OOTS #935 - The Discussion Thread

[Silverionmox]

Well, this is definitely not true.

There have been no comments along the lines of "familicide shouldn't have been used", or "shouldn't be used anymore".

Someone saying they wish something wasn't sexist isn't being sexist or hypocritical.

Taking offense on using it on a female character and not taking offense when it's used on a male one, that's sexism. The hypocrisy, or inconsistency, is when people say that spiked tentacles are too horrible to put in the comic, but people being eviscerated alive or crucified and burnt while dying: hey, no problem.

[Bovine Colonel]

It might just be me, but does anyone else think that Laurin's line to V in panel 2 is missing a verb?

"You people up there in your lush forest while the rest of us have to fight for scraps..."?

Shouldn't it be more like:

"You people live up there in your lush forest while the rest of us have to fight for scraps..." ?

Not quite. She's addressing V as "people up there in your lush forest."

[Nightsbridge]

It might just be me, but does anyone else think that Laurin's line to V in panel 2 is missing a verb?

"You people up there in your lush forest while the rest of us have to fight for scraps..."?

Shouldn't it be more like:

"You people live up there in your lush forest while the rest of us have to fight for scraps..." ?

Not so. It's not a complete sentence, but one finished by lauren in the third panel. 'You people up there in your lush forest' is a noun phrase, it is the subject of the sentence. 'You people up there in your lush forest while the rest of us fight for scraps' (serves as subject, with a subordinate clause attached to outline their relation with the desert people) 'you can shove your false respect' (serves as verb)

[Silverionmox]

Eyelids would most certainly have been batted if the victim of the tentacled had been human or humanoid, I think, regardless of gender. The joke only lasted as long as it did because the victim was perceived at the time to be not human, and the big ethical question of treating sentient animals as monsters to be destroyed had not yet come up to a significant degree.

He was clearly presented as male, capable of committed relationships, and having a name. That's more than can be said of some humanoids in the strip.

Familicide was never presented as a joke for laughs. So it is not comparable.

&

Trying to group both circumstances together leaves me with cognitive dissonance.

Plenty of other occasions: Belkar's shtick with kobolds, for instance, or Mr. Scruffy's brief encounter with Evisceratus. And that happened on-screen, and didn't have half the cast next to it saying how awful it was.

[Clistenes]

So what do you suppose Tarquin sees when he looks at Sabine? A comely demon-girl, or some kind of abomination?

And I guess Sabine didn't know about Tarquin's ring when she shot down his compliment in 821.

He sees her true succubus appearance:

This creature is stunning, statuesque, and extraordinarily beautiful, with flawless skin and raven hair. Her form, so tempting, also has an otherwordly side. Large bat wings unfurl from her back, and her eyes glow with sinister desire.

[Silverionmox]

No one thought it was regrettable that familicide was used? I suspect there are a few dozen megabytes of, ahem, emotionally animated comments to be found in the archives here that would rebut that version of OoTS forum history.

They did say familicide is a bad deed, obviously. Did anyone claim it shouldn't be used in order to avoid shocking the readership?

[happycrow]

19 pages before the thread begins to go to hell. A new record!

Or, would that be the abyss. Or the IFCC?

[bguy]

It's not good tactics to plan for the tactics you know your opponent will use?.."

Not when your plan plays right into your opponent's strengths. Getting into a battle of attrition with a high level psion just gives them more opportunities to break out their highest level powers. V's strategy was basically equivalent to a normal unarmored human being standing right in front of a 50 caliber machine gun on the assumption that they can survive being shot by it until it runs out of ammo.

"Proper strategy requires you to assume your opponent will fight in an optimized manner" even if you have an explicit reason to believe she won't, treating every opponent as a generic Everyopponent rather than planning for what you actually know about that opponent? Huh. That sounds pretty close to the definition of horrible strategy to me.."

How did V have explicit reason to think that Laurin wouldn't fight in an optimized manner? She knows Laurin is highly intelligent and experienced, so she has to presume competence. And relying on the word of a fiend for planning her battle strategy seems rather... questionable, since the trustworthiness of the chaotic evil demon working for an organization that specializes in deceit and manipulation aside, I don't think Sabine has any ranks in spellcraft and as such probably doesn't really know what Laurin is capable of. (The fact that Sabine was speaking in general terms like "bringing out the big guns" rather than specifics "Laurin likes to use spell X which does y effect" certainly suggests her information wasn't very precise.)

If we're talking about OPTIMIZED strategy, and assuming perfect optimization, then given the level and power gap, V's only "optimal" strategy was "I surrender. Please have mercy. Kill Roy and spare the rest of us," and hope to high heavens that Roy's corpse is left resurrect able..."

I think you are being far too pessimistic about V's chances. What about her just hitting Laurin with a disintegrate? We know V had at least one prepared, it targets Laurin's weakest save, might well one shot her on a failed save, and V seemingly won initative over Laurin, so she could have gotten it off before Laurin had a chance to do anything in strip 925 or again in strip 926, or again in strip 927. And of course that's just one possibility. V had plenty of options between surrendering and letting the Order be a punching bag for a high level psion for 20 rounds. (Heck, simply casting long range evocations at Team Tarquin the whole time they were chasing down the Order in strip 926 would have been useful. V could have gotten in at least three free hits there which might have weakened Miron enough that Roy alone could have dropped him in strip 927, freeing up the rest of the Order to dogpile Laurin.)

[Kish]

How did V have explicit reason to think that Laurin wouldn't fight in an optimized manner? She knows Laurin is highly intelligent and experienced, so she has to presume competence. And relying on the word of a fiend for planning her battle strategy seems rather... questionable,

It appears that you are at this point arguing that the next-to-last panel of the current strip is meaningless detritus Rich drew because he loves drawing extraneous panels (twice) and that Vaarsuvius won by sheer luck. Which, well, have fun with that.

[Lexible]

Oh, I've just noticed that Mechane made a manoeuvre that shouldn't really be possible for something that is basically a dirigible, whether it has those rotors or not. Just look a that line in panel 8, just look a it! I also don't think that it can actually be at that angle, again, rotors or not.

I wonder if you are interpreting the line as a loop (i.e. in 2D). If the line is representing a 3D trajectory what we see could be the trajectory of a tight spiral.

Edit: by "tight spiral" i mean "helix"

[sims796]

It appears that you are at this point arguing that the next-to-last panel of the current strip is meaningless detritus Rich drew because he loves drawing extraneous panels (twice) and that Vaarsuvius won by sheer luck. Which, well, have fun with that.

Agreed. Ignoring the fact that V had little reason to doubt Sabin, seeing how she has a personal vendetta against Tarquin's group, and she is currently the best source of information available (what, should she start using Invisibility because hey, Sabin might've lied about that too?), it's hard to believe that Rich himself would go out of his way to introduce that panel of him getting info from this "unreliable source", which immediately preceded the panels where V won the fight by relying on said source's info, just for @#$% and giggles.

[zimmerwald1915]

Not when your plan plays right into your opponent's strengths. Getting into a battle of attrition with a high level psion just gives them more opportunities to break out their highest level powers. V's strategy was basically equivalent to a normal unarmored human being standing right in front of a 50 caliber machine gun on the assumption that they can survive being shot by it until it runs out of ammo.

You'll notice that Laurin hit V with a power that looks like the stunning power that incapacitated Haley...and V not only survived it, but was able to cast afterword.

I think you are being far too pessimistic about V's chances. What about her just hitting Laurin with a disintegrate? We know V had at least one prepared, it targets Laurin's weakest save, might well one shot her on a failed save, and V seemingly won initative over Laurin, so she could have gotten it off before Laurin had a chance to do anything in strip 925 or again in strip 926, or again in strip 927. And of course that's just one possibility. V had plenty of options between surrendering and letting the Order be a punching bag for a high level psion for 20 rounds. (Heck, simply casting long range evocations at Team Tarquin the whole time they were chasing down the Order in strip 926 would have been useful. V could have gotten in at least three free hits there which might have weakened Miron enough that Roy alone could have dropped him in strip 927, freeing up the rest of the Order to dogpile Laurin.)

She used her "at least one disintegrate" to target Miron, and we don't know if she had another prepared. Even if she did, we all know how productive "why didn't Character X take Action Y" discussions are on these boards. Also, she did cast long-range evocations during the wormhole chase, including a lightning bolt that hurt Miron.

[mucat]

It might just be me, but does anyone else think that Laurin's line to V in panel 2 is missing a verb?

"You people up there in your lush forest while the rest of us have to fight for scraps..."?

Shouldn't it be more like:

"You people live up there in your lush forest while the rest of us have to fight for scraps..." ?

Think of Laurin's sentence as an expanded version of

You jerks!

There is no verb, and all the other words were just an expansion on the noun "jerks people".

[Spoomeister]

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I see her coming back for more than a single strip (unless it's for something hefty like Tarquin killing her in a rage to show *his* character arc). If the Giant follows your path, I can't see her making more than a "I'm not going against V again" appearance. It could be she's lured/bribed/bullied into going after OOTS (T takes L's daughter hostage?) or she somehow continues to make appearances for other reasons, but I still see her going after OOTS for her own reasons, perhaps rationalizing that with a full rest she could take V.

Possibly. But I think it would be in the context of 'semi-random encounter on the way to the final gate' and not its own immediate plotline coming up.

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As for Miron, he appears to be willing to do anything for the right price. I also think there'd be no need for Tarquin to have a conflict with him as long as there's still gold left to bribe him with.

I don't know about that last bit. I think he's had enough of Tarquin too, at any price.

[Fnordius]

WOW. This was absolutely and unquestionably the best strip of the storyline. I mean, seriously, I like V, but it was not even that. The flow of the fight, the short jokes, the satisfaction of victory and reasons WHY V won...

...

(snipped because it was long, and I agree with it)

You did forget one other tidbit of awesomeness that I noticed right off the bat: how Haley seemed to lampshade the whole discussion about broken arms. She took that broken arm in stride!

[Spoomeister]

How did V have explicit reason to think that Laurin wouldn't fight in an optimized manner?

We see a panel of V observing Laurin opening wormholes like there's no tomorrow. V can reasonably infer that Laurin considers support her primary role, rather than, as I mentioned before, firing off psionic disintegrates like the main cannon of an anime starship.

I think you are being far too pessimistic about V's chances. What about her just hitting Laurin with a disintegrate?

If V still had a disintegrate she would have used that on Team Tarquin's mount, rather than prismatic spray.

The IFCC restored V to her full complement of spells when returning her to the fight so it would match whatever she had prepared that morning. Did V prepare her spell list for the day with a fight with Team Tarquin in mind? Could she have? I believe this day that they're on as of 935 started with 837 (good grief!). They hadn't even found the entrance to Girard's pyramid yet. They know Team T could be around but any 'optimizing' V would be doing the day should have been flexible enough to deal with whatever was in the tomb and not necessarily for picking apart a psion, a necromancer (whatever Miron is?), a vampire, Nale and Tarquin.

[sims796]

One thing I wonder is why V revealed his remaining spell slots in order to get Lauren to flee. Couldn't V finish her off right there and then? Or did he not want to get into a drawn out battle with her when Tarquin was still aboard?

Or maybe he wasn't entirely sure of her ability to take down Lauren, and wanted to bluff her out?

[Angel Bob]

If V still had a disintegrate she would have used that on Team Tarquin's mount, rather than prismatic spray.

Actually no, because according to Vaarsuvius herself, Disintegrate "would have negligible effect on a beast of that girth".

Man, don't you love it when people squabble over random details without bothering to carefully read the said details of the strip?

[orrion]

We see a panel of V observing Laurin opening wormholes like there's no tomorrow. V can reasonably infer that Laurin considers support her primary role, rather than, as I mentioned before, firing off psionic disintegrates like the main cannon of an anime starship.



If V still had a disintegrate she would have used that on Team Tarquin's mount, rather than prismatic spray.

Uh, we know V had at least one Disintegrate after that point because it was used on Miron in the next comic in panel 4.

Oops?

The IFCC restored V to her full complement of spells when returning her to the fight so it would match whatever she had prepared that morning. Did V prepare her spell list for the day with a fight with Team Tarquin in mind? Could she have? I believe this day that they're on as of 935 started with 837 (good grief!). They hadn't even found the entrance to Girard's pyramid yet. They know Team T could be around but any 'optimizing' V would be doing the day should have been flexible enough to deal with whatever was in the tomb and not necessarily for picking apart a psion, a necromancer (whatever Miron is?), a vampire, Nale and Tarquin.

The IFCC did nothing of the kind.

The only way we know of for the IFCC to restore spell slots is to Soul Splice someone. They did not Soul Splice V here. Therefore no spell restoration.

[happycrow]

Sims, I think V's mission is "secure the escape," not "destroy the foes." V more than satisfied the AoR on the casterfight portion of that mission with Laurin going away. Tarquin's status remains to be seen, but I think V would be just as happy sending Tarquin to the semi-elemental plane of Ranch Dressing as nuking him into oblivion.

(Though I suspect Tarquin to be gone based on how everybody's talking with their guards apparently down, and given that Tarquin himself has no counter to a flying V. Laurin can conceivably say "I gave it my best shot, now pay up" or accept a stipulated ersatz favor instead as things currently stand. She can't do that if she departs solo and Tarquin gets himself nuked.)

[sims796]

Sims, I think V's mission is "secure the escape," not "destroy the foes." V more than satisfied the AoR on the casterfight portion of that mission with Laurin going away. Tarquin's status remains to be seen, but I think V would be just as happy sending Tarquin to the semi-elemental plane of Ranch Dressing as nuking him into oblivion.

(Though I suspect Tarquin to be gone based on how everybody's talking with their guards apparently down, and given that Tarquin himself has no counter to a flying V. Laurin can conceivably say "I gave it my best shot, now pay up" or accept a stipulated ersatz favor instead as things currently stand. She can't do that if she departs solo and Tarquin gets himself nuked.)

It just seems to me that if V had to ability to outright destroy the threat, it'll cover the escape even better, while getting rid of a future threat.

But I completely get what you are saying. They are in no condition to fight, otherwise they wouldn't be escaping to begin with. We still have Julio dangling from a rope, a crippled Haley, and a seemingly invincible Tarquin (do I have to make that blue?) that may or may not be there, scaring her away is more than adequate.

[Spoomeister]

Actually no, because according to Vaarsuvius herself, Disintegrate "would have negligible effect on a beast of that girth".

Man, don't you love it when people squabble over random details without bothering to carefully read the said details of the strip?

Hey, you could be right without being snippy about it.

[Silverionmox]

Sims, I think V's mission is "secure the escape," not "destroy the foes." V more than satisfied the AoR on the casterfight portion of that mission with Laurin going away. Tarquin's status remains to be seen, but I think V would be just as happy sending Tarquin to the semi-elemental plane of Ranch Dressing as nuking him into oblivion.

As Durkon said: "Meh, that works too."

[Knight.Anon]

So would taking advice from be an evil act?

[chibibar]

This strip had a lot of good moments in it. For one thing, V just burning out Laurin's power points was a clever way to battle, showing V's growth as a caster and strategist. Plus, Bandana got to do something cool. I have always enjoyed how even the minor characters in the strip still get to be interesting people in their own right. Also, I like the odd friendship that V has with Sabine. They somehow always end up helping each other out, inasmuch as it's possible to do so given who they are. Blackwing continues to impress, and he finally got his shiny bauble! Good man. Finally, it's interesting to note Laurin's hostility towards the elves. Hard to say if that's apropos of anything other than what she states, but I just get the impression there's so much about Tarquin's team that remains unsaid. I do hope they get some spotlight in the possible prequel.

Now all that remains is Tarquin, who is unarmed and hanging off the ship. Despite that, I suspect he's not completely out of the fray, but it's hard to say how it will go down, considering Haley's injured, Elan's unarmed, and V's spells have generally not proven effective against the general. Time will tell, I suppose.

totally Agree.

It is the same strategy that Xykon was using on "all powerful" V. V have the power, but didn't know how to use it properly.

Thanks to Sabine, V is now able to use tactic to "weaken" another caster one form or another. Since any negative effect can hurt a caster, V is using spells that cause Laurin to dispel which eats up precious power points. Awesome indeed.

[Lexible]

If they are spiked, it constitutes more of a physical than a sexual assault IMO.

You might want to reflect on the fact that rape is a physical assault. Seriously, go read The Vagina Monologues or some other first hand accounts of some of the physical consequences of rape.

I'm not writing this to shame you, but you definitely seem to be missing some perspective.

[The Giant]

One thing I wonder is why V revealed his remaining spell slots in order to get Lauren to flee. Couldn't V finish her off right there and then? Or did he not want to get into a drawn out battle with her when Tarquin was still aboard?

Or maybe he wasn't entirely sure of her ability to take down Lauren, and wanted to bluff her out?

Or maybe V wasn't making the decision whether or not to kill someone from a purely consequentialist viewpoint, especially after a long day of learning all about the unintended results of a previous rash decision to do so.

[Nightsbridge]

Tarquin's status remains to be seen, but I think V would be just as happy sending Tarquin to the semi-elemental plane of Ranch Dressing as nuking him into oblivion.

. . . I want to see this happen now. Can you imagine something more offensive to Tarky's ideal story structure than camping out in a plane of ranch dressing until his allies scry him up and teleport him out?

[Altessia]

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We've seen people turned to stone and shrunk for transport before, and I'm sure there are a lot of other ways to transport allies without needing them to have their own horses or otherwise be obviously there. Tarquin is going to pull Thog out of his pocket and throw him into the middle of the fray as a distraction while he tries to finish off Roy.

[sims796]

Or maybe V wasn't making the decision whether or not to kill someone from a purely consequentialist viewpoint, especially after a long day of learning all about the unintended results of a previous rash decision to do so.

It's not like they aren't enemies in an active battle with one another. Lauren had proven herself to be a significant threat, and it isn't as if they counted on Mirion's Contingency spell to take him out of the fight; they aimed to kill their powerful attackers.

I fully understand why V didn't opt to soundly defeat her; it isn't a priority, escaping is, and she's better served using her spells to that end. Still, it was a passing thought in my head that she decided to announce that, and pretty effective to boot.