On Fantasy, clichés, TVTropes and Science Fiction.
Oh, and some D&D there too. Sorry I couldn't break it down further.
Spoiler
D - There's a question though, can Fantasy be taken seriously anymore?
R - You mean in the sense that a lot of it is recycled? A lot of it is the same sort of material all over again? I think so. I think there's definitely something to say with fantasy still. Order of the Stick is in many ways sort of a critique I guess, a spoof of a lot of fantasy cliches, but once you see the cliches, you dodge them. I mean, there's plenty of fantasy writers who don't do the same old "warriors on a quest" thing, which I'm doing but by way of sort of turning it on it's head. I think there's plenty of room in fantasy for unique stories. I think the number one thing people can do to make their fantasy something new and interesting is to not marry it to the same old medieval sort of time period for no apparent reason. I mean, if magic exists in a world, why can't it exist in a different historycal setting. I think there's still plenty to say, and I think there's still plenty for me to make fun of, so, you know, hopefully that will keep going on both sides.
D - Question: We have talked about TVTropes, even mentioned the name (...)
R - (Laughs, interrupts) Sorry, what was the question?
D - The thing is, they have sort of these shorthands, like he's the Chosen One, he'll save us from the Dragon or the Evil Wizard.
R - Yeah, like the next thing that happens would have to be the thing that happens 'cause this thing happened because the trope said so.
D - Yes. I mean, do you think it's possible just to divorce completely, to walk away and do something else?
R - It's hard. There was a point in time a few years back when I felt like every time I put out a strip the number one response to it was "Oh, he's just doing this trope", "he's just doing that trope", you know, and put a link to it, "see, he's just not original at all". And I don't know whether that just became less popular as a way of sort of pidgeonholing things, or whether I've actually broken enough of them now that nobody assumes they know what's gonna happen next. But one way or another that doesn't seem to happen as much anymore. People try to sort of guess what I'm gonna do, and I hopefully kick it in the shins and run away laughing. But I think there's a danger of over simplification of literature, of becoming so wrapped up in these compartments that put every element of the story that you sort of miss the story. It's sort of like a lazy criticism. Criticism in the classic sense of actually doing a critical piece, not in a complaining wait. It let's you churn out an analysis of a work without putting much tought into it. I think it's fun to point to the website and see the diferent ways different works do the same sort of cliches, not in a bad sense, but I do think there's a danger in taking them too seriously as the 'be all, end all' of literary criticism.
D - Yes, indeed. I have read a lot of fantasy, and it's always like "here's the Chosen One, here's the local , here's the obviously evil sorcerer who betrays everyone"
R - Yeah, exactly. I think fantasy is more prone to that than almost any other genre. And that's partly because there have been a few titans of the genre who sort of formed everything that was to come after. And also honestly because of Dungeons and Dragons. I think people playing D&D has reinforced certain stereotypes in their mind (mumbles) RPGs that follow the same tropes and all of these sort of things, has reinforced this sort of monolithic fantasy from which few authors deviate and well so, but there's a lot of the same old same old out there too. So I think fantasy gets probably a lot more of those, those tropes listed, than almost any other genre. You know, Science Fiction, I'm a huge SF fan, SF is, every story you read is esentially a completely different setting, I'm sure, Space Opera stuff tends to be a lot of the same, whatever, but you can just go off and do something wildly different and still be Science Fiction, and I think less people do that with Fantasy these days.
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Hmm, I'm hesitant to add this quote as it doesn't seem to pertain to the actual comic, just loosely to an image graphic in the ookoodook store.
Au contraire, the fact Giant doesn't read Pratchett means that people like me who thought that the Redcloak arc was influenced by Unseen Academicals and Snuff (which look at how traditionally 'evil creatures' Orcs and Goblins are victims of circumstance and should be treated with respect and humanity) are put back in our box.
Au contraire, the fact Giant doesn't read Pratchett means that people like me who thought that the Redcloak arc was influenced by Unseen Academicals and Snuff (which look at how traditionally 'evil creatures' Orcs and Goblins are victims of circumstance and should be treated with respect and humanity) are put back in our box.
Alright, thanks for explaining. I'll add it under "Reading Too Much Into It."
__________________ Thanks, Bradakhan, for the avatar!
Au contraire, the fact Giant doesn't read Pratchett means that people like me who thought that the Redcloak arc was influenced by Unseen Academicals and Snuff (which look at how traditionally 'evil creatures' Orcs and Goblins are victims of circumstance and should be treated with respect and humanity) are put back in our box.
Given that both books came out years after Redcloak's arc began, I'm not sure how you could have thought this in the first place.
On the D&D media scare, Dark Dungeons and Tom Hanks. There's many places in this part of the interview where the audio is off or I just can't figure out what they are saying.
Spoiler
D - You mentioned the impact of Dungeons and Dragons.There was a huge backlash against D&D
R - Yeah, sure.
D - Do you think we're likely to see something like that again?
R - I don't think so. I mean, there's certainly always going to be people who are still going to say the same charges against it, you know, that are still gonna say the things that weren't true then, and still aren't. But I don't think it's wildly circulating, I think because it was new then, people didn't know what was going on, didn't know what this thing was, and then they got a lot of misinformation from various sources, and the media picked it up and ran with it as a media scare. And now it's old news. It's been around for thirty and some odd years, you don't get articles in the media about Dungeons and Dragons making people sacrifice goats [interference] "Dungeons and Dragons is coming out with a new edition, because D&D owner Hasbro has released this information in this press conference, blah blah blah.". So I think that's not gonna resurface. I mean just the fact that it's owned by Hasbro now gives it a legitimacy that I think it probably didn't have back in the day, when it was owned by a bunch of guys in Wisconsin [interference] gives it a "Oh, obviously it has to be OK, it is owned by the company that does Mr Potato Head." And I don't think it's in Hasbro's interest to let those kind of stories exist. When you're a big corporation, you kinda get that power in the sense that if they're going to do a story about Dungeons andd Dragons they're going to immediately walk up to your Hasbro or WotC and ask for a quote, and then their sort of media team will take care of it from there. But I think the days of mass hysteria scare about D&D are behind us at this point.
J - I think there are bigger scapegoats now as well.
R - Yeah, absolutely, there's the Internet and all of it's glory. Playing D&D seems downright quaint now, you can find people who are in their 50s who've been playing D&D for 30 years, it's not.. you know, in detriment of the hobby, but it's not something that all teenagers are flocking to these days. When you're 13 you're like "Hey, let's go play D&D tonight!" You have to get those kids into the hobby in a way that isn't really happening right now. I'd say as long as it's not threatening tomorrows children I htink it'll stay on the right side of the public opinion.
D - Speaking of threatening children, what we do on the show... are you familiar with the Jack Chick comic Dark Dungeons?
R - I am, vaguely, passingly familiar, as much as any long time D&D player could be.
D - We might have to do a show on Jack Chick.
R - I like to think of my comic as a sort of tribute to the great comic that had come before. Could I have done a Dungeons and Dragons themed comic if not, like I said, if not, if the giants of the genre had not put forth that independent comic creation of lore?
J - Dark Dungeons was a very interesting book. I would say it's not even close to the crazyest thing Jack Chick has ever done.
R - Yeah, not top ten really.
D - No. But the thing I love about his...
R - (uninteligible, gets cut by connection) it wasn't as crazy, he's gone really off the (?) then, then it probably wouldn't have been taken seriously until this day.
D - Well, according to Dark Dungeons, apparently the sourcebook is an actual spell book, from wich you can actually, literally just call up the devil and say "hey".
R - Spells, yeah, exactly. I've certainly heard that. All I can say is I think the copies I've been using must be defective in some way, either there's a misprint or a page missing because I've been playing the game since I was 11 or 12 and I've yet to actually cast a magic spell, deeply dissapointed at that.
D - How about Maces and Monsters?
R - Oh yeah. Tom Hanks has a lot to answer for.
D - Yes he does.
R - (uninteligible)
J - He unleashed Forrest Gump upon the world, he has to pay for that. Now we get into Dave's axe grind.
R - Personal media vendetta should actually be the title of this podcast.
D - He knows what he did.
J - Where gonna try to get him on the show for a reconciliation. They're gonna hug each other on the air.
R - Or just volleyball with him.
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You know, seeing as I did the interview, I figure I should help out here a little, so here are a couple of things I caught in this one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Xapi
On the D&D media scare, Dark Dungeons and Tom Hanks. There's many places in this part of the interview where the audio is off or I just can't figure out what they are saying.
Spoiler
"I think there are bigger scapegoats now as well."
This line was said by me (Jesse), not Dave
D - We might have to (uninteligible)
Dave was saying, "do a show on Jack Chick" here
R - I like to think of my comic as a sort of tribute to the great comic that had come before. Could I have done a Dungeons and Dragons themed comic if not, like I said, if not, if the giants of the genre had not put forth that independent comic creation of lore?
D - Dark Dungeons was a very interesting book.
"I would say it's not even close to the craziest thing Jack Chick has ever done."
Above in quotes was also said by me.
D - He unleashed Forrest Gump upon the world, he has to pay for that.
"Now we get into Dave's axes to grind"
Above in quotes was said by me.
Hope that helps!
Last edited by jidasfire : 03-01-2012 at 10:11 AM.
On The Giant's favourite characters to write, and some commentary on every character of the Order. Even Durkon, but that's just to say there's not much to say :P
Spoiler
J - Back into the Order of the Stick a little bit as far as the characters, to talk a little about the characters. I have my theories on this, but I'm wondering if you have a personal favourite character as far as writing.
R - It depends on whether you mean writing the jokes or writing the personality and internal conflicts. Jokes is easy, Belkar with Elan a close second. You've got your sort of... either your violence jokes or your bad person gets their comeuppance jokes with Belkar, and then Elan has your dumb jokes, has your sillyness, has your kinda child like comedy, and I like writing both of those. As far as writing a personal sort of inner thoughts on your life whatever things (sic) I really like writing Haley a lot. She's got issues, I think she's probably got the most legitimate issues of the people in the Order, and that makes her interesting to write. It's interesting how she's going to react, based on her upbringing and sort of what she's been through in her life to this situation or that situation. I think that makes it more.. to you, Elan's pretty straighforward, you know what he's gonna do. You may not know in the sense that it's something completely random and off the wall and pull out a hand puppet and start worshiping it, but you know he's gonna do something weird and silly and ultimately harmless, because he's a good person, and nothing bad is gonna happen to him as a result. And you know Belkar's gonna do the opposite, he'll take the most awful, irrediming sort of path that he can find and get away with. But you don't know what Haley's gonna do in a situation, she wants to be a good person, but she wasn't raised that way, she was raised to be a thief. And so she sort of has to struggle with being a hero, what comes easily to, well, it comes pretty easily to Roy. He'll snap at people, he'll be sort of verbally abusive, but he's not gonna... he's never attempted to do the wrong thing, really.
J - There was the one time, but...
R - Yeah. Exactly, and that was a big point of development for him. But really, since then, that was within the first 150 or 160 strips, so for the mayority of the comic's lifetime he's been pretty clear on what he should be doing.
J - It seems like Vaarsuvius has become a character with a lot of internal moral conflict recently as well.
R - That's true, that is correct, and that was a concious sort of effort on my part, because I felt like Vaarsuvius had been underutilized, by the end of the War and XPs book I felt like Vaarsuvius was sort of... "and then we have an elf", wich is a problem I still have with Durkon but I have plans to adress as well. And so I think I crafted almost all of Don't Split the Party around "let's (uninteligible) a better arc"... some of it I had planned already, some of it I already know that when I did the first... Spoiler by the way, if anyone hasn't read this... when I did the first small black dragon, that I was gonna have the older one come back and be a villain in some point that would attack Vaarsuvius for what he or she had done. But the sort of sell your soul angle was a little more recent, and more of an attempt to really get at what Vaarsuvius issues were in life. So that sort of dovetailed nicely into one story that I'm really happy with.
I have 19 minutes to go of a 59 minutes interview.
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I find Belkar and Elan's jokes to be probably the funniest (as well as Roy's sarcastic remarks) so that subsection of the interview makes a lot of sense.
__________________ Thanks, Bradakhan, for the avatar!
On the variety of OotS villains, and on the D&D alignment system.
Spoiler
J - That brings, the whole idea of the Black Dragon and the demons, brings up another thing which is the idea that you seem to play a lot with the idea of Evil, like there's a huge variety of villanous characters with motivations all across the spectrum from, you know, and in some ways it seems like the comic tries to deconstructs that, in other ways it plays it straight
R - More like, I think both are valid, you know what I mean?, both are ways of looking at the problem, and I think again getting back to the history fantasy literature, I think there are an awful lot of cardboard cutout tackling (?) villany out there, and that's a choice to make when you're writing your story, and I sort of want to have it both ways, I want to be able to have villany villains, and at the same time, not writing a character that doesn't make sense, not writing a character that doesn't have a motivation to what they're doing. And I think there's a lot of debate among my fans, because they're not necesarily used to seeing that, from fantasy villains, specially when it comes to Black Dragons, undead sorcerers and Goblins who are out to destroy the Gods. You expect those sort of characters to be very straightforward, and I try to make it a little more complex than that, which, I was thinking, readers, in this (?) open up alternate interpretations, people would swear that 'cause Redcloak thinks what he's doing is the best for the Goblin people, that Redcloak is in fact the good guy, that he is the hero of the story. And that's... an interesting viewpoint. And I'm glad that I provoked that, I'm glad that I wrote a character that is layered enough that some people would say he's absolutely in the right, but yeah, I really like turning it upside down and not assuming that because it's a dragon it has no emotions. I think D&D appeals to people who are much more Math & Science oriented, that... I can sort of surprise them more by delving into the emotional side of things, and they don't see that coming, if they're D&D fans. And people who are generally fiction fans just enjoy it on it's own merits.
J - So, it comes out to not being as simple as the nine simple moral codes that D&D ascribes to.
R - Yeah, and I think one of the themes of Order of the Stick is there's this guide alignment system in D&D where it places every single person in one of these nine moral codes, and for the entire history of the game, that I've played it, people have been complaining that that's over simplystic. "Oh, it's more complicated than that", and it absolutely is more complicated than that, but they're also doing it wrong. They think because they have this alignment they have to act this way, this one specific given way, and I think each one of those categories is so wide open to interpretation, and that was a lot of what Miko Misayaki was about, was that she's lawful good, but she's a complete bitch, you wouldn't want to spend time with her at all. And I think that was sort of the flip side of the simpathetic villain: the unsimpathetic hero. Or at least good guy. So yeah, I definitely like to subvert expectations in that specific way, because I think the alignment system gets a bad rap from people who aren't trying to make it work, and say "that's overly simplistic".
14:30 left.
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Note that these are very early strips- and his views may have been modified slightly since then.
Yeah, I think that's a good example of how back then, Rich didn't know people would analyze everything he said.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Brother Oni
Well you've got two options - you can either wait for life to throw you a bone, or you can make your own by tearing it out of Life's quivering body, with your bare teeth and nails in a frenzied bloodied act of cannibalism.
A suggestion to improve the list on the first page: Could you please include the date of the Giant's post in the overview?
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Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei, King Joffrey, The Tickler, The Hound, Ser Amory, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling, Weese, Dunsen, Nale, Ser Gregor Clegane and Chiswyck: Winter is coming!
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