Goblins XIX: New Year, New Updates

[Silly Name]

I can't choose what I would find worse: Complains just disappearing into Hell and the other goblins just accepting it... Or the rest of the goblins jumping in the portal to follow Complains, so that we can have yet another plot diversion.

Seriously, what are they even doing anymore? What are their goals for what happens afterwards?

[Traab]

I can't choose what I would find worse: Complains just disappearing into Hell and the other goblins just accepting it... Or the rest of the goblins jumping in the portal to follow Complains, so that we can have yet another plot diversion.

Seriously, what are they even doing anymore? What are their goals for what happens afterwards?

Im guessing the goal is to get the axe as deep into the abyss or whatever, as they possibly can. The deeper it is, the less likely the demon inside can get back to the material plane when it escapes. Im pretty sure they all know, even if they havent said it, that its a suicide mission. Its not like there really is an end point where they can dust off their hands, say, good enough, and try walking back out of hell. So keep going till they get dragged down and hope its enough. Eternal torment sure, but at least they saved the world.

[Silly Name]

Im guessing the goal is to get the axe as deep into the abyss or whatever, as they possibly can. The deeper it is, the less likely the demon inside can get back to the material plane when it escapes. Im pretty sure they all know, even if they havent said it, that its a suicide mission. Its not like there really is an end point where they can dust off their hands, say, good enough, and try walking back out of hell. So keep going till they get dragged down and hope its enough. Eternal torment sure, but at least they saved the world.

I get that. It's just that, from a narrative standpoint, it would be yet another derailment.

Remember, this whole story started as "the goblins become adventurers to become stronger and better defend their village from player character adventurers". Then Fumbles got into Brassmoon, the other goblins had to rescue him, there was the whole ordeal with Goblin Slayer and freeing the other monsters, and then the goblins got "out of focus" in favor of Minmax, Forgath and Kin, who went through the Maze of Many. Minmax and Kin fell in love, but Minmax touched Kin's leash and broke her trust and so she didn't follow Minmax and Forgath to confront the goblins.

And then Kore popped up, killed Chief and almost killed Forgath, the Axe of Prissan broke and started the apocalypse, Forgath got found by the Kliks and turned into a weird stone thing. Minmax got separated from the goblins and reunited with Kin. Forgath had his little adventure to kill another evil Klik along with the Cursed Duo, and last we saw them, they met up with Kin and Minmax.

And in the meanwhile we had Dies Horribly's entire subplot, completely divorced from the rest of the narrative, and which has apparently been completely abandoned.

If the story for the main group of Goblins ends with "and then they all jumped into hell to bury the Prissan as deep as they could", it'd be a terrible ending.

[Kish]

The premise of the world's first goblin adventuring party seems to go against what Elli wants to write, in which the protagonists are almost entirely reactive.

And now I'm trying to figure out if I'm right to think that she presents being proactive rather than reactive entirely in negative terms. Kore thinks he wants to commit genocide and appears to actually want to commit omnicide. Dellyn wanted the helpless adoration of every human in Brassmoon and to brutalize every nonhuman in existence. Duv wanted to force all goblins into a genocidal dictatorship. Minmax was also genocidal until Kin ran into him and has been purely reactive since then. The goblins...started out with "we set up in one place and wait to be killed," almost literally. As a reaction to their warcamp being destroyed they showed a very brief spurt of being positively proactive which led to the goblin who had provided the impetus for it nearly killing a child and getting MONSTER carved into his forehead, and have been reacting to things that come flying at them ever since then.

[Keltest]

The premise of the world's first goblin adventuring party seems to go against what Elli wants to write, in which the protagonists are almost entirely reactive.

And now I'm trying to figure out if I'm right to think that she presents being proactive rather than reactive entirely in negative terms. Kore thinks he wants to commit genocide and appears to actually want to commit omnicide. Dellyn wanted the helpless adoration of every human in Brassmoon and to brutalize every nonhuman in existence. Duv wanted to force all goblins into a genocidal dictatorship. Minmax was also genocidal until Kin ran into him and has been purely reactive since then. The goblins...started out with "we set up in one place and wait to be killed," almost literally. As a reaction to their warcamp being destroyed they showed a very brief spurt of being positively proactive which led to the goblin who had provided the impetus for it nearly killing a child and getting MONSTER carved into his forehead, and have been reacting to things that come flying at them ever since then.

Proactive adventurers have a pretty significant overlap with murderhobos. Theyre people who are crazy or dysfunctional enough they cant make a living in a more normal, less life threatening way. They dont necessarily HAVE to be bad guys, but its an easy line to cross.

[Pax1138]

I think there is a difference between "reactive: we're sitting in our warcamp waiting to be attacked" and "reactive: we're out in the world encountering difficult situations and having to decide how to deal with them." Especially since there is definitely a style of dungeon mastering that's just throwing plots at your players and seeing what happens. In fact, unless you're running a true sandbox with a quest hook in every direction that your players must decide between, having your quest giver offering a single quest for a given game session isn't too much further down the spectrum from purely reactionary.

As for what the Goblins will do next... well that's anybody's guess at this point of course. Presumably they continue with the plan of returning to the main camp, only now with a lot more experience dealing with adventurers and crazy problems. I doubt things will be that easy, of course.

[Neoriceisgood]

Yeah the proactive/reactive thing I feel lukewarm on. I get the criticism but it's definitely not in my top 10 issues with Goblins, although I wish it was.

I do agree that right now it feels like we keep getting introduced to new plot ...segways that kinda get thrown at us almost out of nowhere. Often things that feel like they would be big world-altering events .. but it happens so often it doesn't really shock me or catch my interest.

[Yul]

I've been reading Goblins since Brassmoon City. I am unsure how I feel about the story structure.

On one hand, I kinda like the idea where the "main" plot is just to return to the goblin village, a supposedly simple task. But on the way, the goblins run into several problems and quests, each more challenging. In the end, the goblins finally reach their village, but after the trip, they are now high-level adventurers and with them, the village is safe forever. After all, it's not about the destination; it's about the journey.

On the other hand, the story does feel kind of aimless, especially with the "recent" developments about the axe and hell. I think the story worked when they ran into the orc-zombie-plant plot, then the Brassmoon City plot. Those were cool stories IMO. Just a series of not necessarily connected events and settings ever more challenging for the goblins to navigate through.

But now the goblins are in a dungeon (a very boring one at that...) and before they can get out, they are deep into the giant demon/hell thing... Also, the stakes just flew out of the window because the quests went from "our friends are kidnapped by plant-zombies" to "we have to rescue our friend from Brassmoon City" to "the whole planet is turning into hell forever and we have to go into the deepest layer of hell to fix it". One of those does not fit the usual challenge-progression...

So, yeah. Not sure how I feel...

[Murk]

To me it's more an issue of unclear theme than plot, now that I think about it.

Early Goblins had a very clear theme. It was all about racism and turning the "humans good goblins bad" on its head, and showing that (what would normally be) side characters also have complex feelings and desires and all that.
So the Goblins went on to become heroes (or at least protagonists) while Forgath and Minmax had to learn not all humans good and not all monsters bad - and there were substories about the GAP saving innocent monsters from a monster-hunter, Dies resisting a goblin tribe that does fit the stereotypical evil image, fleeing a racist paladin, monster-slayer Minmax falling in love with a monster, and Kin overcoming her human-caused traumas in record speed.

The theme was not particularly original, but it was very clear.
But I'm not so sure if that's still the theme. It seems to have been largely dropped from the Maze of Many onwards. Even the sub-title (wasn't it "Life through their eyes"?) has disappeared!

If I was forced to do an analysis of the themes of Goblins for the past few years... I don't know. Something about becoming who you want to be versus accepting who you are?
With Dies and Fox' opposing views on fate, Complains and Big Ears turning into demon/angel, the gargoyle missing his old body, bunny girl's weird speech about dying peacefully, Forgath becoming a horrifying eldritch abomination. There are a lot of identity crises going around.

But that's reaching. The comic seems thematically a lot less clear than it used to be.

[Silly Name]

If I was forced to do an analysis of the themes of Goblins for the past few years... I don't know. Something about becoming who you want to be versus accepting who you are?
With Dies and Fox' opposing views on fate, Complains and Big Ears turning into demon/angel, the gargoyle missing his old body, bunny girl's weird speech about dying peacefully, Forgath becoming a horrifying eldritch abomination. There are a lot of identity crises going around.

But that's reaching. The comic seems thematically a lot less clear than it used to be.

Considering the author is trans, reading matters of identity and self-determination, especially in opposition to what others/society/fate says "you ought to be" in the story isn't that big of a reach. But that does require we bring in the author's personal history into the reading. In particular, seeing goblins go against the "fate" implicit in many of their names, especially Vorpal going as far as telling the others he no longer wants to be called Fumbles (something even Saves-A-Fox hadn't gone as far as doing), does help sell this reading of self-imposed identity vs outside-imposed identity.

Honestly, I think that Big Ears cutting his ears off to use the golem-controlling helmet and fighting off Kore could have also worked into this, but that opportunity wasn't really seized, and he got his ears back pretty quick (within the story, at least).

I do however agree that the comic has lost focus, both narratively and thematically. Kore still exists as the representation of extreme racism and prejudice, and even the Well of Darkness arc still dealt with those themes. But Forgath's side-quest seems really divorced from that theme, and the whole Axe of Prissan arc is removed from any interpretation of the comic's messages.

[Daywalker1983]

Agreed, we've still not seen the impact of Complains becoming Chief, and the GAP has to meet up with Dyes Horribly and cause Duv problems at some point.

Concerning that, they need a New chief now anyway.

[Anonymouswizard]

Concerning that, they need a New chief now anyway.

You're assuming Fumbles isn't going to use his Fortune Teller powers to call Complains back.

Like at the worst it'll be Forgath asking Herbert.

[Kish]

Called back or not, he's not dead so I don't know why they'd be replacing him.

[Morgaln]

From what I understand, they can't replace him at all until he's dead. That's how Dies Horribly found out Chief is dead; the viper clan tried to make him chief and it would have worked if he had accepted it. See this page and the following. Let's just not talk about how dumb a plan it is to perform chiefing ceremonies on random goblins on the off chance that their chief might have died recently enough that they didn't get replaced yet.

[Kish]

There's no aspect of Duv's plan that wasn't self-defeating. She appears to have been convinced that rule over all goblins and the world was hers by right and that, accordingly, anything she did in pursuit of that goal was both justified and correct. She also appears to have been written that way deliberately (she says as much to Saves-A-Fox, and at the end, Biscuit points out to her that everything falling apart stems directly from her own actions). It's a pretty good way to write a villain (by contrast to Psion Minmax, who was apparently supposed to be Neutral because his efforts to eradicate existence didn't include lecturing the people he was using brutal psionics on on why they should want to be dead, and Kore, who has no indicated reason to have ever been a paladin).

[Daywalker1983]

Called back or not, he's not dead so I don't know why they'd be replacing him.

While I Was not Exactly serious, it's a bit strange to have your chief, who is rather New anyway and turning into a demon, Set sail into the nine hells. He is alone, He is Not at All certain to come back and He has made no arrangement for a substitue or the case of his death.

[Devlerbat]

I don't think arranging for a replacement cheif is up to the chief anyways and is in fact the duty of the Teller.

[Traab]

New comic is up and its an interesting one!

Spoiler

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So first off, ears and his gargoyle lover are going on the trip to hell, this is going to be fine im sure. Totally not a wonderful opening for eventual torture porn. But more importantly, the axe seems to have dragged most of the corruption back to hell with it, meaning names has accomplished his mission and saved the world! Though to be fair its probably only temporary if he cant get deeper into the pits before the axe fully shatters. Interesting thing I didnt notice last comic, probably because it wasnt colored yet, the portal is half demonic fire, half names ime color. Interesting touch, wonder if it means anything beyond the obvious.

[Neoriceisgood]

Spoiler: latest page

Show

Not entirely sure how I'm feeling about another party split, considering how slowly Goblins updates and how we're already following like ... 3 different narratives. Though I guess at least 2 groups recently combined back into one *at least*.

As someone who's into story writing/comics myself I do find the whole reactive writing thing ... interesting. I've been trying to wram my mind around what bugs me about the writing in Goblins as I do agree there's something that feels a bit odd. Maybe it's lack of certain big changes being foreshadowed? Like "Hey you're a demon that means you can make a portal now, let's go to hell. Oops 2 people get dragged along cause of suction/vacuum" is very ... to me it feels like it came out of nowhere. Like I guess this is meant to be the big payoff to the slow demon transformation, but even that aws something that happened to complains by accident as he grabbed the axe and it transformed him in full because he was randomly being an idiot.

I don't know. I have this personal rule that with webcomics I try to rank arcs as a complete narrative once they're completed rather than page-by-page, because a page is only a small snippet & sometimes when you reread it in full it feels less haphazard. Some day I might reread all of Goblins to see if I feel differently when I read through all of it in a single go. But I'm also kinda wondering how long this current arc will continue as it has endless and endless meandering sideplots within it.

[Beni-Kujaku]

I can't choose what I would find worse: Complains just disappearing into Hell and the other goblins just accepting it... Or the rest of the goblins jumping in the portal to follow Complains, so that we can have yet another plot diversion.

Congratulations, you get both!

[Vinyadan]

So, is it a team with a LG paladin, a NN gargoyle, and a usually CE demon?

[Daywalker1983]

I don't think arranging for a replacement cheif is up to the chief anyways and is in fact the duty of the Teller.

But didnt Chief mark Complains as the new chief and Fumbles only made that a fact through the ceremony?

[Anonymouswizard]

But didnt Chief mark Complains as the new chief and Fumbles only made that a fact through the ceremony?

Nah, the angel made Complains chief.

Which is really weird unless Complains ends up meeting Duv and Dies horribly relatively soon

[Kish]

Dies-Horribly didn't go along with being made chief by Duv so no. The upshot of that was Dies-Horribly learning that Chief was dead, and everyone (except possibly Duv and Grem) learning that Duv was actually a card-carrying villain of the "kill people when they're no longer immediately useful to you" school of thought.