OOTS #1114 - The Discussion Thread

[AutomatedTeller]

To be more clear, I mean that we don't know all that much about her or any other dwarven wedding. Maybe they are all done at crossbow. Maybe the crossbow is symbolic of something. Maybe all dwarven marriages are arranged, and the crossbow was just a little extra. Maybe it was a joke.

There's an assertion which says that this arranged marriage is a setup for rape, and that's just not supported by anything. I'm not convinced that's the case in human society, though I do believe that it can be abused. But then, a non-arranged marriage can result in rape, too.

The thing is, dwarves are NOT short humans. They are a separate species. It's quite possible that marriages are arranged and if no sex happens, they are dissolved. Quite literally, we know nothing about the dwarven customs of marriage, except that they don't seen to suit Hilgya, who is chaotic as opposed to lawful.

I really thinks it's weird to say the clan set her up to be raped and got lucky that she wasn't. It's quite possible that the clan elders knew exactly what they were doing.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I must note the lack of overlap between "Firehelm members arranging the marriage" and "Firehelm members being married". The idea that the marriage was "for the good of the clan" is seriously undercut by the clan leadership's inability to choose amongst themselves who would be married for it.

Family leaders tend to already be married - being married is one of those unofficial requirements to attain leadership positions in many societies. I do not think it is a stretch, either, that everyone in a position of authority might have been too old and/or male to marry Ivan. In fact, the combination of wrong marriage status, sex and age would easily account for everyone making that kind of decision, before throwing in other considerations such as Ivan not being important enough in the other clan to warrant a high-level marriage.

Grey Wolf

[Jasdoif]

Family leaders tend to already be married - being married is one of those unofficial requirements to attain leadership positions in many societies. I do not think it is a stretch, either, that everyone in a position of authority might have been too old and/or male to marry Ivan. In fact, the combination of wrong marriage status, sex and age would easily account for everyone making that kind of decision, before throwing in other considerations such as Ivan not being important enough in the other clan to warrant a high-level marriage.

So, if they made a decision "for the clan" knowing they wouldn't personally absorb the costs...how convenient for them. Why marriage in the first place, then?

[The_Weirdo]

So, if they made a decision "for the clan" knowing they wouldn't personally absorb the costs...how convenient for them. Why marriage in the first place, then?

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one!" - Said Spock, grabbing a random redshirt and tossing him into the chamber...

[Lord Joeltion]

I do not believe there was any luck involved. I think that it was quite clear to anyone (other than Hilgya, whose capacity for self-deception is off the scales) that Ivan was practically braindead, a sweetie and no harm to anyone. Now, I cannot prove it, and I'm not expecting anyone to agree with me, but my headcanon is that it was Ivan's nature that was at the heart of the marriage: Ivan's clan needed to marry him off, and Hilgya's clan agreed. It does not mean Hilgya's clan comes smelling of roses (Ivan needed a caring caretaker, they gave him to Hilgya), but I think the accusations of attempted rape are way off line. We've literally seen Ivan twice in the entire run of the comic, and both times it has been extremely clear what his nature is. I think Hilgya's clan knew exactly who they were marrying to one of their own, and they knew he was not a sexual menace.

Okay, let's assume this was made for Ivan's well-being. Let's assume she was given as a care taker and "partner for life" in papers alone. Let's also assume the family did care about Ivan being totally "harmless". Heck, just for the sake of it, let's imagine for a while the first attempt of convincing Hilgya involved some argument like "You can totally take advantage of the fool. He won't even realize whether you cheat on him with the stable boy or whatever. There's absolutely no downside to this deal, and you will become rich!"

It's still a wrongdoing, from the family's POV. Because if Hilgya wasn't on board from the get go; and no argument could convince her, it still results in the family basically trafficking her body for profit/benefit*. Consider that I wasn't equating her family's criminal actions with being accomplices of rape. All I was arguing is that forced marriage is still a crime. And as such, the family is guilty.

We can, of course, discuss the other actors involved and who is to blame for who (and, in turn, what qualifies as "proper retribution" fro each of them); but that doesn't unmake the crimes committed by the family. Maybe in Dwarven lands it's not a crime to coerce a child at crosbow point (I doubt it, though); but that doesn't mean that threatening people at gunpoint is still a crime. Not even to mention, forced marriage. Specially when it involves padlocks

In that light, I don't think monetary compensation qualifies as disproportionate retribution on a vacuum. After all, we don't know how much she actually gained from her scam. It could be anything from a small/big fortune, to just about enough to pay for the lawyers and go on with her life until she finds an actual job. The fact that her family was ruined by their actions is a whole other issue; possibly more complex; but I'm not as quick to hold Hilgya completely responsible for that. At worst, she is guilty from fraud and manipulating a public gambling house. But that has nothing to do with her family's bankruptcy. After all, she only had to play the system because her family played the system with her first. If her family wouldn't have forced into marriage, she wouldn't have had to resort to scamming their money away (in order to pay a competent lawyer); meaning that in the end, her clan brought up their ruins over themselves.

Or at least, that's my read of this particular strip.

*Whose profit or benefit, I think it's irrelevant.

The description from the wiki (leaving aside the religious elements, of which there are many and I won't go into for obvious reasons)

About the only thing in the above description that might fit the Hilgya-Ivan forced wedding is the bit about honor, and even that would require Hilgya to have done something with Ivan ahead of the wedding, and by all accounts they hadn't even met.

So yeah, if there was anything I'd want Rich to change is the reference to a shotgun wedding, and switch it to some other indication that this was a forced wedding, just not of the shotgun kind.

Maybe the Giant never thought this through completely, or he was using a broader definition of "shotgun wedding reference". I'd chose the latter.

Edit: also, there is a certain degree of poetic injustice in all this. In pre-women-rights, women that didn't marry the suitor chosen by their families (or whose suitor died, or otherwise ended unmarried) often ended in poorhouses and workhouses. That Hilgya has condemned an entire clan to that same fate is as evil as if she had ended in the same place because of their actions.

I agree on the evil part. She had to commit a (complex and premeditated) crime to get compensation for a previous (more serious) crime against her. Where I disagree is on the "injustice" part. I don't quite see it that way. If, in fact, Hilgya resorted to an overkilling amount of money instead of scamming them for about just the money she needed to get her and her child out of the situation others had previously condemned her; it's more of a technicality than an actual problem.

For starters, we lack bases to argue either side. And whatever the case, it's an inescapable situation anyway. Ultimately, it was the family's greed (or lack of foresight) what led them to ruin. Hilgya served only as Fate's hand for the deed, malicious as she may or may not had been. It's only money after all; and hadn't she been born, the clan would still be having monetary/political issues that their wealth can't possibly solve (apparently). So, yeah, I think they kinda got what they deserved.

ETA: Had Hilgya jeopardized the current well being of "innocent"* people, I could lean towards your point of view. But until we see actual destituted children wearing rags; I won't account Hilgya responsible for the potential hardships of future generations. It wasn't only Hilgya the one who failed to find a proper solution for their current issues. Forced marriage doesn't strike me as a proper solution to any problem, and actually, seems more like a sloppy attempt for an easy way out.

*Innocent: as in, unable to work out a solution by their own means; i.e: kids and those unable to create a profit

[Grey_Wolf_c]

So, if they made a decision "for the clan" knowing they wouldn't personally absorb the costs...how convenient for them.

Strange claim, given that they clearly did end up absorbing the costs. Even absent a roaring rampage of revenge, there is always a risk that marriages won't work out in ways that will cost them personally influence, money, power, and so on.

Why marriage in the first place, then?

To quote Pratchett:

"Do you really think that family is a matter of money?"
"We-ell, yes, according to history. Money, land and titles. It's amazing how often we failed to marry anyone who didn't have at least two out of three"

Consolidating alliances, power, business contracts, access to governmental positions, the list goes on, and traditionally all of those are sealed with marriages. And because there is a lot of such deals, not every one of them can involve the clan heads doing the marrying.

Grey Wolf

[Devils_Advocate]

...does that Giant's-actual-thoughts post strike anyone else as very "You are who you are on your very worst day, Durkon. Anything less is a comforting lie you tell yourself to numb the pain."?

Yes, it does.

Put simply: The Giant (in the quote) is saying that your actions OVERALL speak to your true character, and that if you try to hide your true character it will eventually be revealed through intense stress.

No, The Giant said "You reveal who you really are under stress", i.e. if your normal, non-stressed personality is different from when you are under stress, then your normal personality is "fake" and not the "real you". Maybe that's not what he meant, but if so he communicated poorly.

(though assigning his make-the-best-of-it disposition to an undiagnosed brain injury was a bit over the top in her lack of self awareness -- he could have just been being an honorable husband, while as sad as Durkon on the inside).

(Hilgya did say "possibly", and Ivan acts at least as clueless as Elan at his most clueless, which is saying something.)

I guess she could be evil in the "evil in a self-interested way" sense instead of the "doing it for the evulz" sense, but we just saw the poster boy for "affably evil" with Tarquin.

Tarquin may seem driven by enlightened self-interest at first, but the more that we get to know him the clearer it becomes that his brand of evil is actually fairly gratuitous. Billing himself as pragmatic just seems to be part of the particular villainous archetype that he seeks to embody. He tends to hate and want to seriously harm anyone who significantly interferes with his elaborate plans, practicality be damned. To the extent that he genuinely believes that doing so consistently bolsters his stranglehold on power, I see that largely as rationalization. Tarquin not only chooses but construes his actions so as to support his self-image of himself as a mastermind. If he really were concerned strictly with controlling people in general rather than with punishing people who step out of line specifically, I imagine that he'd behave more than a bit differently.

I have to admit I missed the padlocks. Where were those shown?

They weren't. But we know that Hilgya was forced into her marriage. It's preposterous to assume that pointing a crossbow at her at her wedding wasn't characteristic of how she was treated leading up to it, and that it would have been possible for her to escape beforehand. Which doesn't mean that no one assumed that anyway, of course...

So large scale death and destruction is a better alternative than making one person miserable? Or are you one of those people who thinks there has to be a perfect way out where everybody is happy just because there must be?

If Hilgya's reluctance to do what her clan asked (demanded) of her is indeed atypical, they likely could have found someone willing. I suspect that they wanted to get rid of her. She's repeatedly expressed dislike of the dwarves' restrictive society in general and was probably pretty rebellious. It's preposterous to assume that her behavior after her marriage is the opposite of how she acted before it.

Too bad "plotting" is not the same thing as, "considering" or actually "doing".

Huh? Considering precedes plotting, not vice versa. It sounds like she did consider it but probably abandoned the idea before it made it to the planning (i.e. plotting) phase.

Destituting the people that forced her to marry at crossbow point to get free from it. That's not Good or Evil, it's something anyone would do in her place, and it does not speak to her alignment in any way.

Eh, I think it's pretty clearly non-Lawful.

She clearly cares not one bit about the lives of anyone other than herself and Kudzu.

That's not clear to me at all. Do you think that she was just lying about feeling bad about getting Elan stabbed by Nale?

Well, since Hilgya didn't (and, instead, merely discussed the idea somewhat coolly), she's obviously not a terrible person.

Denying the antecedent.

Absent from all that moral exposition is a response to the question why should her clan's well-being be her problem?

If you don't agree that you shouldn't harm innocents, I don't even know what you think "should" means.

Let say you work for Ecks Incorporated a globe-spinning company than currently provides 1,000,000 peoplewith steady well paying jobs and good working environment in these times of crisis. They do this by selling (for a reasonnable price) a delicious but healthy food that has become their trademark and nobody else knows the recipe. Then your direct superior fire you to protect his nephew who made a mistake that cost the company money. Jobless and pennyless you cannot afford to go to court. However by pure chance you stumbled upon the recipe sometime before and could now send a copy of it to the competition. As Ecks' entire business modelis based on this one recipe you know that doing so would cripple them maybe even bankrut them. The one who fired you would lose his job but so would most of your 1,000,000 former colleagues.

If a gang of hooligans runs around breaking windows, is it bad to stop them, thereby depriving glaziers of business? Is it good to oppose automation, on the grounds that it eliminates jobs?

It seems quite questionable that the scenario that you describe represents a net negative. Yes, the monopoly and its employees suffer, but their new competitors and consumers both benefit. What right do those employees have to benefit at the cost of others? They didn't come up with the recipe, or at least presumably the vast majority weren't responsible for it, and whoever did invent it is probably quite well-off by now.

And, again, given the pattern, they will likely do so by forcing their women into prostitution.

... Do you think that that somehow helps Hilgya's case? Saying that she's condemning multiple others to suffer what she went through does not make her look better. If she's in a unique position to sympathize with their plight but is still like "Eh, screw 'em", that's really pretty cold. That's like Princess Leia consigning all of the other slave girls in Jabba's Palace to fiery death! NOT COOL, Leia. Not. Cool.

Hilgya has every reason to hate the clans with a passion and anyone that's not a Vulcan would be fairly indiscriminate about whom among the clans they hated, so it's not exactly a big deal for her to talk so calmly about it and it might show quite a bit of restraint on her part that she didn't go through with it.

Hilgya is a member of her clan, so if she hates everyone in her clan she should hate herself, unless of course she's subject to different considerations than everyone who isn't her. Perhaps this comes as news to you, but that sort of fundamentally self-centered value system is generally not regarded as virtuous.

It seems entirely inappropriate to blame "her clan" or "the clans" for injustices done her rather than the specific individuals responsible. That's the main point here: Your arguments seem to be partly based on precisely the sort of collectivism that Hilgya would be fighting against, and thus your position comes off as ideologically inconsistent.

If you want to be a proper individualist, you need to get past the idea of "the individual" being oppressed "by society", because that way you wind up seeing either no one or everyone as oppressors. See, rather, that "society" is an abstraction, and that everything done is done by individuals. Individuals oppress other individuals. Fight the oppressors, not the oppressed, unless you want to be one of the oppressors.

Let's reduce this down to base principles: if Hilgya had stabbed some random woman to death, possibly for trying to pick her pocket to feed her starving baby, when she could have just as easily turned her over to the law... would you think that the baby's slow, painful, death from starvation was the mother's fault?

Without directly addressing that question, I'd like to point out that blame is not a conserved quantity. Sometimes something bad happens and no one is to blame. Sometimes something bad happens and multiple individuals are each 100% responsible. There's not, like, exactly one... blameload, or whatever, to go around.

Not even discussing the worthiness of revenge here: in her place, what would you do to ensure your own freedom that is perfect, clean and harms none, bearing in mind that both clans would do everything in their power to ensure you stayed with Ivan? It very much was a problem caused by the clans.

Someone else already mentioned that Hilgya could just stay away from her homeland. But if your point is that there's no perfect solution where everyone gets exactly where they want... well, I'm not sure how that's relevant, since no one's saying there is.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Okay, let's assume this was made for Ivan's well-being.

Why? I don't. I assume it was to secure an alliance, and get them fool out of their hair. Yes, they wouldn't want him dead of starvation, but they also didn't seem to want to take care of him. His well-being, like that of Hilgya, was at best a secondary consideration. In my headcanon, they probably gave them a better deal for him than they would've for an able-minded dwarf.

It's still a wrongdoing, from the family's POV.

Yes, so? I haven't claimed otherwise. What I have said is that we cannot simply reduce this to "rape". For two reasons: first, it is likely inaccurate. Second, it weakens the actual cases of rape when they get moral-equvalenced to every other crime in existence. Rape is rape. Threatening someone with a crossbow is not rape. Being forced to care for a child-brained adult is not rape. They are crimes, yes, but I find it important to establish a scale of things, and I place rape above the other two, by a considerable margin.

Consider that I wasn't equating her family's criminal actions with being accomplices of rape. All I was arguing is that forced marriage is still a crime. And as such, the family is guilty.

I disagree with your assertion of your position:

her family did set her up as a potential rape victim.

Maybe the Giant never thought this through completely, or he was using a broader definition of "shotgun wedding reference". I'd chose the latter.

I am not aware of any broader definition. Please provide it if it exists.

Where I disagree is on the "injustice" part. I don't quite see it that way.

The clan is not just the guys making decisions. The clan is children, and family members and plenty of others who how now lost their houses for no crime of their own other than being born to this particular clan. There is no justice in that. Innocent paying for the crime of the guilty is never justice.

Grey Wolf

[Kish]

I think Rich's definition of "shotgun wedding," in context, began and ended "wedding that takes place against the will of one of the participants because the unwilling participant has a shotgun aimed at them."

I'd just like to point out, because Joeltion's latest post strikes me as suggesting otherwise, that there are two separate, not directly connected parts of Hilgya rigging the race. She won enough money to hire the lawyers by betting on the winner at 70-1 odds. She also separately tricked her brother into a bet that bankrupted her family, because she wanted "her family is destitute" to be a consideration when Ivan's family decided whether to contest her divorce. She didn't get the money her family lost; she got 70 times her own bet, and would have whatever her family did or didn't bet.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I'd just like to point out that there are two separate, not directly connected parts of Hilgya rigging the race. She won enough money to hire the lawyers by betting on the winner at 70-1 odds. She also separately tricked her brother into a bet that bankrupted her family, because she wanted "her family is destitute" to be a consideration when Ivan's family decided whether to contest her divorce. She didn't get the money her family lost; she got 70 times her own bet, and would have whatever her family did or didn't bet.

Sometimes I wish you quoted the posts you are responding to. I'm guessing someone made the argument that she had taken all of her clan's money?

(Also, I'd say she got 70 times her own bet, minus whatever it took to rig the bet - costs must always be accounted for )

GW

[Necris Omega]

You don't get to be a high level cleric of Loki without some high level shenanigans. I don't know if the "burn them all!" thing was in jest or not, but what she did was infinitely more appropriate for her deity of choice. I don't know why, but I find myself appreciating clerics who so well represent the deities they serve, particularly when those deities have some level of nuance to them.

[The_Weirdo]

If you want to be a proper individualist, you need to get past the idea of "the individual" being oppressed "by society", because that way you wind up seeing either no one or everyone as oppressors. See, rather, that "society" is an abstraction, and that everything done is done by individuals. Individuals oppress other individuals. Fight the oppressors, not the oppressed, unless you want to be one of the oppressors.

Good point! I agree and stand corrected!

[Jasdoif]

Strange claim, given that they clearly did end up absorbing the costs.

No, they clearly didn't absorb the cost of any of them being married to Ivan; they forced Hilgya to absorb it for them while they (as members of the clan) reaped benefits from it.

That this triggered a cause-and-effect chain that ended with Hilgya throwing them into destitution was certainly a cost for them, but it wasn't that cost.


It really isn't that different from Kubota's belief that Azure City's legal system would protect him every step of the way after failing to have Hinjo killed, and then Vaarsuvius showed up without feeling beholden to that system.

---

On rereading the strip, something I just realized is that Hilgya's eldest brother was in position to control the clan's finances; else how did he get all their money to bet on #8? How high up the ladder, so to speak, might Hilgya have been? (I also noticed that she said Ivan's clan was "highborn", so there being a clan union of wealth and social status is quite plausible; though I'm not sure how/if this would affect the targeting for the marriage)

[Lord Joeltion]

Why? I don't. I assume it was to secure an alliance, and get them fool out of their hair. Yes, they wouldn't want him dead of starvation, but they also didn't seem to want to take care of him. His well-being, like that of Hilgya, was at best a secondary consideration. In my headcanon, they probably gave them a better deal for him than they would've for an able-minded dwarf.

I was just granting whatever possible scenario you propose. You mentioned the family needing somebody to take care of Ivan. I wasn't saying it was the only reason, I was just allowing your scenario to exist. If your headcanon is that they gave them Ivan because they wanted to get rid of him, it's kinda about his well-being. Or driving the burden to someone else, you can call it as you want. My point is that Ivan's family wasn't the one I was judging, since Hilgya implied Ivan wasn't forced, and apparently she never held them directly responsible for her mistreatment.

Yes, so? I haven't claimed otherwise. What I have said is that we cannot simply reduce this to "rape". For two reasons: first, it is likely inaccurate. Second, it weakens the actual cases of rape when they get moral-equvalenced to every other crime in existence. Rape is rape. Threatening someone with a crossbow is not rape. Being forced to care for a child-brained adult is not rape. They are crimes, yes, but I find it important to establish a scale of things, and I place rape above the other two, by a considerable margin.

If anything, I reduced it to human trafficking, not rape. Although that's probably irrelevant to you. Sure, she wasn't actually forced into slavery, but I can't think of other crimes that can be equivalent to forced marriage/physical coercion and don't involve violating a couple Human Rights. So...

I disagree with your assertion of your position:

You forgot the "Well, in a purely technical sense,"; which conveys I was talking about a situation on a vacuum, and not specifically about the strip. The disregard about her safety wasn't because of any direct harm she could suffer from Ivan or his family; but actually about their implementation of physical coercion to force her into marrying him. Once they resorted to physical violence (virtual or real), they already stopped caring about her safety altogether.

I am not aware of any broader definition. Please provide it if it exists.

The broader meaning would rest on the "reference" part, actually. Reference->allusion->etc

The clan is not just the guys making decisions. The clan is children, and family members and plenty of others who how now lost their houses for no crime of their own other than being born to this particular clan. There is no justice in that. Innocent paying for the crime of the guilty is never justice.

Grey Wolf

So, from this, I gather you are against monetary retribution on a legal case; when it comes to the bankruptcy of a homestead? It's not a tricky question, I'm trying to see your point clearer. Because I still see it as a corporate business having to respond for the actions of those decision-makers whose foresight was too shortsighted. That includes only those who decided Hilgya was the only possible solution to their problems. And there's a bunch of clear flaws on that plan. Starting from her rebellious nature and her tendency to not agree with their decisions. They basically rest the solution of all their problems on the worst possible candidate. Maybe Hilgya is guilty of being the worst possible candidate, but then again, it wasn't actually her call. So her faults actually rest on somebody else, IMHO.

[t209]

So I forgot that Higlya was evil since the last time. I mean Ivan isn't abusive, but Higlya tried to poison him and divorced him even if it involved impoverishing her family.

[Kish]

Good point! I agree and stand corrected!

Alas, I doubt that means you now recognize the fundamental wrongness of paving a path to freedom with innocent bodies (when you can wave your hand and say someone else started it).

[The MunchKING]

"Breathing in all that smoke would have been terrible for Kudzu's developing lungs"

Proper priorities!

Am I alone in finding this utterly heartwarming?

No, not at all. The MunchKING finds it nice to know her Maternal instincts are properly functioning.

That is a whole new level for Hilgya. Bankrupting your family to pay for the divorce proceedings is...wow.

I wonder if being a runaway from her clan and honor as well as apparently a major problem before that got her written out of the will, and thus she sees it just as taking back what should have been hers all along.

Ivan definitely has an undiagnosed brain injury: how long did he think Hilgya was in the bathroom.

Either that or he was just trying to be polite and not call attention to how flimsy her story was. :p

Yeah, OK you're probably right.

Probably by bribing and/or threatening various participants, I'd imagine.Those are the standard approaches. But the comic doesn't say, nor does it need to.

Grey Wolf

Drugging the Slimes so they move slower, or doping the one up on Haste potions?

Can you DO that to a Gelatinous Cube in RAW?

Destituting the people that forced her to marry at crossbow point to get free from it. That's not Good or Evil, it's something anyone would do in her place, and it does not speak to her alignment in any way.

Just because you think anyone would want to do that doesn't mean it doesn't speak to her alignment.

Well, to be sure, if you consider murdering an innocent and plan on it and then speak calmly about it, that would usually show you as Evil.

The key word here being innocent. Hilgya has every reason to hate the clans with a passion and anyone that's not a Vulcan would be fairly indiscriminate about whom among the clans they hated, so it's not exactly a big deal for her to talk so calmly about it and it might show quite a bit of restraint on her part that she didn't go through with it.

Quite a lot of non Vulcans are known to be discriminate in their revenge. Saying otherwise doesn't make it true.

And maybe Malack. The others are either scornful or out to hurt the most people they can.

Wait... Wasn't Malack planning on setting up Death Camps?

Point of order: we don't know that dwarves have 9 month gestation.

I thought RAW said a year was common, but looking it up in the BoEF, all I could find was that it was "long" presumably in relation to a human's pregnancy time.

Anyone got a reference to a case where burning down the clan hall at night isn't intended to kill more or less everyone in the clan?

That seems like very poor fire-safety. That's why most houses now days have multiple doors and windows big enough to fit through.

she is unwilling to serve

That's the weird thing about this, she is a Cleric! A relatively high level one! It seems she isPERFECTLY willing to serve, as long as she chose to serve out of personal loyalty rather than overarching societal demands.

... Do you think that that somehow helps Hilgya's case? Saying that she's condemning multiple others to suffer what she went through does not make her look better. If she's in a unique position to sympathize with their plight but is still like "Eh, screw 'em", that's really pretty cold. That's like Princess Leia consigning all of the other slave girls in Jabba's Palace to fiery death! NOT COOL, Leia. Not. Cool.

Except she wasn't at the Palace, she was in his/her? (What is the proper pronoun for a hermaphrodite? Whatever, I think everyone used male pronouns in Star Wars, so I'll assume Jabba was cool with that.) private pleasure Barge, and IIRC she was the only one Jabba brought along specifically because he wanted her to watch the others die slowly and suffering because he knew she loved Han Solo and had tried to rescue him.

[The_Weirdo]

Alas, I doubt that means you now recognize the fundamental wrongness of paving a path to freedom with innocent bodies (when you can wave your hand and say someone else started it).

I wouldn't be a charming psychopath if I did, now, would I?

[Kish]

Charming...psychopath. I know both those words, but they don't seem to make sense when you say them together like that. Oh--you mean this guy? Or this one? He apparently had high Charisma too...

[The_Weirdo]

Charming...psychopath. I know both those words, but they don't seem to make sense when you say them together like that. Oh--you mean this guy? Or this one? He apparently had high Charisma too...

Nah, I'm not undead. Or Lawful.

And now, for something completely different:

Okay, folks, it's roleplaying time!

Suppose a company that employs 200 highly specialized people did something grievously wrong against you. You can sue and, if you do, you'll win - and the company will have to pay you more than it's worth and go out of business, sentencing its 200 highly specialized employees to unemployment. Settlement out of court is not possible for several reasons (up to and including that the company may have refused it outright).

Is it Evil for you to sue, even though the company committed a grievous wrong against you? Will you really give that much of a thought to the 200 employees? Are they not as innocent as the newly destitute clan members?

Well?

[Vessyra]

Ha ha ha, that has to have been one of the funniest OotS in a long time.

On an unrelated note, does anyone know how long a colon tutor can go untreated for? If it's longer than [checks archives] 1107 strips, Elan may be in trouble...

[Aeson]

Bit late for that part of the discussion, but I agree with Grey_Wolf_c that the clan hall that Hilgya meant to burn down was that of her husband's family, not that of the Firehelm's. Consider - her primary objective appears to have been to free herself of her marriage to Ivan. Would burning down the Firehelm clanhall have aided her in the accomplishment of that objective? Not really. Presuming that Ivan's family would have opposed the divorce if the Firehelms hadn't lost all their wealth, I'd suggest that there is a strong possibility that killing off a large part of her family would have made it harder for Hilgya to secure a divorce - she (and presumably Ivan and his family) would probably have a greater share of the Firehelm wealth after the deaths of the majority of the clan than before, which would make retaining the marriage more worthwhile. Burning down the clanhall of Ivan's family, presumably with Ivan and many of his clansmen and clanswomen inside of it? That directly accomplishes her objective, and is simply a more extreme version of her earliest-known plan to free herself from her marriage: murder Ivan.

[Lord Joeltion]

I'd just like to point out, because Joeltion's latest post strikes me as suggesting otherwise, that there are two separate, not directly connected parts of Hilgya rigging the race. She won enough money to hire the lawyers by betting on the winner at 70-1 odds. She also separately tricked her brother into a bet that bankrupted her family, because she wanted "her family is destitute" to be a consideration when Ivan's family decided whether to contest her divorce. She didn't get the money her family lost; she got 70 times her own bet, and would have whatever her family did or didn't bet.

The way I understood it, it involved the same bet. She tricked them to bet against her, in a race she was sure to win (so, win-win, in the end). It's true that I phrased it as if she was taking the money directly from them; but that's because I was disregarding the actual mechanics of her scam; for I consider them rather irrelevant.

First, she tricked her brother into losing a certain amount of the clan's fortune for a rigged race. Then rigged the race in order to multiply her personal coin by a fixed amount. Whether those sums are equal or not, it's unimportant, because she more or less had a certain amount of control over how much profit she would make (assuming she also fixed the specific odds, which is to be expected IMO) and how much her brother would be willing to bet. Even if she didn't specifically told him to bet every penny of their fortune, she (as her mother) could more or less control how juicy the prize would be for her brother.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

No, they clearly didn't absorb the cost of any of them being married to Ivan; they forced Hilgya to absorb it for them while they (as members of the clan) reaped benefits from it.

The moment she walked out of the city they probably paid for her actions - paid in prestige almost certainly, and trustworthiness and other immaterial ways that nevertheless, amongst the powerful, often are far more valuable than money. What clan is going to trust the Firehelm clan with another arranged marriage after that?

To be absolutely clear, I am saying that in this situation, historically, untangling who paid what for what services and at what cost is NOT as clear cut as "Hilgya was the only one bearing the costs, and the leaders were the only ones reaping the benefits". Yes, by the nature of leadership, I'm sure they worked hard to minimise their own personal risk and cost, but minimize is not nullify. As you note, her brother was high enough up in the clan hierarchy that he was the treasurer. Hilgya was probably being groomed for a similar position, by arranging a marriage to someone who could not even begin to control her, which would have made her both "respectable" and also give her as much freedom as her clan was able to give her. It was just not enough for Hilgya.

And again, because I am eternally being misunderstood in this topic: I am NOT in any way suggesting that the leaders were doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, or out of respect for Hilgya's desire for liberty or any other high-minded position. I am sure they stood to gain a great deal from any arrangement they made. But they took the cards that have been dealt to them and, as far as I can tell, played them not to "set her up as a potential rape victim" but to further the clan as a whole.

Grey Wolf

[Lethologica]

So, if they made a decision "for the clan" knowing they wouldn't personally absorb the costs...how convenient for them. Why marriage in the first place, then?

As far as the married clan members are concerned, they paid the costs when the decision was made for them, and then it was Hilgya's turn. It's not a great worldview, but it's also not the one you seem to be attributing to them.

[Jasdoif]

To be absolutely clear, I am saying that in this situation, historically, untangling who paid what for what services and at what cost is NOT as clear cut as "Hilgya was the only one bearing the costs, and the leaders were the only ones reaping the benefits".

They decided they needed someone from their clan to be married to someone from Ivan's clan (unclear whether Ivan specifically was in mind at this point), and they decided the unwilling Hilgya should be that someone and not any of themselves.

If you're saying the marriage wasn't the entirety of whatever deal was going on...well, obviously; but series of hypothetical scenarios, which can't strictly be ruled out because we know next to nothing about the scenario, aren't particularly appealing here. That the Firehelm clan leaders were unable or unwilling to find someone willing to be married off, is far less hypothetical.

[atemu1234]

Eh, maybe I've played this game too long but, 'considering murder as a possible solution to mundane problems' is not really an evil trait insofar as D&D goes. Hell, even LG characters deal with it on occasion (those damn paladin squires are a pain in the ass sometimes). The fact that she didn't indicates something akin to personal growth, or at least growing acceptance of peaceable solutions.

I'm gonna rule CN on this one. She doesn't give two ****s about tradition, and wants the best life for herself and her child, even if it means bankrupting her family. 'Me and mine' is a valid philosophy in this case

[Sarbos]

I do really love Hylga in the background collecting the prize...

[Ironsmith]

I think Hilgya's actions come out just a little south of Neutral here. On the one hand, she totally bankrupted her family for her own gain. On the other hand, she did so basically by giving them enough rope to hang themselves; her eldest brother being so irresponsible with the funds is what ultimately did them in. However, there's no shortage of innocents impacted here... members of her clan that weren't involved in her marriage, the other gamblers who lost money on an unfair (fixed) bet, and anybody else the Firehelm clan may have been connected to that needed a financially strong ally. The good news is, for everyone but her clan, this so far amounts to not much more than an inconvenience. As for her clan... this is only really devastating if they're running on pooled funds, and/or gave her brother all the financial freedom he needed to invest the entire clan's complete fortune on what amounts to a die roll. That was already a mistake and bound to come back to bite them at some point.

Also, I can't be the only one getting the impression that Ivan's clan were trying really hard to get rid of the village idiot, right? I mean, it's an arranged marriage, so they have to pick someone to be the groom... and it's not hard to get the impression Hilgya was always going to make her husband miserable. Nobody in the higher-ups would want to take that, and there'd be a shortage of volunteers among the others, too, so they'd have to pick someone who wouldn't mind it. Why not kill two birds with one stone and get that obnoxiously optimistic guy out of the hall, too?

[Kardwill]

I just love Elan's matter-of-fact "pupeteers?". He knows Helgia is worshipping a definitely untrustworthy guy, but takes it in stride

I wasn't sure if there was a hint in there or not, but now that my morning brain fog has lifted, I can see more clearly that "but it had its own benefits" was probably just meant to imply that "it was a hard problem, and solving it made her rich".

It's probably already been pointed out, but if you look at the comic, right next to the "had its own benefits" speech bubble, you'll see a smiling Helgia pulling a cart with a small mountain of gold ^^
And getting 70:1 on a 3-cubes race? That cube really needed a boost, heh?