All six of the books being reprinted as part of this drive have seen print before; in fact, two of them weren’t even out of print before this drive spurred a run on copies. Most of the hardcore OOTS fans that would ever want copies of the books likely already got them when they originally came out, so they are likely to gain nothing as a result of this drive. The primary beneficiaries of this drive are probably people like me, who were late enough in coming to OOTS and/or in deciding to get books – perhaps people who hadn’t even heard of the comic, at least before all the attention this drive is getting – that some of those books were out of print by the time they decided to do so.

In my case, I almost wouldn’t have contributed because I’m lacking for money, I wasn’t interested at the start of the drive because I would rather get the second book before I ever get the third that was trying to be reprinted at the start, and (dirty little secret time) most of the books are more expensive if picked up through the drive than if they were just ordered through the Web site. The book I mentioned in my last post is an exception, as that pledge level is roughly equivalent to ordering the book through the Web site plus the $10 to get the PDF stories, and I eventually decided I could spare the expense to get that. If I’d had money a year ago (and I almost did) when about 75 copies of that book were found in the back of a warehouse and sold over 24 hours, I’d have picked up a copy then, then pledged to get the third book now (if I still had money). If I couldn’t get the second book then and had the money now, though, I’d just be pissed that Rich counted that 24-hour period as when the second book went out of print and waited to pledge anything until it was going towards reprinting the second book.

The point is, the majority of OOTS fans weren’t benefiting directly from this drive, and a portion of those who did probably wouldn’t be able to contribute meaningfully if their financial situation had something to do with their lack of the books. So how did Rich get them all on board to get those books back in print in such a way that it stunned even him?

I think an underrated aspect of the drive’s success is that, several weeks before it started, Rich hinted that getting the third book back in print would take “the full support of everyone who wants to have the book in their hands, and maybe even a little bit more than that.” Before anyone even knew what that was, it psyched everyone up to give their support to the drive if it was necessary. That got people who wouldn’t otherwise have cared in the mindset that they might want to contribute to the drive. Beyond that, however, much of the drive’s momentum at first probably didn’t stem from the prospect of getting the books reprinted, but by what else Rich was selling – namely, a brand new canonical story (for the low low price of $10!) starring one of the most memetic characters in the entire strip. Even if I had money but no second book, I might have begrudgingly pledged $10 to get that and hope that third-bookers getting their way would help me get my way. That suggestion is also raised in Rich’s recent interview with ComicAlliance, where Rich also indicates that people with a complete collection still wanted to contribute to the drive, but evidently, only once it started to pick up steam. (And Rich’s advice to comic creators looking to start a Kickstarter almost amounts to “start a webcomic”, which makes it a potentially ideal segue to my Future of Content series.)

Given the circumstances, I’m not sure I agree with whatever point El Santo is trying to make about what this means for webcomic creators trying to make money. He can’t be trying to say that you can simply start up a Kickstarter to get paid to work on your webcomic, because that seems to me to be akin to getting paid to goof off, or no different than setting up a PayPal donation box. If he means setting up a Kickstarter to pay for other merchandise, it’s unlikely he means any sort of merchandise that hasn’t been done by webcomic creators in the past – in fact, selling copies of his first book was what allowed Rich to call himself a full-time cartoonist. But if he means that a popular webcomic creator can fund some sort of project that he wouldn’t otherwise be able to make the numbers work out on before the fact? That’s a lesson I’d already taken to heart before I wrote my last post.

(And I still can’t get over all this happening while the actual comic is reaching a peak in the action, which has now gotten to the point of attracting the renewed attention of Tangents, giving newcomers an ideal jumping-on point to become addicted.)

More than that success (which I’m pretty much numb to at this point), I’m dumbfounded at the level of media attention the whole thing has gotten – catching the attention of freaking Boing Boing, for Pete’s sake! Of course, beyond the added fuel it’s presumably giving the drive itself, it has the added effect of introducing people to the fascinating world of The Order of the Stick; I hope Rich can reward them by producing material on par with that that attracted me to the comic, and the start of the Kickstarter does seem to have coincided with events picking up considerably.

There is one interesting side effect, however. Last year, Rich decided to release a book reprinting the material he created for Dragon magazine back in the day, plus a few bonus side-stories. He announced that it would be a limited print run and would only be available through his online store. Which made sense, since after all, a lot of his longer-standing fans had already read the Dragon strips when they originally came out, and it wasn’t like any of it was canon anyway. Fast forward to now: Some people are clamoring for Rich to commit to reprinting this special book as well, but Rich has shut the door on that, since he did say this was going to be a one-time limited-edition printing, and he’s not going to go back on that promise because of a site that’s all about promises (you don’t want your pledges to be going towards, say, goofing off and working on a blog while blowing off actual schoolwork).

Just one problem: Most of the people who pledge towards the drive will be receiving a follow-up story to one of the new stories in that special book. Along with about five other new stories that will be canon. So, if you’re interested in collecting all of the canonical material, you’re also going to get a story you’d probably like the original context for, which would require picking up this special book.

Not that it’s a big deal, since apparently Rich feels confident there are enough copies to survive this drive and for some time thereafter (which proves the original reasoning right up to this point, though the special book seems to have gotten the short end of the stick in terms of its availability with other books among the pledge rewards), but it’s certainly food for thought.

As with Homestuck, it takes a lot of doing for me to post on the same comic twice, and the previous strip certainly ranks high on the list of OOTS strips that would qualify if any did. In this case, after giving myself a day to think about it, I decided that after how SoD-heavy my last post was, I should write a post oriented more towards readers of the online comic. I also think I may have been too gobsmacked by the comic itself to think clearly about it.

For readers of the online comic, the main development from the previous strip, aside from the end of Tsukiko and the revelation of what the ritual actually does, is the more general revelation of Redcloak as the man behind the man. Honestly, though, even before SoD was published there’s been hints of this in the online comic, from Redcloak convincing Xykon to attack Azure City to his level of involvement in the battle planning there to convincing Xykon to stay in Azure City. In the previous book Redcloak even made clear that he and Xykon were not on the same side and that Xykon was little more than a “valuable ally”, which also backs up my contention in the previous post that Redcloak is more committed to the Plan than to Xykon himself. The previous post also explains why this isn’t quite the revelation it looks like it is (and I’ve had people try to tell me it’s even less of one than that).

Probably more stunning, and coming across as a revelation on the order of the “planet-within-the-planet“, is the revelation that the ritual doesn’t do anything near what Xykon thinks it does, that Redcloak has manipulated things down to the level of Xykon’s motivations and goals. By itself this revelation changes little, since Xykon doesn’t know about it, until the final battle (although one may be excused for wondering if it’s related to the “planet-within-the-planet”), but it does say a lot about Xykon, Redcloak, and the relationship between them, much of which is made apparent either in the strip or my previous post. It recontextualizes every strip with Xykon and Redcloak to know that even success for Xykon would accomplish what Redcloak wants, but not what Xykon wants.

Considering that the ritual in actuality neither destroys the world nor conquers it, it also defangs Team Evil a little as villains, even if their success would still cause some nasty consequences. In fact, this is a theory I’ve had in my head since having SoD spoilered for me, but knowing what the ritual actually does could actually open the door for Xykon and Redcloak to succeed at the final battle. Although Redcloak may not be mired in complete subservience to Xykon, he’s still tightly connected to him, and much of the comic and SoD has raised the possibility of a full split between the two being a fairly major event. Xykon discovering the ritual doesn’t do what he thinks it does, as has already been made clear, would certainly fit the bill, and he inevitably would find out if he were to be “successful”. One wonders if it constantly nags at the back of Redcloak’s mind what reaction Xykon would have to “success” at this point. (One problem with this theory: it turns the main villain from Xykon to the Dark One, however briefly, who I don’t think was even mentioned in the online comic until the third book… but what he doesn’t know about the “Snarl” could hurt him.)

It’s also worth noting the number of characters whose information about the Gates, past and future, comes primarily from Xykon and Redcloak. Nale picked up a lot of information about the Gates from Shojo, but makes clear that he intends to get the ritual out of Xykon or Redcloak somehow. They aren’t going to be any more successful, at least at this gate, but it’ll be interesting to see what the reaction will be out of either one of them if they even get close. Would Redcloak, for example, be more willing to divulge the arcane half of the ritual than we may once have thought he would, in hopes of grooming Nale to potentially replace Xykon?

Meanwhile, we now have some sense of what Redcloak’s plan for the phylactery is: to replace it with a fake. In some sense this actually helps Xykon, and certainly doesn’t help the OOTS, who could conceivably destroy the “phylactery” without actually destroying it. But the fact that Redcloak evidently wants to hide this plan from Xykon suggests he still has some ulterior motives…

This comic would have warranted a post even considering all the knowledge already out there. For someone who hadn’t read the Start of Darkness prequel or any synopses of its events (a group that apparently includes Gary “Fleen” Tyrell)? I’d have to imagine they’d be in a stupor for days.

(There will be more minor SoD spoilers in this post, but I’m dispensing with the jump break because a good number of them are unspoilered in this comic, allowing me to talk around any details that are too spoilery.)

Let’s start with the fact that those who did read SoD might be confused at Redcloak’s effective claim to have always had a spine, which would render my last OOTS post moot. At the end of the previous comic, Tsukiko calls Redcloak “Wrong-Eye”, which is Xykon’s way of reminding him of his great failure at the end of that book that, he believes, effectively keeps him in line and subservient to him in perpetuity, and it seemed to work quite well earlier in this book. But here, Redcloak claims that he only ever allowed Tsukiko to get her way to avoid “upsetting the delicate balance between myself and Xykon”, implying that he has always been in complete control of the situation throughout the online comic. Which raises the question: do we need to reinterpret what happens at the end of SoD?

On one level, Redcloak doesn’t admit to any specific manipulation of Xykon here that wasn’t already covered in SoD, and which dates to the very beginning of their relationship. Not informing Xykon of the ritual’s true purpose has been a sort of passive manipulation; Redcloak could be a complete patsy of Xykon in the here and now, and Xykon’s actions would still be manipulated by Redcloak’s misinformation in the past. The “delicate puppet strings on which ‘Lord Xykon’ unknowingly dances” may well be as simple as Xykon continuing to go after the gates, convinced they will allow him to take over the world, in the first place.

On the other hand, Redcloak implies that it was never the “Wrong-Eye” comment that caused him to acquiesce to Tsukiko’s wishes, but merely maintaining his control over Xykon, letting Tsukiko control him rather than gain too much influence over Xykon. Although he may just be showing some bravado for Tsukiko’s benefit, it still suggests he’s not as broken up over the end of SoD as that ending makes us think.

The thing is, though, while the tragedy presented to us in Start of Darkness may not be the whole story, Redcloak may well still be mired deep within a tragedy of a different sort, one he may never escape from, one of loyalty not to Xykon, but to the Dark One. The Dark One has his plan to better the lives of goblinkind, divulged to non-SoD readers in this comic, but Redcloak has come up with an alternative, one that doesn’t involve the risk of the entire world being destroyed, and one that SoD readers may recognize as an improved version of what the Dark One himself engaged in in his former life, one of goblins seizing a piece of the world for themselves.

Tsukiko essentially warns Redcloak that killing her would lead Xykon to completely obliterate the fruits of that plan (and Redcloak’s life), and Redcloak seems resigned to that eventuality, noting that Xykon’s reaction would likely be the same to Tsukiko tattling on him. At least theoretically, there is an alternative, albeit a difficult one, one of all-out resistance to any attempt of Xykon to commit genocide on Gobbotopia, admittedly difficult considering Xykon’s epic-level status. On one level, that’s not going to happen because it would end the comic or at least Xykon’s (and Redcloak’s) status as its main villain. But on another level, for all that Redcloak may have doubts about the Dark One’s plan, he’s still willing to sacrifice everything for it. It’s especially tragic considering that the forums have speculated in the past that the Dark One hasn’t been completely honest even to his own high priest about the true goal of the Plan.

Perhaps it’s here that Redcloak is still affected by the end of SoD, rendering him unwilling to abandon the Plan under any circumstances lest his guilt for that ending overwhelm him, but unbeknownst to Xykon, still seeing him merely as a means to that end, one that can be replaced if he can find a powerful enough arcane spellcaster that he can control easier. Without getting too spoilery, there’s a bit towards the end of SoD where Redcloak’s brother voices his own concerns over the Dark One’s motives, and whether he really has the best interests of goblinkind at heart. Gobbotopia suggests those words have been nagging at Redcloak; his willingness to throw it away suggests they haven’t been enough to dissuade him.

On the other hand, perhaps it’s here that Redcloak’s recovery of the phylactery really comes into play. If Redcloak can save his life and that of the people of Gobbotopia with the threat of destroying or re-losing the phylactery, he might just be able to continue to have his cake and eat it too. Certainly if Redcloak still sees Xykon as a means to an end, he can at least bluff Xykon into staying in line as a last resort, and certainly it seems unlikely that Xykon would follow through with such a threat, if only because of how integral Redcloak himself is to the strip, although it would make it far easier for Hinjo and company to retake the city. One wonders if it was the recovery of the phylactery, as much as Tsukiko’s threat to unravel (no pun intended) the Plan, that allowed Redcloak to finally take matters into his own hands regarding Tsukiko (sort of).

I’d be remiss if I didn’t cover the end of Tsukiko’s story, as relatively bare-bones as that story was. For someone so delusional about the undead, it’s somewhat fitting for her to meet her end at the hands of the creatures she so adored. I might have preferred for her to become an undead herself, to find out how the other half lives, but Redcloak clearly couldn’t take that risk, as evident in his order for Tsukiko’s former “children” to devour each other. And while Rich presents us with four panels of Redcloak’s expressionless stare while Tsukiko gets slowly drained away, her vain, delusional attempts to appeal to those “children” as her worldview crumbles along with her are far more chilling than any actual depiction of her draining and dismemberment would be. (Although one wonders if having the wights kill her entirely, as opposed to, say, throwing her into the rift, may come back to bite Redcloak in the end if her spirit is still around to blab to any other interested parties…)

Warning: This post will contain spoilers for the Order of the Stick prequel Start of Darkness. As such, we’re hiding it behind a jump break. This means the comic image will overflow past the post itself on the main blog page; I can only hope that the miscellaneous stuff at the bottom will keep it from screwing up the page layout too much (although I admit I forgot how huge the comic image can be compared to the text).

I wanted to hold off on saying anything about this sequence until I had some sense of whether Rich would even acknowledge the direction I thought he might be going with it, but I eventually decided to stop waiting. Because it looks for all the world like Redcloak might be finally growing a spine.

I mentioned once that Redcloak’s tragedy “reaches its nadir at the end of [SoD] but isn’t over yet.” Over the course of the events in the online comic, Redcloak has risen from being Xykon’s complete patsy to a hero and leader of goblinkind unseen since the Dark One walked the earth. But he still suffers under Xykon’s thumb, and his rebirth won’t be complete until he works to change that. And we may be seeing the groundwork being laid for just that, because Redcloak may be the only one alive (aside from Niu) who even knows that the phylactery has been recovered.

Let’s step back for a moment, and consider how Redcloak utterly used the Resistance to get to this point. The Resistance learns of the phylactery’s recovery from a spy they have polymorphed into a hobgoblin, and promptly slaughter everyone guarding the phylactery and the goblin who recovered it. They promptly take the phylactery back to their base… where they find Redcloak waiting for them with various assorted nasties, and learn that he had a polymorphed spy of his own in their midst. The Resistance is wiped out, and Redcloak destroys their base and makes off with the phylactery.

So, if we take the implication by Redcloak’s spy that he floated the idea of polymorphing someone into a hobgoblin at face value, that means that Redcloak arranged it so that the Resistance would intercept the phylactery from whoever recovered it so that he could intercept it from them. That’s a level of devious cunning we haven’t seen much of from Redcloak in the online comic, and a sign that he’s coming into his own as a villain in his own right, especially for people who haven’t read SoD. He must have had a reason for arranging such a scheme, and it wasn’t simply to recover the phylactery, because he could have done that by letting things play out as they would (although the phylactery might have wound up on Xykon’s person as a result). No, it seems far more likely that he’s intent on recovering the original purpose of making the phylactery his holy symbol in the first place.

To convince his brother to go along with the plan to turn Xykon into a lich in SoD, Redcloak suggests that if they make his phylactery something they’ll always have access to and Xykon won’t, it’ll give them some measure of control over him. It doesn’t exactly work that way – Xykon is completely nonplussed when Redcloak threatens to destroy the phylactery, only threatening to destroy him in response – but it may be on the cusp of doing so. Xykon has shown every sign that he considers the phylactery to be more precious now than he did in SoD, and more importantly, Redcloak now knows the phylactery’s location, and Xykon doesn’t. And it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he was determined to keep it that way.

What gives me pause is that Redcloak doesn’t have many options for keeping it that way. The most logical course of action is to keep from Xykon that the phylactery has been found, but Redcloak has already arranged his affairs for his departure, going so far as to officially transfer power over to Jirix. Redcloak seems to be okay with leaving, and he’d probably much rather his people continue building their new nation than keep looking for a MacGuffin. Redcloak could inform Xykon that he alone knows of the phylactery’s whereabouts, but the problem with any of these is that Xykon is not likely to take kindly to Redcloak standing up to him – he already has a standing threat to kill him and replace him with Jirix if he gets too uppity. Considering that freaking Tsukiko was putting Redcloak to shame earlier in the book, I don’t think he’s that much over his brother’s death yet.

But Redcloak spinning the hiding of the phylactery as a positive in the short term… that may be an intriguing proposal, considering Xykon may be at the point where he’d stow away the phylactery in a safe place himself before doing anything risky. That might also open the door for the OOTS to actually defeat Xykon in similar fashion to what happened at the Dungeon of Dorukan, though that would defang Xykon considerably as a threat and render the final battle rather anticlimactic when the only real problem facing the OOTS is finding a MacGuffin that’s not a Gate.

The destruction of the Resistance, meanwhile, puts Hinjo in a bad position. The good news is that, as far as he knows, Xykon and Redcloak will be leaving soon, taking out at least the two most powerful foes he’d have to face upon trying to retake the city. The bad news is that there won’t be a Resistance waiting for him when he gets there (or, possibly, any elven allies either), and even if Niu were to try to rebuild it it probably would never reach anywhere near the level the previous one did. Combine that with how much Redcloak has been able to build on the ashes of Azure City, and it’s clear that retaking it will hardly be a trivial proposition, or even as popular among the other nations of the world as might otherwise be thought. Redcloak will be leaving Jirix a nation without as much in the way of threats as one might think.

When I predicted that Nale and Tarquin might make up and form one side in the battle for the Gates, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

Although Tarquin seems willing to accept his son’s direction, as at least one person on the forum points out, he’s also equally willing to let someone else hold the official position of leader of the Empire of Blood, so he could be just as willing to try to manipulate Nale similarly. But that might actually turn out to be a far more interesting outcome than if he just let Nale run the show, and not necessarily because Tarquin would be entirely successful.

Tarquin knows a lot, but he’s not omniscient, and so far as we know, Sabine is the only person in that room who knows what the real power behind the Linear Guild is. The IFCC might be willing to put up with Tarquin joining the group and even calling the shots so long as it results in more conflict for Girard’s Gate, but it’s very easy to see a scenario where Tarquin takes the Linear Guild in a direction they don’t want it to go, or raises them beyond the level of “incompetent buffoons”. That could result in much of the comic’s conflict occuring within the Linear Guild, especially between Sabine and Tarquin with Nale caught in the middle. It’s been speculated that Nale might find out about and rebel against the IFCC at some point; we may be seeing the groundwork being laid for that.

At any rate, after spending so long inside the Empire of Blood, the comic is moving everything straight towards what’s shaping up to be an epic, multi-way conflagration at Girard’s Gate, one that’ll make the Linear Guild encounter we just had look like child’s play.

Rich finally proved a forum theory wrong for once… sort of.

Quite a few people speculated that Tarquin knew something about the Gates, and while theories about Tarquin and Nale working in collusion had died down considerably, I myself was still toying with them. Both theories look like they’ve been pretty much shot down… with regard to anything that happened before this strip, that is.

When last we talked about OOTS, Tarquin revealed that he didn’t actually know anything about Girard, but still gave the OOTS a lead toward his gate – a lead his late ex-wife had let slip, and that she was planning to follow up on, shortly before her death. The OOTS figured that her source was likely a disguised Sabine, and that Nale killed her when she was no longer useful – despite the fact that, when speaking of Penelope’s death earlier, Tarquin used phrasing that someone less dense than Elan would figure suggested he himself was the culprit.

If Tarquin did kill her, and if this clue was the reason for that, it might have been the result of jealousy and not wanting her to return to her ex-husband, or it may have been that he sensed the importance of what she said and wanted to keep her from spilling more beans. That means that, in all likelihood, if Tarquin killed her it was likely after he learned that Nale was afoot.

Interestingly, Tarquin implies in this strip that he only knew of Nale’s presence after Penelope let slip her clue, which was only “a few weeks ago”, although it seems apparent that Zz’dtri had been present for longer (his elf-ambassador disguise is shown as being present when Penelope lets slip her clue in the original strip), and Nale had earlier told Elan that he had been here for “months“. I don’t see how Tarquin could have drawn the connection between what Penelope said and Nale’s presence if he knew Nale was there the whole time, which lends more credence to the notion that Nale killed her either when she outlived her usefulness or to keep from tipping off Tarquin to his presence – although the notion that Tarquin only recently learned of Nale’s presence seems more credible to me. (The two aren’t mutually exclusive, of course; though it’s unlikely, Tarquin could be telling the truth when he implies that he only learned of Nale’s presence in the last few strips.)

Why did Tarquin keep Elan around through the festival? Partly to make sure they were still around for it, rather than run off the instant they got their information or upon finding out this wasn’t the Draketooth they were looking for, partly to use the festival to draw out Nale, but maybe we should also consider why Tarquin said in the previous strip, “it is in our own best interest that they succeed.” Keep in mind, when he says this he knows nothing about the Gates or about Xykon, but he does know that Nale probably won’t be there when they get there, he knows that they are chasing “some cliched scenery-chewing villain bent on world conquest“, and we can reasonably assume that he has some inkling that he might want to chase off after them (especially since “cliched scenery-chewing villain bent on world conquest” is a pretty good description of Tarquin himself).

Everything Tarquin has done since we’ve first met him, then, has likely been aiming towards several goals: draw out Nale (doubtless engineering “Roy v. Thog” to help with this), weaken the teams of both of his sons, learn enough about the OOTS to properly incorporate them into his plans, send the OOTS on their way with enough time to stop the other cliched villain, find out what he can about what both teams are doing from a source likely to fold when he threatens him (he may have initially thought Elan stood a chance at qualifying until he found out how much of a Pollyanna he is), and maybe some other plots I can’t even fathom because I’m not the diabolical mastermind Tarquin or Rich are. Now that that’s been completed, it seems we have now officially filled in one of the “nine sides” going after the Gates (and Nale, like Xykon, presumably doesn’t know that the Snarl is pretty much worthless for conquest)… although it’s worth leaving open the possibility that Nale and Tarquin will make up and form one side.

After a year-and-a-half in the Empire of Blood, it’s looking like we’re finally starting to move back to the main plot.

Tarquin just took a single strip to drop most of the knowledge, for what it’s worth, on Girard that he’s promised during that time, and what it basically amounts to is a lead on the location of Girard’s Gate, but very little on Girard himself, other than that the notion that he might be dead by now is once again very plausible (or, perhaps, that he’s used aliases and illusions to keep himself young). That’s enough information, though, that Elan seems to be bringing the Empire of Blood interlude to a rather abrupt halt to chase after that lead – making me once again wonder if this interlude went on far longer than Rich intended.

On the other hand, while it originally looked like Tarquin’s “employment opportunity” for Roy and Belkar was going to be the pretense for putting them back together with the Order, that now looks like it might be rather hard to pull off – unless Tarquin takes a particularly keen interest in the Order’s journey. Adding credence to that, there’s a lot that doesn’t add up here: Elan decides that the Linear Guild pressed Tarquin’s ex-wife for information, then killed her, but Tarquin had previously indicated that he might have killed her himself… leaving open the possibility that Tarquin has his own knowledge of, and interest in, the Gates, one that doesn’t intersect with the Order’s in a friendly way.

Which is not to say it intersects with that of the Linear Guild in a friendly way either; I could easily see a scenario where Tarquin deduced that Penelope was helping Nale and killed her so she’d stop. In any case, it’s starting to look like the fight we just had between the Order and the Linear Guild may soon look like child’s play…

I have very little to add to this strip. (Not a good thing when it’s a whopping four pages long. Oh well, let’s see how it goes this time…)

I have very little to add to Roy taking time out in the middle of the fight to shoo away the spectators instead of protecting himself or returning to the arena to keep Thog away from the spectators. (Or his line “I’m a big scary gladiator with permissive ideas about individual rights!”)

I have very little to add to Roy tricking Thog into shoving him into columns, waiting for him to de-rage, then letting everything the columns were holding up cave in on him. Or to Roy managing to get in a one-liner in the aftermath. Or to the stealthily-meta title. Or to the more-confusing-than-you-might-think panel of Zz’dtri being led off.

(Actually, I do need to stress this more than I just did. Roy not only concocts a plan to ultimately defeat Thog, he allows his own body to be battered and bruised carrying it to completion. And then he taunts Thog about how he did it. That is just… Let’s put it this way: There is a reason why professional wrestling is popular, and there is a reason putting on shows like this works for evil dictators like Tarquin.)

I have very little to add to whether Thog is dead as a result of this, and honestly, for the moment I don’t care. My hunch is he isn’t, though, based on the sort of drama framed around this scene and what Rich has done in the past (not to mention it wouldn’t matter much anyway, as Roy knows well). Frankly, I wonder more what this means for Roy: would this make him the new Champion, and if so, what would escaping do to that?

I have very little to add to the Linear Guild fight (and thus this whole long 100+-strip Empire of Blood sequence) winding down, with Zz’dtri and Vaarsuvius being indisposed (I don’t know if I’m putting the apostrophe in the right place and for the moment I don’t care), Elan meeting with Durkon, and Belkar and Mr. Scruffy meeting up. I have a feeling, though, that I will be making a lot more posts on OOTS in the future – Rich will probably start sending the Order to Girard’s Gate (finally) soon, and that could result in quite a few post-worthy revelations, not to mention more moments like this (though not quite of this caliber) in the near future. And that’s not even getting into the posts I’ve had planned but have been waiting for the right moment to actually do, like my last OOTS post.

(I almost wrote “sending his cast to…” there. Is Robert A. Howard rubbing off on me? Speaking of which…)

I have very little to add to what Tangents said about this strip, especially since I made some of the same points he does earlier in the fight (and as with that strip, this one works largely because there are no swords involved), except to say that cross-cutting between different fights in different places is in fact one of Rich’s favorite tactics, and that if the fight has been dragging I would blame the slowing update schedule.

I have very little to add to being most of the way done with this post, but still needing to insert pointless filler like this to keep the comic image from messing up the layout of the page. (Hmm… maybe I should have inserted a thumbnail of only a part of the comic, like I did in my very first OOTS post? But there’s so much comic to choose from…)

I just want to say two things, at least one of which I suspect Eric Burns(-White) would say if he were still posting:

This comic… tells you everything you need to know about Roy Greenhilt.

And also: Roy Greenhilt is awesome.

That is all.

(Just a little bit further… YES! It counts! That’s right, that’s right, who’s the boss, who’s the boss?)

Rich rarely makes huge storytelling blunders, a result of how straightforward the comic’s art style forces his storytelling to be, but this comic contains a pretty big one. In the midst of Belkar dealing with Mr. Scruffy’s injury, we get a random panel showing Enor with Mr. Scruffy’s head, Gannji with Belkar’s head, and the back of Belkar’s head.

Or a flashback to Enor and Gannji’s arena battle, giving context to Belkar’s decision to save the two by unleashing the allosaurus. That works too, but only if you remember (a hard task given how slow the comic has updated recently – Robert A. “Tangents” Howard had a post on this comic nearly a week ago) that the line in that panel was originally said by Roy in the original comic. The panel isn’t given any real context, certainly no buildup, and the “revelation” contained therein seems to be randomly divulged without any real impact or providing any additional meaning to current events. In fact, there isn’t really any reason we couldn’t have gotten it a lot sooner.

Regardless, we now have some context for that decision, and an opportunity for me to say something about it. What we knew before was that Belkar made that decision, and didn’t want Ian to tell Roy about it – and seemed uncomfortable taking Roy off the scent himself. Considering Belkar is currently trying to fake the sort of character growth that would lead to him releasing a dinosaur to save a couple of people he only knows for getting him thrown in jail, it seems odd that he would deny any responsibility for it and actively try to maintain Roy’s impression that he’s still every bit the bastard he’s always been.

But what I’ve noticed, re-reading past strips in this book and my posts on them, is that Belkar only ever claims to be a team player. He never claims to have any sort of character growth beyond that. He never actually tries to claim that he’s any less of a murderous psychopath, he simply claims he’s no more of one than any other adventurer (something of a sore spot of Rich’s). Which begs the question: is that what Shojo meant? When he asked Belkar to fake character growth, did he mean as little character growth as possible? Re-reading my original post on the matter, there may be evidence in favor of this interpretation:

To this point, it seems that Shojo’s point might be bigger than whether or not Belkar should be a “hero”, but whether he should simply live a life bigger than just stabbing everyone at every opportunity. Consider Belkar’s life immediately preceding being struck by the Mark of Justice: skipping out on the entire explanation of the Gates because he’d killed a guard and fled, leading Miko on a wild goose chase and slowly driving her more and more insane with fury, pretty much trying to get her to kill him out of blind fury for kicks. Belkar doesn’t even care about staying alive as long as he believes he can be quickly resurrected…we can place a name to Belkar’s life through the Mark of Justice experience: “anger and needless rage”. He’s spent too much time consumed with both to realize his true potential, whether that involves “hurting…living creature” or not.

I proceeded to suggest that “Really, nothing about the conversation says Belkar needs to stop acting outwardly evil; only the circumstances would determine that at any time”, and that one interpretation of Shojo’s remarks was that “Belkar needs to stop acting like he’s above the alignment system entirely, and start acting Chaotic Evil“: “Belkar, in this interpretation, is entirely within his rights to do exactly what he has been doing, but only as long as he at least makes an effort to get along with the rest of the Order of the Stick, and pay some effing attention to everything else that’s going on.”

Belkar’s reaction to his own decision to release the allosaurus suggests he’s taken this interpretation, but there’s a difference between not hiding your evil actions, and hiding your good ones. Belkar has an interest in Roy thinking he’s a team player, but somehow, he seems to also have an interest (or thinks he does) in Roy thinking he’s still a Chaotic Evil murderous psychopath. (It’s not that Roy would have a problem with him helping Gannji and Enor specifically; Roy’s own reaction disproves that.) Otherwise it would seem odd that Belkar would hide an act that would further his effort to convince Roy of his reformation, however defined. What makes it even odder is that Belkar has been introduced to the rewards of being good – but interestingly, his interpretation is wrong: “I did exactly what I always do – murder people horribly – but because I killed the people everyone else wanted me to kill, I get presents instead of jail time?”

So I have two interpretations of Belkar’s decision to hide his decision to release the allosaurus from Roy. The first is that Belkar is still new to this “society” and “morals” thing, and doesn’t realize that saving lives, even a couple of supposedly evil lives, is as praiseworthy as killing the people Roy asks him to. The second has to do with what we’ve now learned about the reason he released the allosaurus: that Belkar panicked at his own decision and didn’t know what to make of it. Under this interpretation, Belkar believes he had a one-time moment of weakness and worries that if Roy knew about it, he might not trust Belkar to do what needs to be done in the future. But not only is he wrong about what Roy’s reaction would be, he’s wrong about what that moment means, because I’m now with the group that believes that Belkar’s fake character growth, or at least his alliance with Mr. Scruffy, will lead to real character growth, at least in the short time he has before he inevitably dies – and perhaps Belkar’s line in the last panel suggests he realizes this. Perhaps it’s only now that he even realizes why he released the allosaurus to begin with.

Both interpretations also raise the question of why Ian doesn’t correct Belkar’s misconception, but I’ve been meaning to write a whole post on him…