OOTS #1114 - The Discussion Thread

[Fyraltari]

Cool but intent doesnt actually matter when what you did was compare joblessness to rape

like there are other ways to talk about this then making it about money.

Right. I did not compare rape to joblessness. I used an analogy to analyse a problem ("is it just to punish other people than the wrongdoers when it is the only way to punish the wrongdoers). The entire point of doing that is to place the same problem in a completely different context as to keep only what is actually relevant to the problem. Here the nature of the crime is not relevant so I changed it.

There were an infinity of better examples I could have used and an infinity of worse ones. I chose that one. End of story

[Castamir]

Aaaaaaand gelatinous cube racing may have to become the next hot pastime in my gritty urban campaign setting... tone consistency be damned, this is amazing.

In an urban setting, you may try a giant snails race instead.

[Fyraltari]

In an urban setting, you may try a giant snails race instead.

It does look good.

[Rogar Demonblud]

I wonder if Hilgya's sudden insight regarding Ivan is supposed to represent character growth or is just the result of gaining a point in Wisdom.

[The Pilgrim]

This whole debate about forced marriages and rape is very interesting. Except for the fact that I don't remember Hylgia ever complaining about her clan "setting her up for being raped".

There is no single line of dialoge in the comic that implies that Hylgia sees herself as the victim of a rape. Neither there is a single line of dialoge in the comic that implies that Ivan ever laid a finger over her against her will.

She blames her clan for telling her what to do. Her issue with her clan always was that her clan (and dwarven society in general) prevented her to do as she liked, not that her clan "forced her into rape".

Also, I'm very dissapointed to read a lot of people arguing about Hylgia bankruptcying her familiy out of petty revenge instead of butchering them all in a fire means she is no longer Evil, yet I read no one arguing that Hylgia resorting to Lawful ways to achieve her personal goals instead of Chaotic ones means she is no longer Chaotic. There is a whole half of the alignment axis you always forget about.

[Starbuck_II]

Never mind Hilgya's cunning scheme or her husband's comical obliviousness, how do you ride a gelatinous cube and not die? How do you see a cube and not want to kill it, burn it with fire!?

Arms and Equipment guide had riding saddle that prevented damage.

[Lord Joeltion]

How is cheating the family who force-married (ie. attempted to rape you by proxy) you, with the explicitly mentioned used of crossbows and padlocks, no less, out of their entire fortune, and using their money to pay the divorce lawyers NOT the best way to get out of a marriage? I cannot see the flaw in this. Those who deserve punishment get it, the woman walks free. And apparently her mother is dead already, so won't suffer from it.

I, for one, think it's the best piece of poetic justice the Giant could have provided, while at the same time avoiding the icky issues of mass murder and wanton destruction (so, basically anything even tangentially related to settin things on fire). I wonder though, who brought up the mother issue (it's ok if it was you) because the mother could have been equally unsympathetic to her daughter as her male relatives are. But, yeah, poetic justice at it's best!

Also related: "Raise ravens and they'll pluck your eyes" (I can't seem to find a similar English proverb to convey this idea... any help is appreciated)

Admittedly, men who rape women, or cause women to be raped by a third party deserve death, but I am willing to settle for destitution. Also begins with a D, after all.

And she is right, setting fire to the clan hall would have been terrible for her son's lungs. Priorities. Sure, setting fire to a clan hall, possibly after slaughtering all the offending males, may look flashy and awesome, but someone gotta think of the child.

Well, actually... It's a golden mean fallacy, kinda. But we should allow this one to the Giant, given that it is a family friendly comic and all. I'd rather have capital punishment or whatever maximum penalty is available for actual offenders of those crimes. Specially because of the public shaming that legal prosecution sometimes entails (in a perfect world, that would be 100% of the times, but... yeah).

Spoiler

Show

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to be one The Giant's points to show that evil doesn't need to be unlikable (as in, we don't need to have all villains be a bastard no one identifies with). Many of the villains so far had some redeeming or excusing situation or characteristic. And yet, good and evil, at least for the mortal characters, has been emphasized as being one's choise.

Hilgya choose to try to murder her husband before running away (not kill in self defense, murder)
Hilgya choose to go after Durkon with the intent to kill him, even before knowing anything about the vampire.
Hilgya choose to bankrupt her entire clan as revenge (not to get the funds to sue for divorce, she admits that was a colateral benefit), and she only didn't burn Ivan's clan to death because it could endanger the one only person she cares about.

She choose evil. She might repent, she might redeem herself at some point and become a better person. But, for all she've shown, she hasn't yet.

Making excuses to try to make her not evil dimishes her as a character, because all she's done is part of the construction of her persona. We are allowed to like her, even if she's evil. We don't have to make her not evil in order to be legit to like her. Please. Embrace liking an evil character. That doesn't mean the one who likes her is evil. Only that, evil or not, she's interesting as a character.

Quoted for truth and to correct you for believing that you could possibly be wrong :)

(anyway the correct answer here is share that recipe with the million people that work for the company and let the workers take over the company)

I like the way you think Also, don't encourage the terrorism advocate

i really dont care about how businesses get run honestly

I really like the way you think Seriously, don't encourage him

ETA:

Right. I did not compare rape to joblessness. I used an analogy to analyse a problem ("is it just to punish other people than the wrongdoers when it is the only way to punish the wrongdoers). The entire point of doing that is to place the same problem in a completely different context as to keep only what is actually relevant to the problem. Here the nature of the crime is not relevant so I changed it.

There were an infinity of better examples I could have used and an infinity of worse ones. I chose that one. End of story

Ok, you didn't, but I have to back Extinguisher here and say your example wasn't entirely the most fortunate one, given the topic you seemed to be arguing before, with somebody else. You'd rather not argue with those people, bud

[Fyraltari]

I wonder if Hilgya's sudden insight regarding Ivan is supposed to represent character growth or is just the result of gaining a point in Wisdom.

[The Shadow]

I'm at a loss as to how anyone can see Hilgya as anything but evil. Yes, she has been badly mistreated. But that doesn't make her a good person, nor does it justify any and all responses on her part. It may make those responses more *understandable* from a human, er, dwarfly, perspective; but it doesn't make them one whit more *justified*.

(Incidentally, I have never been able to take the D&D alignment system seriously for multiple reasons, one of which is that it is logically impossible to be neutral between good and evil. D&D moral neutrality is usually just 'Evil Lite', with half the Evil calories. But I digress.)

She clearly desisted from *burning her entire clan alive, including small children* purely because 1) it would be bad for Kudzu's lungs and 2) she had a better and more profitable idea. Not because it would have been, you know, monstrously wrong. (As Elan's horrified expression attests.)

That's so clearly evil that I have a hard time believing it's even a discussion. (Not counting the obvious troll, of course.)

In other news, "trapped by honor and tradition and possibly an undiagnosed brain injury" was fall-down funny even by the standards of this strip!

[Grey_Wolf_c]

There is no single line of dialoge in the comic that implies that Hylgia sees herself as the victim of a rape. Neither there is a single line of dialoge in the comic that implies that Ivan ever laid a finger over her against her will.

The author has actually clarified that she and Ivan never consummated their marriage, FWIW.

ETA:

"Raise ravens and they'll pluck your eyes"

"You reap what you sow" and "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree" (or in OotS terms, "Tree is Within 10-ft. Radius of Apple")

ETA2:

(Incidentally, I have never been able to take the D&D alignment system seriously for multiple reasons, one of which is that it is logically impossible to be neutral between good and evil. D&D moral neutrality is usually just 'Evil Lite', with half the Evil calories. But I digress.)

I'm not about to try to change your mind, because you might just consider it evil light, but technically, Neutral is just not giving a damn about other's people's plights as long as they don't conflict with your needs, while Evil is actively making other people's lives worse if it furthers your needs. So one allows evil to happen when it's not their business to stop it, while the other is causing the evil.

GW

[The_Weirdo]

This whole debate about forced marriages and rape is very interesting. Except for the fact that I don't remember Hylgia ever complaining about her clan "setting her up for being raped". There is no single line of dialoge in the comic that implies that Hylgia sees herself as the victim of a rape. Neither there is a single line of dialoge in the comic that implies that Ivan ever laid a finger over her against her will. She blames her clan for telling her what to do. Her issue with her clan always was that her clan (and dwarven society in general) prevented her to do as she liked, not that her clan "forced her into rape".

Also, I'm very dissapointed to read a lot of people arguing about Hylgia bankrupting her familiy for petty revenge instead of butchering them all in a fire means she is no longer Evil, yet I read no one arguing that Hylgia resorting to Lawful ways to achieve her personal goals instead of Chaotic ones means she is no longer Chaotic. There is a whole half of the alignment axis you always forget about.

Ivan HAPPENED not to rape her, because he HAPPENED to be nice.

In forced marriages, what do you think USUALLY happens, though? Do you really think the newest hobos in the Dwarven Lands cared too much about the (likely, as far as they knew) rape of the woman on whose back they had a crossbow trained?

People are saying she is NOW Chaotic Neutral because, so far, she has acted very Chaotic Neutral and not done one Evil thing ever since she appeared in the comic again.

[Psychronia]

I know I shouldn't expect otherwise from you, but that's just mean, Helga. I still like her, but I don't really see how anyone could argue she isn't a bad person. At the very least, she's kind of a harmful person to be associated with.

In lighter news, something tells me Ivan and Elan would make good friends. They could be Undiagnosed Brain Injury Buddies!

[zimmerwald1915]

Also related: "Raise ravens and they'll pluck your eyes" (I can't seem to find a similar English proverb to convey this idea... any help is appreciated)

Chickens coming home to roost. Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.

Farming/husbandry metaphors seem to be a popular way of expressing this idea.

[Jasder]

I'm at a loss as to how anyone can see Hilgya as anything but evil. Yes, she has been badly mistreated. But that doesn't make her a good person, nor does it justify any and all responses on her part. It may make those responses more *understandable* from a human, er, dwarfly, perspective; but it doesn't make them one whit more *justified*.

(Incidentally, I have never been able to take the D&D alignment system seriously for multiple reasons, one of which is that it is logically impossible to be neutral between good and evil. D&D moral neutrality is usually just 'Evil Lite', with half the Evil calories. But I digress.)

She clearly desisted from *burning her entire clan alive, including small children* purely because 1) it would be bad for Kudzu's lungs and 2) she had a better and more profitable idea. Not because it would have been, you know, monstrously wrong. (As Elan's horrified expression attests.)

That's so clearly evil that I have a hard time believing it's even a discussion. (Not counting the obvious troll, of course.)

In other news, "trapped by honor and tradition and possibly an undiagnosed brain injury" was fall-down funny even by the standards of this strip!

The fact that you don't think D&D's Neutral position is anything other than 'Evil Lite' probably explains why you don't think she can be anything but evil. I'd certainly be more likely to put her in the Evil category than the Good one. But as I think Neutrality is an understandable? reasonable? possible? (not sure how best to phrase that) alignment for D&D, I think her actions were mostly Neutral, with some Good or Evil sprinkled in, and lots of Chaotic.

ETA-I think a lot of this disagreement about the relative morality of stuff in this comic struggles with the fact that most of us hopefully don't experience anywhere near as difficult stuff as characters in OOTS (some we definitely don't, like seeing people we cared about become undead, or even be unmade) so are shocked by their actions. With Hilgya, a forced marriage is a terrible thing, and wanting revenge is understandable. A completely good person might be able to forgive it, and a mostly good person might make sure their revenge only hurt those actually responsible for it, but I can totally see a Neutral person simply not making great effort to avoid collateral damage.

[Fyraltari]

Ok, you didn't, but I have to back Extinguisher here and say your example wasn't entirely the most fortunate one, given the topic you seemed to be arguing before, with somebody else. You'd rather not argue with those people, bud

That's fair.







Get a look at my signatureand know that I study engineering, bud.

[Lord Joeltion]

"You reap what you saw" and "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree" (or in OotS terms, "Tree is Within 10-ft. Radius of Apple")

*palmface* I knew the reaper one! Dunno why it never came up to me. Guess my repertoire is getting rusty. I always thought the apple one was more about describing "like father like son" situations, more than speaking about justified/expected retribution? You can correct me if I'm wrong, it's just that I would have never used that phrase to describe what Hilgya did to her clan. Maybe to describe her questionable morals (altho I admit this apple isn't quite as rotten as the tree, apparently) but not her scam.

Chickens coming home to roost. Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.

Farming/husbandry metaphors seem to be a popular way of expressing this idea.

Lol, the chicken one is funny. Specially the longer version

Thank you both!

[Jasder]

*palmface* I knew the reaper one! Dunno why it never came up to me. Guess my repertoire is getting rusty. I always thought the apple one was more about describing "like father like son" situations, more than speaking about justified/expected retribution? You can correct me if I'm wrong, it's just that I would have never used that phrase to describe what Hilgya did to her clan. Maybe to describe her questionable morals (altho I admit this apple isn't quite as rotten as the tree, apparently) but not her scam.



Lol, the chicken one is funny. Specially the longer version

Thank you both!

Nah, you're right that the apple one is more commonly used for 'like father like son' examples. I suppose it could be used for stuff like this, but it's certainly unusual.

ETA-What goes around comes around also works for 'sow the wind, reap the whirlwind', although it's not as fun a way to put it.

[The_Weirdo]

I know I shouldn't expect otherwise from you, but that's just mean, Helga. I still like her, but I don't really see how anyone could argue she isn't a bad person. At the very least, she's kind of a harmful person to be associated with.

In lighter news, something tells me Ivan and Elan would make good friends. They could be Undiagnosed Brain Injury Buddies!

Right now, within the past few strips, she's only dangerous to vampire spawns and to people that try to marry her off by force...

[The Pilgrim]

Ivan HAPPENED not to rape her, because he HAPPENED to be nice.

In forced marriages, what do you think USUALLY happens, though?

Are you discussing about events in this comic, or about issues in the real world? I could write a long essay about what happened in arranged political marriages in historical aristocratic societies (which were par for the course for the aristocracy, and usually ended in profit for all parties involved and a lot of consented adultery). But the fact remains: Hylgia Firehelm is not the victim of a rape in this comic.

Do you really think the newest hobos in the Dwarven Lands cared too much about the (likely, as far as they knew) rape of the woman on whose back they had a crossbow trained?

Maybe they did, and that's why they married her to an extremely gentle idiot. In any case, Hylgia never blamed her family for setting her up for rape. She blames her family and dwarven society for not allowing her to do as she likes.

People are saying she is NOW Chaotic Neutral because, so far, she has acted very Chaotic Neutral and not done one Evil thing ever since she appeared in the comic again.

You mean, besides she just stating in the last panel that she didn't butcher her whole family in a fire because the alternative was more lucrative and slightly less risky for the foetus on her belly?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

*palmface* I knew the reaper one! Dunno why it never came up to me. Guess my repertoire is getting rusty. I always thought the apple one was more about describing "like father like son" situations, more than speaking about justified/expected retribution? You can correct me if I'm wrong, it's just that I would have never used that phrase to describe what Hilgya did to her clan. Maybe to describe her questionable morals (altho I admit this apple isn't quite as rotten as the tree, apparently) but not her scam.

No, you are correct that it suggests that, but in this case, I see it somewhat appropriate in that the clan forced her into a crappy situation, and she paid them back by forcing them into a crappy situation, because that's what she learnt about how her clan deals with their objectives.

GW

[The_Weirdo]

Are you discussing about events in this comic, or about issues in the real world? I could write a long essay about what happened in arranged political marriages in historical aristocratic societies, but the fact remains: Hylgia Firehelm is not the victim of a rape in this comic.



Maybe they did, and that's why they married her to an extremely gentle idiot. In any case, Hylgia never blames her family for setting her up to rape, she blames her family and dwarven society for not allowing her to do as she likes.



You mean, besides she just stating in the last panel that she didn't butcher her whole family in a fire because the alternative was more lucrative and slightly less risky for the foetus on her belly?

1- Both. You don't marry someone off at crossbow point if you really care about their wellbeing.
2- Your claim there is doubtful in the extreme. Besides, by that logic, her revenge should be at the entire society.
3- Evil is about what you ACTUALLY do, you know. Besides, they gave up the right to call themselves her "family" (and her "part of the family") the moment they oppressed her that way.

[gooddragon1]

Chaotic good in my opinion would then be ensuring that they have enough money after getting the result of divorce to rebuild.

[The Extinguisher]

Are you discussing about events in this comic, or about issues in the real world? I could write a long essay about what happened in arranged political marriages in historical aristocratic societies (which were par for the course for the aristocracy, and usually ended in profit for all parties involved and a lot of consented adultery). But the fact remains: Hylgia Firehelm is not the victim of a rape in this comic.

yeah, because The Giant isnt the kind of author that thinks casual rape makes a good story, but regardless of whether or not sex actually occurred it is absolutely appalling to not recognize that being forced into marriage at crossbow point leads to rape.

If you want to ignore that because no sex happened, you need to ignore her wanting to set the clan on fire cause no fire actually happened

[zimmerwald1915]

3- Evil is about what you ACTUALLY do, you know.

Good people might disagree, at least as it applies to themselves. "Guilt is one of the primary weapons in God's arsenal," after all.

[bravelove]

I think a big problem of this debate is no one seems to get chaotic evil, her actions were at worst, LAWFUL evil chaotic evil is defined as "A chaotic evil character tends to have no respect for rules, other people's lives, or anything but their own desires, which are typically selfish and cruel. They set a high value on personal freedom, but do not have much regard for the lives or freedom of other people." so if she was chaotic evil she wouldn't have cared that burning it down would have hurt her child, she would have kept trying to kill Ivan, she showed mercy, chaotic evil characters don't show mercy, chaotic evil doesn't do a legal proceeding like divorce.

Also as a Dungeon Master myself I would have called the actions neutral but that's more personal opinion.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Chaotic good in my opinion would then be ensuring that they have enough money after getting the result of divorce to rebuild.

Chaotic Good could be "I don't need some legal document saying I'm free to be free, and I don't need revenge to be happy". If an LG needed to pretend to be legal in this society, they could also talk to Ivan, reach an agreement, then go on and live their lives separate. And there are plenty of other alternatives I could think of. Bottom line, being Good does involve a certain degree of being the better person, even when confronting those that have wronged you, if that means avoiding harming innocents that would be caught in the crossfire.

That Hilgya relishes the chance to put the entire clan in the poorhouse, even children that weren't even alive when a few clan leaders wronged her, speaks (to me anyway) louder than anything else that she is Evil, and willing to crush the innocent if that means achieving her objectives. But then, so did her intention of murdering a one-night stand for daring to not stay with her.

ETA:

so if she was chaotic evil she wouldn't have cared that burning it down would have hurt her child

Wrong. Evil people, even chaotic evil people, can have friends and loved ones. This idea that a chaotic evil mother would not care about her child is, simply, wrong.

GW

[Fyraltari]

I think a big problem of this debate is no one seems to get chaotic evil, her actions were at worst, LAWFUL evil chaotic evil is defined as "A chaotic evil character tends to have no respect for rules, other people's lives, or anything but their own desires, which are typically selfish and cruel. They set a high value on personal freedom, but do not have much regard for the lives or freedom of other people." so if she was chaotic evil she wouldn't have cared that burning it down would have hurt her child, she would have kept trying to kill Ivan, she showed mercy, chaotic evil characters don't show mercy, chaotic evil doesn't do a legal proceeding like divorce.

Also as a Dungeon Master myself I would have called the actions neutral but that's more personal opinion.

So because she cares for one person other than herself she can't be evil? I disagree.

In fact I think the giant disagrees (or is Sabine not chaotic evil?).

[Kish]

I think a big problem of this debate is no one seems to get chaotic evil, her actions were at worst, LAWFUL evil

Chaotic is not somehow more evil than Lawful.

[The Pilgrim]

1- Both. You don't marry someone off at crossbow point if you really care about their wellbeing.
2- Your claim there is doubtful in the extreme. Besides, by that logic, her revenge should be at the entire society.
3- Evil is about what you ACTUALLY do, you know. Besides, they gave up the right to call themselves her "family" (and her "part of the family") the moment they oppressed her that way.

"You don't marry someone off at crossbow point if you really care about their wellbeing" would be a very debatable issue in the context of an aristocratic family in a medieval setting. Still, debating it is beyond the point. Fact is, she was not forced into rape.

Hylgia has done nothing in this comic but repeat again and again how much she depises her clan and dwarven traditions for getting in the way of she doing what she fancies, and how much she likes Loki for providing her a way to blend the rules and do as she likes. That doesn't implies that she is morally flawed or evil in any way. The fact that she worshipps an Evil god, attempts to murder her husband (who, again, never raped her and is obvious to the fact that she depises their marriage), associates with a band of evil characters, wants to murder someone just because he turned her away after having consensual sex with her, and expresses no moral concern on the notion of burning alive a whole clan, does.

[gooddragon1]

Chaotic Good could be "I don't need some legal document saying I'm free to be free, and I don't need revenge to be happy". If an LG needed to pretend to be legal in this society, they could also talk to Ivan, reach an agreement, then go on and live their lives separate. And there are plenty of other alternatives I could think of. Bottom line, being Good does involve a certain degree of being the better person, even when confronting those that have wronged you, if that means avoiding harming innocents that would be caught in the crossfire.

That Hilgya relishes the chance to put the entire clan in the poorhouse, even children that weren't even alive when a few clan leaders wronged her, speaks (to me anyway) louder than anything else that she is Evil, and willing to crush the innocent if that means achieving her objectives. But then, so did her intention of murdering a one-night stand for daring to not stay with her.

ETA:
Wrong. Evil people, even chaotic evil people, can have friends and loved ones. This idea that a chaotic evil mother would not care about her child is, simply, wrong.

GW

I do like that better, but I can somewhat understand the desire to get even. It's just that to remain good she should have at least tried to put things in place to ensure their well being after teaching them a lesson. I don't know. Somewhat conflicted now. Like the non-vengeance approach better.