Duv: "Let's enslave, push around, bully and force them into going into a very dangerous dungeon crawl. After that, I'll pervert one of their traditions and crown their chief myself instead of allowing their clan to do so. On that, I'll then choose one of them as my number two. It can't possibly go wrong!"
Well, I see two possibilities...
1) She's trying to be nice to him now to make it easier to manipulate him later. She wouldn't actually trust him or any non-viper and is just putting on a public display because doing so furthers her actual goals.
The Atlas is also goofy but it has that whole "Stay Puft Marshmallow Man" menacing smile thing going for it. The guy who drew that one up was obviously taken to the Nutcracker when he was a child... and he was screaming in terror the entire time.
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Originally Posted by Enterti, Cogidubnus
Glyphstone, out of all the playground I think you scare me the most...
She's already shown remorse for her son guys, remember? Just because she isn't crying her eyes out right now doesn't mean she's a moron.
Only briefly. But I think this is a deliberate choice on Thunt's part — he's showing that Duv cares more about her "destiny" than her own blood.
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Only briefly. But I think this is a deliberate choice on Thunt's part — he's showing that Duv cares more about her "destiny" than her own blood.
possible. Or maybe she realizes she's wasted too much time already with a missing wing and wants to get started on her little takeover project as soon as possible. Her very god has given her this responsibility, and now that she has the means to achive it, she doesn't have time to greive anymore.
She wept for her kin. Now its time to put the past behind her and get to work.
Only briefly. But I think this is a deliberate choice on Thunt's part — he's showing that Duv cares more about her "destiny" than her own blood.
Why put destiny in quotations? Every teller's prophecy has come true. Dies DID die horribly. Saves a Fox DID save a fox. Complains DID complain about names.
Perfect track record, there's absolutely no reason to think that her destiny won't come true either, nor that it will come true in a way we think it will.
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Why put destiny in quotations? Every teller's prophecy has come true. Dies DID die horribly. Saves a Fox DID save a fox. Complains DID complain about names.
Perfect track record, there's absolutely no reason to think that her destiny won't come true either, nor that it will come true in a way we think it will.
Wouldn't Duv's name be "Leads the Goblins to Glorious Ascendancy" instead, then?
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Originally Posted by The Giant
Fantasy literature is ONLY worthwhile for what it can tell us about the real world; everything else is petty escapism.
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Originally Posted by The Giant
No author should have to take the time to say, "This little girl ISN'T evil, folks!" in order for the reader to understand that. It should be assumed that no first graders are irredeemably Evil unless the text tells you they are.
Wouldn't Duv's name be "Leads the Goblins to Glorious Ascendancy" instead, then?
It was established earlier that the Viper Clan's teller does not use the whole 'named after what you will do' tradition.
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Why put destiny in quotations? Every teller's prophecy has come true. Dies DID die horribly. Saves a Fox DID save a fox. Complains DID complain about names.
Perfect track record, there's absolutely no reason to think that her destiny won't come true either, nor that it will come true in a way we think it will.
A lot of these names strike me as self fulfilling prophecy. I mean if you say he's gonna complain and give him a dumb name then obviously he's gonna complain after all. As well, most of the other situations are kind of loaded so the result and events leading up to it technically happen either way(nothing Saves did wouldn't not save the fox in some way, and if Dies is a goblin warrior dying badly is a certainty).
The thing about prophecies is you can never read too much into them, since they tend to twist according to exact wording and be highly situational. Duv's plans could go to hell a million and one ways and she could die in the next three panels and there'd probably still be a way for things to come true.
Why put destiny in quotations? Every teller's prophecy has come true. Dies DID die horribly. Saves a Fox DID save a fox. Complains DID complain about names.
There's a prophecy about a White Terror taking wing. It doesn't say "Duv will become the White Terror when she gets her wings back."
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Last edited by Candle Jack : 06-30-2012 at 08:25 PM.
nothing Saves did wouldn't not save the fox in some way, and if Dies is a goblin warrior dying badly is a certainty.
And if Saves had never encountered that fox? Or had chosen to ignore it entirely?
What if Dies had died a quick death? Or lived long and died of natural causes? Just because he's a warrior (not much of one, but he was in the warband) doesn't guarantee a terrible death. Let's say he takes an arrow through the heart and dies instantly. It's a death, but it's not what I'd consider a horrible one. Tortured to death by an unstoppable Dwarven paladin. Having your soul taken and being torn to pieces by a demon. Those are horrible deaths.
There were other possibilities. For both of them. And both of them ended up going down the path that their prophecy said they would.
I mean -- with Saves, the prediction was 'on your fifth birthday, you will meet the fox you're meant to save'. While "save" can be interpreted multiple ways, the rest of it could not. A fox showed up on her fifth birthday. Unless her fellow clansgoblins went out and found a fox, and had a way to give it sunset fever...
Prophecy is most definitely a real, tangible thing in this universe. It's easy to say 'you will save a fox' will happen someday in some form, but 'you will meet a fox on your fifth birthday' isn't up for interpretation.
Also, some neat details I never noticed before:
I never noticed how Klik wraps around Saves' arm in the last two panels here. It never really made much sense how she could hold on to a pole like that with that sudden weight.
It also doesn't help as much as it seems like it would, since he's not helping her other hand that they're all hanging from. Doesn't matter if she can't drop the ladder and Dies if she loses her grip on that tooth and they all fall. Fortunately she's a real badass.
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It also doesn't help as much as it seems like it would, since he's not helping her other hand that they're all hanging from. Doesn't matter if she can't drop the ladder and Dies if she loses her grip on that tooth and they all fall. Fortunately she's a real badass.
I would think that a person would need to much harder to keep a pole from sliding out from their hand in the thumb-to-pinky direction than the palm-to-knuckles direction.
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I would think that a person would need to much harder to keep a pole from sliding out from their hand in the thumb-to-pinky direction than the palm-to-knuckles direction.
Which means that if there's going to be a failure, they've ensured only that she will die with them.
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And if Saves had never encountered that fox? Or had chosen to ignore it entirely?
What if Dies had died a quick death? Or lived long and died of natural causes? Just because he's a warrior (not much of one, but he was in the warband) doesn't guarantee a terrible death. Let's say he takes an arrow through the heart and dies instantly. It's a death, but it's not what I'd consider a horrible one. Tortured to death by an unstoppable Dwarven paladin. Having your soul taken and being torn to pieces by a demon. Those are horrible deaths.
There were other possibilities. For both of them. And both of them ended up going down the path that their prophecy said they would.
Saves would have encountered a fox eventually. She's a forrest dwelling goblin after all. As well, there's no real generally excepted way to die that doesn't scare SOMEONE. If you live to old age your body breaks down, if you get killed in battle your life gets cut short, if you get worked to death your body breaks down FASTER ect.
The thing is you need to be very careful about that definition. I mean heck, if Saves met that fox then just left it'd have been as if she "saved" it by allowing it to live. Prophecies work by using weird definitions and wording pretty much by default. That's how pretty much every story about prophecy gets to be the way it is, simply because inevitably a bunch of people who've heard the prophecy, even word for word, get thrown a curveball they don't like.
OK, again, she was told the exact date she would meet the fox, two years ahead of time.
The 'saves' part, sure, can be interpreted many ways, but not 'you will meet the fox on your fifth birthday'. This was not a completely vague prophecy that would have just come true eventually. The chances of a fox showing up on that day and having the rare disease that makes any action of hers up for interpretation as 'saving' are extremely low.
I just want to point that out. Tellers in this world most certainly do have mystical powers of clairvoyance. These are not all generic self-fulfilling prophecies. They may have more than one way to come true, but not, like, billions of ways.
Saves would have encountered a fox eventually. She's a forrest dwelling goblin after all. As well, there's no real generally excepted way to die that doesn't scare SOMEONE. If you live to old age your body breaks down, if you get killed in battle your life gets cut short, if you get worked to death your body breaks down FASTER ect.
Not a fox, that fox. A fox that she would do something that could be interpretted as saving it. If she's just walking along in the forest and sees one before continuing on her way, then she isn't saving it.
As for Dies, neither death of old age or a quick but more or less clean death in battle sound particularly horrible to me. There are tons of ways to die, but only a small fraction of those are horrible ways to die.
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Originally Posted by Jayngfet
The thing is you need to be very careful about that definition. I mean heck, if Saves met that fox then just left it'd have been as if she "saved" it by allowing it to live. Prophecies work by using weird definitions and wording pretty much by default. That's how pretty much every story about prophecy gets to be the way it is, simply because inevitably a bunch of people who've heard the prophecy, even word for word, get thrown a curveball they don't like.
Oh, I disagree. You don't save something by ignoring it. To save something, you have to actively do something to it. To prevent harm from coming to it. To prevent it from suffering. To do something to prevent something unpleasant from happening. I couldn't, for example, pull a gun on someone, point it at their face for a second, then put it away and claim that I just saved that person's life.
I'm not arguing that prophecies don't thrive on uncommon interpretations of their phrasing, but there are plenty of things that could've happened but didn't that would've voided both prohpecies, yet the way things played out, both were fulfilled. Coincidence? Possibly, but so far, all evidence points to prophecies being a real thing in-universe.
When he said a few hours delay, I believed him. I should have believed the questioner, it'll probably be up tomorrow instead.
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Originally Posted by Hashmir
When I die, I donate my body to the cause of whatever ******* finds it first.
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Originally Posted by Bloodgruve
Really though, how effin scary would the beach be if an octopus could launch itself outta the water at a 200' move speed every 6 seconds. I'd never go to the beach again... I thought flying sharks were scary...
Blood~
There's pretty much nothing else to justify that guard's name, even in a fantasy setting. Oh well, there has been worse. Bruno the Bandit had a villain named something like Bayshon who wanted to be called Master.
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Originally Posted by Midnight Roamer
I think he did the only morally acceptable thing by killing everyone.
You know, I always wondered why D&D rules had rules for how many creatures could be swallowed by a larger beast. Now I have my answer!
Biscuit isn't going to take the goblins betrayal lightly. That "creature" looks like a mechanism. I wonder if there is a control room inside it somewhere...
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