The Giant said something about this in relation to OotS before....

This too.

I mostly agree with him about the real world implications. I'd probably quibble a bit in the sense that we do things like play shooter games, D&D, etc. to get away from the real world and that sometimes it can be comforting to enter a "black and white" morality type of setting...so long as you leave that sort of thinking behind when you exit.

Redcloak is the ultimate example of "Villain has a point" and I think Giant's done an exceptional job of showing that. He's an evil, but sympathetic character who has understandable motivations and is clearly very different from, say, Xykon.

But Giant's taken turns both playing the trope straight and lampshading it. On the one hand, he lampshaded a good aligned adventuring party slaughtering a bunch of goblins with one of them objecting to the deeds.

"You killed them all!"
"Only because they attacked us."
"Because we were committing a home invasion!"

But on the other hand, he hasn't let it get in the way of a good story. The Paladins didn't get lost in the weeds over those goblin deaths caused by the party going towards Soon's gate. (Although I suppose it could be argued those were goblins working for Xykon and hence acceptable target.)

[Kish]

I don't know what "lost in the weeds" means or what deaths going toward Soon's Gate you're referring to, but Rich has explicitly pointed out that we shouldn't take for granted that the paladins who sacked proto-Redcloak's village didn't fall.

[nocoolnamejim]

Ah, so all the innocent evil-race creatures Roy killed in their homes in people's tabletop games, I see.

My bet offer remains open: A million gold says Rich will never write a character who is "actually good" rather than "technically good and lampshaded horrifically evil" like the paladin leader of his first adventuring party, and approves of genocide.

I'm not saying you're saying you approve--I'm saying that what you're saying is irrelevant to the comic. That "most tabletop games do this" matters as much as "in Timbuktu there's a shoemaker who does this." That if the opinion of the person you keep speaking for mattered, you'd be able to use active voice rather than passive, and/or point to things in the comic rather than things you apparently think happened in the comic that didn't. Jasdoif's links should make the actual themes of the comic clear enough.

And I don't disagree with the themes of the comic. As I've said, I dunno, maybe six times now I'm only pointing out it would not be consistent with the setting that has been established thus far for good aligned creatures to object to evil creature deaths.

The setting itself is a bit screwed up because that's how the gods have set it up. Certain races are acceptable targets. Full stop.

Giant has done a good job of showing his opinion that's not how it should work. But he's also played it straight that currently that's how things currently DO work in-universe. It's nearly the entire basis for the Redcloak character that his race is an acceptable target. His ENTIRE RACE is an acceptable target in universe.

Which brings me back to the original point. Given that is how things currently work in universe, it would be way more likely and be much more consistent with what has been established for some good aligned dragon council's main objection to be the collateral damage and not the evil dragon deaths.

This is not mutually exclusive with Giant's viewpoint that V's actions were morally reprehensible for reasons INCLUDING the evil dragon slaughter. It's just consistent with how the vast majority of other characters and beings in the universe would think and act.

Summarized:

Giant thinks things SHOULD be X and Giant recognizes that things are CURRENTLY Y are not mutually exclusive.

Or, filling in the variables. Giant thinks that goblins SHOULDN'T be an "always acceptable target" but in universe Giant has presented that currently goblins ARE considered to be an "always acceptable target".

He may think it is wrong and even portray it as being wrong, particularly in showing the racist elves and providing a sympathetic backstory for Redcloak. But that simultaneously proves that is currently the way things work in universe and therefore it makes it unlikely (not impossible) but unlikely that the main objection of a good aligned dragon council is going to be a bunch of evil dragon deaths instead of the deaths of "non acceptable targets" caught in the crossfire of V's spell.

My fireball in the crowded marketplace metaphor.

[Kish]

Oh, so Roy and Celia aren't good creatures then.

Passive voice remains utterly uncompelling. If you actually think there exists a mind which thinks what you're insisting on and which matters, switch to active voice. "It is the way it is" is meaningless. No character whose perspective is being presented as having value thinks goblins are acceptable targets.

[nocoolnamejim]

I don't know what "lost in the weeds" means or what deaths going toward Soon's Gate you're referring to, but Rich has explicitly pointed out that we shouldn't take for granted that the paladins who sacked proto-Redcloak's village didn't fall.

In this context what "lost in the weeds" means is that we didn't get 30 comics of the PCs on trial for murder for killing all the goblins on the way to Soon's gate.

The paladins didn't care about that.

Instead the comic focused on laying out the backstory of the Snarl and the gates and the PCs were placed on trial for destroying one of the gates.

If the universe worked like Giant thinks it should as soon as the PCs were exonerated for the destruction of the gate they should have been put on trial for mass murder right afterward.

But they weren't because while Giant thinks it is wrong that goblins are an always acceptable target, in universe that's exactly what they are so paragons of virtue like paladins don't even consider it relevant enough to mention let alone put the group on trial for.

[Kish]

There were no goblins on the way to Soon's Gate. Do you mean Dorukan's Gate?

Assuming you do, I take it that's a yes to my earlier question about whether you were treating Dorukan's Dungeon as the home of Xykon's inoffensive minions when you insisted that Roy had done a whole lot of killing evil-race creatures in their homes while they weren't bothering anyone.

[Quibblicious]

Note that you never said you never hit him on the head with a wrench.

How do you think he got him into management

Q

[nocoolnamejim]

Oh, so Roy and Celia aren't good creatures then.

Passive voice remains utterly uncompelling. If you actually think there exists a mind which thinks what you're insisting on and which matters, switch to active voice. "It is the way it is" is meaningless. No character whose perspective is being presented as having value thinks goblins are acceptable targets.

You mean aside from the creators of the entire world?

Edit: And yes, I meant Dorukan's gate.

[JumboWheat01]

How do you think he got him into management

Q

Don't be silly, management isn't about hitting people with a wrench.

It's about telling others who to hit with a wrench.

[Kish]

Ah! The gods! Finally, you identify who you've been speaking for!

No, I mean including them. Prominently including them. The best of them are squabbling children who treat mortals as semi-valuable chess pieces, the worst of them as monstrous as Tarquin and Xykon. And none of them have anything to say about whether, if Rich had a bronze dragon show up, that dragon would be actually good (like Roy, Celia, Haley, Elan, O-Chul, Hinjo, etc.), or horrifying "technically good" like a few mostly-joke characters. They don't justify your bizarre insistence that "technically good" is what "good" means, except in cases you're not acknowledging and are sure Rich will not introduce another of. Their opinions do not matter, except when and to the extent they are backed up with coercive power; if you remember, Roy was in the middle of explicitly disavowing the slightest concern for what the Godsmoot was about before he heard that they might destroy the world.

[georgie_leech]

You mean aside from the creators of the entire world?

Edit: And yes, I meant Dorukan's gate.

The creators explicitly called out as petty jerks that came this close to deciding to end the world and start over? Clearly paragons of virtue.

[Quibblicious]

Don't be silly, management isn't about hitting people with a wrench.

It's about telling others who to hit with a wrench.

But to get there, you have to go through training, which involves getting wrench-smacked

Q

[Keltest]

Heres an alternative question for you Kish. Who, besides Roy and maybe Durkon, has actually been shown as having an opinion worth valuing? O-chul, maybe? Right-eye, arguably, except he isn't in the main comic.

[Mightymosy]

Killing the young black dragon was done entirely by Vaarsuvius, in two actions which Roy had no chance to intervene between. The fact that he didn't seem to object to Vaarsuvius doing so...well, as I've said before, I think Rich rates "being responsible for what someone else does" far too low, but that doesn't change the fact that he's never going to have a Good character say "yay genocide" without it being part of a massive "this character's not really Good" lampshade (like the paladin leader of Roy's former adventuring party).

I know.

But Roy gloats about the dragon slaying afterwards, and he is Varsuuvius' leader. So I expected it to come up - although maybe it was left out because Belkar was so bad...

(I'd still like to know that part about Azure City being a karmic "justice" for the Twelve Gods...)

[georgie_leech]

Elan's heart is fairly consistently in the right place, even if he is comically naive at times constantly.

[Chei]

Heres an alternative question for you Kish. Who, besides Roy and maybe Durkon, has actually been shown as having an opinion worth valuing? O-chul, maybe? Right-eye, arguably, except he isn't in the main comic.

Haley and Elan have been getting noticeably better at having valuable opinions, as of the last book or so.

[AvatarVecna]

Spoiler: Response to Mightymosy, spoiler'd for length

Show

I don't care about this gender stuff. Everyone should just assume the "gender role" they like and that's it. If you don't like how someone else lives their gender role, feel free not to f**k them, but leave them in peace.It's not as if it had any consequence on your life.

My point is that I don't see how this relates to the comic at hand, which I thought we were still discussing.

The original quote certainly concluded that people needed to lighten up about supposed-discrimination they read into the comic, when it was supposed to be just a joke, which I agree with to an extent (obviously, there's issues when the joke goes too far in regards to a rights issue, but I doubt Rich is gonna step in that particular turd). The issue is more with the conversation that lead up to that conclusion, which discusses the "engineers are awkward" joke being "overdone in mainstream media". While your conclusion was written to be specific to the OotS comic, and I don't think you're transphobic (or whatever the word would be for "dismissive of the issues trans people have with their depiction in the mainstream media"), the conclusion in undermined by the argument concerning mainstream media, and overshadowed by the lines drawn between engineer discrimination and LGBT discrimination.

To put it a bit more simply, this:

Bottom line: It's a comic. A parody. Maybe we should all step back a little and try not being insulted, whether we are engineers, transgenders, sluts, STEM people, stupid people or anything else the comic occasionally (supposedly) makes fun of? Laughing about oneself is a huge step in character, I have found.

...implies some comparison between perceived anti-engineer and anti-trans jokes/trends in the OotS comic. While it would probably be less offensive if written like this:

Bottom line: It's a comic. A parody. Maybe we should all step back a little and try not being insulted, regardless of the group supposedly being maligned. Laughing about oneself is a huge step in character, I have found.

It wouldn't be perfect, of course, but it wouldn't be calling out specific groups anymore. The problem is this unintentional juxtaposition:

I also don't think the engineer thing is really a thing in this comic. The Necronomicon is right that the whole "STEM people are socio-empathically losers" thing has been so overdone in mainstream media, but I don't feel this is a major point here.

...

Bottom line: It's a comic. A parody. Maybe we should all step back a little and try not being insulted, whether we are engineers, transgenders, sluts, STEM people, stupid people or anything else the comic occasionally (supposedly) makes fun of? Laughing about oneself is a huge step in character, I have found.

The conclusion is about the comic in particular, but the argument leading up to it is not, and this can leave people with the impression that your conclusion is meant as a more general statement in regards to how groups are depicted by the media, which comes across very poorly.

Once again, I don't think you're transphobic (or whatever the word for this would be), but I've long since come to a conclusion myself that we, as individuals, have some level of responsibility for how the world perceives us and judges us, to take into account how people will view our actions and words before we speak or act, to make sure the image we're presenting, and the one that others will take away, is one we can be satisfied with...and this goes doubly for online interactions, where misunderstandings and unintended implications/impressions occur much easier. I don't think you're a bad person, my post was more an attempt to let you know that this:

Bottom line: It's a comic. A parody. Maybe we should all step back a little and try not being insulted, whether we are engineers, transgenders, sluts, STEM people, stupid people or anything else the comic occasionally (supposedly) makes fun of? Laughing about oneself is a huge step in character, I have found.

...looks far worse than I'm pretty sure you intended it to look.

[nocoolnamejim]

Ah! The gods! Finally, you identify who you've been speaking for!

No, I mean including them. Prominently including them. The best of them are squabbling children who treat mortals as semi-valuable chess pieces, the worst of them as monstrous as Tarquin and Xykon. And none of them have anything to say about whether, if Rich had a bronze dragon show up, that dragon would be actually good, or horrifying "technically good" like a few mostly-joke characters. They don't justify your bizarre insistence that "technically good" is what "good" means, except in cases you're not acknowledging.

I'm not justifying anything. In fact, perhaps if you spent a little less time complaining about my posting style and a little more time trying to read and understand my points you'd get that.

For example, when I said this: "But he's also played it straight that currently that's how things currently DO work in-universe. It's nearly the entire basis for the Redcloak character that his race is an acceptable target. His ENTIRE RACE is an acceptable target in universe."

I assumed you knew Redcloak's backstory where the goblin race was designated as an acceptable target by all the gods except the Dark One and that's something he's trying to change. I didn't know you needed it explicitly spelled out for you.

But back to my first sentence: I'm not justifying anything. In fact, I'll repeat it because you're really hung up on me thinking that the acceptable target race thing is okay. Let me be as explicit as I possibly can: I AM NOT making the argument that any race SHOULD be an acceptable target. You seem to think that I'm making the argument that things SHOULD work this way in universe. I AM NOT. I'm saying that's the way that they currently DO for the majority of the in-universe setting.

Roy and Celia are both EXTREME examples in-universe. Celia is a complete pacifist who won't commit violence even if her own life is threatened. Roy's got official Only Sane Man status and the universe is explicitly written as ignoring him half the time as with the example of the Godsmeet.

You've used Roy as an example multiple times as someone whose perspective matters.

Remember his speech before the vote to destroy the world? Moving. Touching. Several of the people who could actually hear it were moved to tears and didn't have the heart to tell him his perspective didn't matter one bit. The gods couldn't hear him. His perspective was literally written as not mattering.

Therefore, I AM however making the argument that mortals take their cues from the gods and if something is screwed up, looking to who set up the system is a good place to start. The goblin race currently IS an acceptable target according to the rules of the world that was created and established by the gods.

Remember when I said this? Giant thinks things SHOULD be X and Giant recognizes that things are CURRENTLY Y are not mutually exclusive.

The entire meeting of the gods council was a lovely example of it. The gods couldn't even hear Roy's perspective and several of the followers of the gods explicitly say that they don't want to see the world destroyed but it isn't their place to override the judgment of their deities.

In other words, Giant writes that the universe is messed up. It SHOULD be X, but it's CURRENTLY Y and these things aren't mutually exclusive.

It is unlikely that a bunch of good aligned dragons are going to object to the killing of a lot of evil aligned dragons because that isn't the prevailing morality of the setting. It would be more consistent with how the majority of the setting has been shown to think that the reasons why good aligned dragons are upset is at the unrelated deaths and not the deaths of their natural enemies: evil dragons.

[SaintRidley]

While I don't discard the possibility that a council of dragons - including Lawful Good dragons - might care about the slaughter of a bunch of black dragons with a single spell based merely on the possibility that such a spell could at some point be used against another type of dragon race...

...I think that if a council of Lawful Good dragons were looking to haul in V for questioning an easier justification would be the murder of all the not-evil people and dragon descendants that V killed. In universe, killing evil dragons probably still qualifies as a good act regardless of HOW you kill evil dragons...up to the point your means of doing so ends up slaughtering thousands of innocent non-evil sentients.

Attempted genocide is always evil. Full stop. Doesn't matter if the intended targets are evil.

[Kish]

I complain about the ways your posting style occludes what you're saying.

For example, I can guess, based on your finally having identified the viewpoint you keep using passive voice for as that of the gods, that "the prevailing morality of the setting" is supposed to mean "the beliefs of the gods"--something that makes no sense to me--and not "the moral reading intended by Rich Burlew," which would, but the sentence is unclear enough that I have to guess. If somewhere in all that passive voice there was a reason why the entirely-hypothetical bronze dragon would agree with the gods other than "the gods say so," it would take more work than I'm going to devote to it to figure it out.

I am not hung up on you thinking that "the acceptable race thing" is okay. I don't care about that at all. I care about the claims you're making of what's in the comic, which I believe are insupportable, as I have addressed before, to be rebutted with lots of assertions (some really off the wall, like Roy having supposedly killed lots of evil-race creatures who weren't doing anything evil in their homes) and very little support for them. Those characters who don't support the beliefs of a handful of joke characters are "extreme" and don't count because of that with no need to support the weight you're giving those joke characters' opinions; some of those joke characters (I especially like Loki's rousing argument for the sanctity of life--which Roy comments on too, if you recall) being unable to hear one of the protagonists of the comic gets directly converted to "his perspective doesn't matter."

I posted the reference, Mightymosy; I believe Jasdoif did, as well. In War and XPs, opposite strip #474.

[nocoolnamejim]

I complain about the ways your posting style occludes what you're saying.

For example, I can guess, based on your finally having identified the viewpoint you keep using passive voice for as that of the gods, that "the prevailing morality of the setting" is supposed to mean "the beliefs of the gods"--something that makes no sense to me--and not "the moral reading intended by Rich Burlew," which would, but the sentence is unclear enough that I have to guess. If somewhere in all that passive voice there was a reason why the entirely-hypothetical bronze dragon would agree with the gods other than "the gods say so," it would take more work than I'm going to devote to it to figure it out.

I posted the reference, Mightymosy; I believe Jasdoif did, as well. In War and XPs, opposite strip #474.

Oddly, I've been posting on various forums for many years now and you're the only person who has ever felt the need to mention my "passive voice" in very nearly every single post you make towards me in a debate.

Here's an idea!

If you're unclear on something, maybe you could, y'know, ASK for clarification instead of continually passive aggressively complaining about my posting style and leaving me to guess what YOUR meaning is on what you are unclear about when you keep mentioning my "passive voice"?

It would have saved you a whole lot of time.

[Kish]

I'm sorry, it genuinely never occurred to me that anyone reading this would not know 1) what passive voice is, and 2) that it's generally unwise for communicating.

Here it is, then, so you can't say I'm being passive-aggressive: Passive voice is when you say something like "Xykon was thrown into the ward over Dorukan's Gate" rather than "Roy threw Xykon into the ward over Dorukan's Gate." In most cases it is unnecessary and makes communication a lot less clear. If you had just said "the gods say this" instead of "it is the way it is" a long time ago, while I doubt there would be any meeting of the minds, we could have gotten to "Each of us thinks the other is totally wrong" in about a quarter the number of posts.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

If you're unclear on something, maybe you could, y'know, ASK for clarification

You mean like they did?

if you stopped treating (the gods? the D&D players you know? I can't actually tell from your posts) as an authority.

What are you even arguing for now?

Those being where, exactly? Is this defining the Dungeon of Dorukan as "the home of Xykon's followers"?

Kish, being far more patient than I ever would, has been pointing out to you both what wasn't clear and why all this time, I assume because they, unlike me, don't like to simply assume what your argument is. Which is why I told you that your whole argument of "the gods approve, therefore the bronze dragons approve" was a non-sequitur a page earlier (but occasionally means I answer something the other poster did not say, which Kish never does to the best of my recollection).

GW

[nocoolnamejim]

I'm sorry, it genuinely never occurred to me that anyone could not know 1) what passive voice is, and 2) that it's generally unwise for communicating.

Here it is, then, so you can't say I'm being passive-aggressive: Passive voice is when you say something like "Xykon was thrown into the ward over Dorukan's Gate" rather than "Roy threw Xykon into Dorukan's Gate." In most cases it is unnecessary and makes communication a lot less clear. If you had just said "the gods say this" instead of "it is the way it is" a long time ago, while I doubt there would be any meeting of the minds, we could have gotten to "Each of us thinks the other is totally wrong" in about a quarter the number of posts.

I'm sorry too. It genuinely never occurred to me that someone who has tried to portray himself as smarter than everyone in an attempt to lecture someone on their "reading at a very basic level" wouldn't be able to figure out my meaning.

But hey, we can passive aggressive snark back at each other all day instead! I'm game.

Here's an example. From the VERY BEGINNING of this debate.

I post: I'm not arguing it's okay at a moral level. Genocide is genocide. I'm saying that in-universe it's considered fine by the way the gods have set things up.

You post: You're using passive voice. "It's considered fine." Who considers?

GOSH. I don't know how anyone could have puzzled that through that I'm talking about the gods. What a brain teaser that passive voice was.

[Jasdoif]

I post: I'm not arguing it's okay at a moral level. Genocide is genocide. I'm saying that in-universe it's considered fine by the way the gods have set things up.

You post: You're using passive voice. "It's considered fine." Who considers?

GOSH. I don't know how anyone could have puzzled that through that I'm talking about the gods. What a brain teaser that passive voice was.

Well, if we're going to get into semantic inferences...that is passive. You didn't say it's considered fine by the gods, you said it's considered fine by the way the gods have set things up...meaning someone looked at the way the gods set things up and decided that meant it's fine. That someone could be the gods...or Soon...or Xykon...or specific gods rather than gods universally....

On the low end of the cynicism spectrum, the ambiguity is unhelpful because the separation from context is a barrier to better understanding of the perspective as a whole. On the high end of the cynicism spectrum, the ambiguity is subversive because it actively attempts to separate an activity from its actors, who could be challenged as imperfect.

[Kish]

Addressed to anyone who happens to be reading this: You know, I can't think of a character who isn't a cleric, a paladin, a goblin, or an orc whose religion is a joke who's shown any real interest in what the gods think? Haley never casually swears using Loki's name and didn't have any hesitation in acting like Thor was a big joke. Elan only cares about one god, and he's a puppet. Even Tsukiko, who was part cleric, doesn't seem to have been interested in any gods, as such; the cleric class was part of her Mystic Theurge chassis, nothing else.

Any other examples I'm missing?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

a character who isn't a cleric, a paladin, a goblin

Way to narrow the field That removes all antagonists save Xykon, and the largest protagonist-aligned group.

I'd look through the Moot. There might be a couple of bodyguards expressing doubtful alignment to the god's decision in there.

(But to your larger point, no, I don't expect to find much)

GW

[Unoriginal]

Something I think the Giant is kind of trying to eat his cake and have it too is that while he tries to portray the "evil races" as Evil on the cultural level (hobgoblins are not the tyrants that would make Tarquin give a thumb up like they are described in D&D, Redcloack's family was warm and loving, etc.), he stills portray them as the bad guys...

I mean, the whole "goblins were created to be walking XP bags and 'acceptable targets' " thing is more "everyone collectively decided to be ***** to goblins because reason, while goblins aren't more evil than anyone" rather than "goblins were created along with the other races, and were among the ones whose individual members liked to inflict harm and suffering to others the most often."


The whole "goblins are evil, so kill them on sight" thing that goes in RPGs still relies on the idea that, even if it's certainly not true all goblins are horribly evil, that most of them are the kind to cause harm and suffering, through pillage, torture and the like, to anyone they meet, and that the adventurers would get killed if they didn't fight.

In typical D&D, an Evil goblin settlement would like a cross between Greysky City and a raider camp, with the goblins using it to launch attacks on all travelers and villages they thought they had a chance against, and it would terrorise the local area until it was dealt with. There could be other kind of settlements, but the Evil one would be something like that.

In our world, pirates were considered "enemies of humanity" for that kind of thing.

In OotS, it sounds like the goblins would just want to have a peaceful life in their nice settlement, but then adventurers burst through walls like demendted, bloodthristy Kool-aid men, point at the goblins, scream "EEEEEEVIL" and then charge to kill all of them.

Yet, the different goblinoids are still portrayed as being mostly "bad guys", except with a "you treated our species like ****, so we're going to treat you like **** once the table have turned" kind of justified revenge.

[Keltest]

Addressed to anyone who happens to be reading this: You know, I can't think of a character who isn't a cleric, a paladin, a goblin, or an orc whose religion is a joke who's shown any real interest in what the gods think? Haley never casually swears using Loki's name and didn't have any hesitation in acting like Thor was a big joke. Elan only cares about one god, and he's a puppet. Even Tsukiko, who was part cleric, doesn't seem to have been interested in any gods, as such; the cleric class was part of her Mystic Theurge chassis, nothing else.

Any other examples I'm missing?

V nominally worships the elven gods of knowledge and adheres to their code. I leave it as an exercise to, well, you, to decide whether their lack of visible guidance for V is due to their nature as elven gods of knowledge (as opposed to, say, gods of hitting evil in the face with a hammer), or because V only pays lip service to them.

I think Roy's mom was implied to be somewhat devote as well, though not heavily.

[SaintRidley]

Addressed to anyone who happens to be reading this: You know, I can't think of a character who isn't a cleric, a paladin, a goblin, or an orc whose religion is a joke who's shown any real interest in what the gods think? Haley never casually swears using Loki's name and didn't have any hesitation in acting like Thor was a big joke. Elan only cares about one god, and he's a puppet. Even Tsukiko, who was part cleric, doesn't seem to have been interested in any gods, as such; the cleric class was part of her Mystic Theurge chassis, nothing else.

Any other examples I'm missing?

Maybe Durkon's mother?