Results 481 to 510 of 1111
-
2023-12-05, 05:50 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2015
- Gender
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
Also it's a bit weird to brush aside something like "we can see the MitD's unchanging eyes when he's asleep" while simultaneously saying something like "one random dude who looks like a wizard has never seen anything like a sentient pile of poo? sounds far-fetched". Seems to me like the latter would be infinitely easier to explain away than the former
ungelic is us
-
2023-12-05, 07:19 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2015
-
2023-12-05, 08:37 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2015
- Gender
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
So? On the face of it, "that particular guy who looks like a wizard has never seen an ooze-like creature that looked like the MitD" is still a simpler explanation a priori than "the MitD's eyes as depicted in the comic bear no relation to his actual eyes, which may or many not exist". Maybe the wizard guy knows a lot of stuff and can pass lots of Knowledge checks, but he just knows nothing about oozes. Maybe he does know but he's not an adventurer and has never seen an ooze before. Maybe he's seen tons of oozes, but none that looked quite like the MitD. Maybe he's not a wizard in the first place ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
ungelic is us
-
2023-12-05, 10:08 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2006
- Location
- Portland, OR
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
Do you think the Snarl has eyes? Because it sure is drawn with them. And a mouth, too. And claws. Despite the fact that the snarl has no anatomy or even physical form when it showed for for realisies instead of in a flashback. It's just a snag in the threads of reality that grew ever more complex, intelligent, and hateful.
So why was it given eyes and a mouth? Artistic license: so a creature that isn't a creature can emote.If you can read this you are too close.
-
2023-12-05, 10:28 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2013
- Location
- Bristol, UK
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
Yeah, if it eliminates every option you have to
consider the possibility of cheatinggive up that round and demand an answer that does fit the answers you got. Mind you, in a game of twenty questions, a question that only eliminates one possible answer is generally a poor question.The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.
-
2023-12-05, 10:37 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2013
- Gender
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
-
2023-12-05, 11:27 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2020
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
Now, before we'd skip to business, listen here for a moment. Full disclosure: I'll be blunt.
–If I happen to misunderstand something you say, feel free to correct an explain again. I don't mind that. Doesn't mean I'll agree. But I don't mind it. If repeated explanations fail, that might be on me. Whatever. You can bask in the warm sun of being very clever. I like warm suns. I'm fine with that.
–Alternatively, if you think I'm intentionally and maliciously misrepresent your point to make it appear weaker because I can't handle your cleverness or out of spite or because I'm too invested in winning a pointless debate or whatever you think the reason is, because that is what strawmaning means, just ****ing report the ****ing post. Simple as that.
Either way, don't fling second-hand accusations at me. Because that I do mind. Thank you well in advance.
First, the Protean has a default size unless it's actively changing into a creature of a different size. That's in its statblock.
Second, the partial in "partial shapeshifting" is important here. He can easily maintain a face while the rest of his body still boils and such.
Yes, I've been saying that there are both explanations that involve MitD holding his face or eyes in position, and explanations that do not involve that but involve something in the artistic style and/or the rules of dramatic convention OOTS runs on.
And I've said I don't know which one explanation is correct, but the fact that I can find enough I consider reasonable or plausible satisfies the doubts I've had there.
The Air Gnome Solution of the Oracle's prophecy for Belkar's death satisfies possible and arguably plausible, but it is too contrived to be likely as far as I'm concerned.
Ignoring defining features "so as not to kill the guessing game" (mute young portly female Sean Connery; advertising Deadpool 2 as a Brad Pitt movie where his not featuring in promotional material is a VERY IMPORTANT clue to the role he plays…) is possible, but hardly satisfying, not for me anyway. You do you of course, but for me it sounds both contrived and trolling.
(Also, I'll throw my support for your points about the "closed eyes as shorthand for sleep" position. It's clear that Rich has to use certain artistic conventions in order to accurately convey his characters' emotions in a stick figure comic.)
I might just be repeating or summarizing my essay here, but I felt it might help to present the sum total of my perspective on MitD's species, rather than arguing bits and pieces of it.
[*]The white/black Slaad's reproduction cycle doesn't fit MitD's comments on his dad,
and the age he would have to be and stages of evolution he would have to go through to be a white/black Slaad doesn't fit with him being a juvenile.
Nonhumans maturing differently is an established thing in the Stickverse. Possible again.
The SBGH should not be surprised a Slaad can talk in Common.
As already portrayed in comic, a Slaad is also not the kind of creature that would cause a learned wizard to say "I've never seen anything like it!"
On top of that, a Slaad has already been portrayed in the comic, and I don't think Rich would do that if the Slaad was his planned reveal. (This is still a story first, and I don't think Rich would undercut a big moment in the story, a big reveal he's been planning for decades, just for a joke about a pregnant deva.)
2. Slaadi are not even the only batrachiate Outsiders in the game. We have Neraphim, Hezrou Demons, Farastu Demodands… And then we have Gripplis, Sivs, DraMag!Vodyanoi and Anthropomorphic Toads on the race front, Ice Toads (warty, white übertoads, but quadrupedal)…
A White Slaad resembles many of these, but is very obviously not any pof the commonly encountered Slaadi, let alone the other creatures, and rare enough that even a learned caster could fail the check to recognize it properly, both from a mechanical and a logical standpoint. Unless you take "I haven't seen anything like" to mean they literally didn't (I would say that upon encountering a massive, white toad with teeth, even though I have seen toads before), it is more than plausible, and if you do… Well, that's projecting.
3. Also, unlike how
[t]he Protean normally wouldn't appear as two eyes in the dark
4. And unlike the Protean that
would have to partially shapeshift into the right creature with the right power to teleport Vaarsuvius and O-Chul away
If it is true that
[o]nly one of those monsters has drawbacks that are possible to explain with the rules, mechanics, and portrayal as established
Clean and simple.
It's also the strongest creature on the FBS, which I think makes it the best fit for the Tower Scene.
I also think its unique qualities make it the best fit for the Circus scene-- by a substantial margin, I might add.
And, finally, the story reasons and thematic resonance for it really work for me: MITD is a character expected to be a scary monster, who's been content to follow others around and do what they want, and who now has to find the inner strength to follow his own heart and mind and change, to be who he wants to be instead of what other people expect of him.
That character then being revealed to be a species of constant change, with more power to change than anything else we've seen in this world, makes a lot of sense to me.
And so far I have not come up with or been presented with a good story reason for any of the other candidates.
-
2023-12-05, 12:17 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2019
- Gender
-
2023-12-05, 12:40 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2006
- Location
- Portland, OR
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
That was your takeaway?
Do you believe the Snarl, a creature with no anatomy because it's not even a creature, has literal eyes? A literal maw?
How about this, instead. In the Crayons of Time panels, everywhere the Snarl is shown breaking through to the material world, it is drawn with claws. In the desert, where we see the Snarl "live" instead of a flashback, it isn't. We are looking at artistic license, to depict something that can't easily be literally shown, using a "language" that is familiar to the reader.Last edited by Sky_Schemer; 2023-12-05 at 12:45 PM.
If you can read this you are too close.
-
2023-12-05, 12:45 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2013
- Gender
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
-
2023-12-05, 12:46 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2020
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
That's what one panel LDW appears on is about. Otherwise, LWD emotes entirely too much for a Nightcrawler during their presence in the story, and quite, well, likeably.
That supports why it's important for MitD to have eyes.
The issue with crayon scenes is that they are canonically not showing things exactly as they happened and were. The gods back then were probably not even stick figures to start with. So, until such time as the Snarl is shown to be both not a creature and actually having eyes in the main comic, the comparison with MitD and his eyes rests on a foundation that I'd describe as a tad shaky.Last edited by Metastachydium; 2023-12-05 at 12:51 PM.
-
2023-12-05, 12:57 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2006
- Location
- Portland, OR
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
And that is completely and totally irrelevant. Just because it's a story within a story, it's still a comic where the artist and author are trying to depict things that are happening or have happened. The "creature" being depicted is the Snarl, which has even less of a physical form than a protean, and Rich somehow has to show it being angry. He does that using artistic license: by drawing eyes, claws, and a maw.
Does the MitD have eyes? I don't know. But there is a precedent in the comic for using artistic license to add physical features e.g. eyes to a being/entity/creature/whatever that doesn't have them.Last edited by Sky_Schemer; 2023-12-05 at 01:00 PM.
If you can read this you are too close.
-
2023-12-05, 01:01 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2013
- Gender
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
-
2023-12-05, 01:11 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2006
- Location
- Portland, OR
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
There will never be such evidence one way or another unless Rich says something, since the Snarl is his creation.
The best we can do is deduce. Taking the comic at its own word, it is literally a tangle in the threads of reality. Which is more likely? That a tangle in the threads of reality has eyes, a mouth, and claws, or there is artistic license at work?If you can read this you are too close.
-
2023-12-05, 01:18 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2013
- Location
- Germany
- Gender
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
Neither is more likely than the other, because as you say: those are the threads of creation and everything is made from them. So why not eyes? Especially as the Snarl is described as "a being born of chaos", so technically anything is possible.
-
2023-12-05, 01:22 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2006
- Location
- Portland, OR
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
Except, again taking the comic at its word, it had no understanding of the pattern of the threads around it.
So which is more likely? That a creature born of chaos with no understanding of the patterns of the threads that formed reality is able to form eyes, claws, and a mouth even though it doesn't understand any of these things, or there is artistic license at work?Last edited by Sky_Schemer; 2023-12-05 at 01:27 PM.
If you can read this you are too close.
-
2023-12-05, 01:27 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2007
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
Exactly! Sure, as Ruck says, “there’s an answer”, but if every suggestion so far is a bad fit, the most logical conclusion is “we probably haven’t found it yet”, not “here’s the least bad fit, we’re confident that’s actually the one”.
As a wise old man once said:
“Many Creatures have been proposed, and will be proposed in this thread of sin and woe. No one pretends that the Protean is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that the Protean is the worst fitting Creature except for all those other Creatures that have been proposed from time to time.…”Offer good while supplies last. Two to a customer. Each item sold separately. Batteries not included. Mileage may vary. All sales are final. Allow six weeks for delivery. Some items not available. Some assembly required. Some restrictions may apply. All entries become our property. Employees not eligible. Entry fees not refundable. Local restrictions apply. Void where prohibited. Except in Indiana.
-
2023-12-05, 01:29 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2013
- Gender
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
Last edited by Keltest; 2023-12-05 at 01:33 PM.
-
2023-12-05, 01:33 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2006
- Location
- Portland, OR
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
If you can read this you are too close.
-
2023-12-05, 01:36 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2013
- Location
- Germany
- Gender
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
-
2023-12-05, 01:37 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2006
- Location
- Portland, OR
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
{scrubbed} I don't even know where to start.
But also, the answer is that the version we actually see is more likely.
You're giving non-answers to avoid answering. Do you believe the Snarl have eyes? Or do you believe the eyes are artistic license?Last edited by Peelee; 2023-12-05 at 03:10 PM.
If you can read this you are too close.
-
2023-12-05, 01:42 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2009
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
TinyMushroom drew my avatarSpoiler: A shaggy dog storyAn evil sorcerer in command of a dark cult is trying to unleash a god-killing abomination more real than the gods themselves. At his side, yellow eyes revealed a Haunter of the Dark. The evil sorcerer ordered it to kill.
-
2023-12-05, 01:42 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2013
- Gender
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
Last edited by Peelee; 2023-12-05 at 03:11 PM.
“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
-
2023-12-05, 01:44 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2006
- Location
- Portland, OR
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
So. Why isn't it randomly forming a bicycle? Or a tail?
At this point you are arguing just to argue.
It is a reasonable conclusion that artistic license is used in the comic. Artistic license is defined as "deviation from fact or form for artistic purposes". It is reasonable to look at the depiction of the Snarl and conclude that it doesn't literally have eyes. And if you do that, you can look at the MitD, of which even less is shown than the Snarl--literally nothing at all is shown about it, except for eyes--and conclude that, if it doesn't have actual eyes, artistic license is a reasonable explanation for how it's depicted.
I don't find "the MitD is drawn with eyes so it must have eyes" to be a compelling argument, any more than I find "the Snarl is drawn with eyes so it must have eyes" to be a compelling argument.If you can read this you are too close.
-
2023-12-05, 01:46 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2006
- Location
- Portland, OR
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
Last edited by Sky_Schemer; 2023-12-05 at 01:46 PM.
If you can read this you are too close.
-
2023-12-05, 01:47 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2006
- Location
- Portland, OR
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
OK. Where are the claws in page 945?
Edit to fix page numberLast edited by Sky_Schemer; 2023-12-05 at 01:58 PM.
If you can read this you are too close.
-
2023-12-05, 01:47 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2013
- Gender
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
-
2023-12-05, 01:57 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2006
- Location
- Portland, OR
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
Last edited by Sky_Schemer; 2023-12-05 at 02:00 PM.
If you can read this you are too close.
-
2023-12-05, 02:02 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2009
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
Claws were also absent from Redcloak's crayon story in SOD (such as the panels where it hypothetically kills Xykon & Redcloak or invades Thor's domain) so I've always figured they're meant to be how Shojo interprets its method of destruction or a redesign (IMO a good call on Rich's part; it better conveys that the Snarl is doing something incomprehensible to its victims rather than just being an extremely powerful beast).
-
2023-12-05, 02:08 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2015
- Gender
Re: MitD XIX: The Potted Plant Is Starting To Look Reasonable
One possible answer is, "because #945 is not crayons (whose relationship with reality is canonically looser)", and neither is the MitD.
Regardless, that's kinda irrelevant. My point was not that the explanation provided for the Protean-MitD's eyes is impossible (in fact, I still think the Protean is the most likely D&D candidate). My point was that, as an explanation, it's more complicated and far-fetched than a number of possible explanations for a particular flaw of the Carbosilicate Amorph.ungelic is us