Webcomics

(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized dynamic entry.)

For the past couple months-plus Homestuck has been the main thing distracting me from getting any work done on the book or other things that might actually be productive… so naturally my triumphant return to webcomics posts involves OOTS.

When Rich Burlew signaled that anyone tired of the constant internal strife between Durkon and his vampiric doppelganger “would be in for a rough 2015”, I let my reading of OOTS come to a stop. Not because that struggle was bad per se, though it certainly was dominating the early comics of the sixth book and seemed clunkily-written and cringe-inducing at times, but because of the same problem I had with Gunnerkrigg Court: I could not handle the high drama and emotional torque of the plotline. Rich seems to have made a tradition of ramping up OOTS‘ Cerebus Syndrome even more than it already was on a regular basis; when Haley and V dropped an oblique reference to it back in Book 2 it sparked surprise on Websnark, the site that gave birth to the term, because OOTS supposedly had never gone through it, but an honest accounting of the strip’s drama levels shows that it had indeed gone through it as early as the 43rd comic – which didn’t stop it from going through it “for real” at the end of the book with the revelation of the gate plotline. Book 5’s length seems to be partly Rich’s way of signalling that the plot really was getting down to business at this point in a way it hadn’t even in Book 3 (in retrospect OOTS‘ Golden Age), but the Durkula plotline seemed to mark the point at which OOTS did what once was unthinkable, the thing that once prevented Websnark from declaring it to have gone down the path of Cerebus Syndrome: the point where OOTS‘ dramatic aspects began to push out its comedic ones.

What I didn’t anticipate was that Durkon’s plot would be the very first proper plot point in Book 6, and it would only take most of 2015 to get to this point because of Rich’s excruciatingly slow update schedule of late, coupled with a side-plot tying up Haley’s loose end with the Thieves’ Guild. Now barely 50 strips into the book, Hel has achieved the goal she hijacked Durkon’s body for – and Roy has finally figured out how badly he’s been played.

Although Rich paid a lot more attention to the advent of the 1000th strip than the multiples of 100 that passed in the last book, the real impact is still to come. There is, of course, no way Rich will allow the vote to go as it stands and have the world be destroyed when he’s less than half the first book’s length into the sixth. But the main other way for the plot to be resolved – for Roy (and possibly a dramatic entrance from Belkar) to finish Durkon off – also seems like it’s happening a little early in the entire plotline of the series, let alone the book, especially when the end of Book 5 and all of Book 6 so far have given the impression Durkon’s internal struggle would be the main underlying plotline of the book (in fact, there’s not much sense so far of where the plot will go from here, assuming there’s still at least one more book after this). Moreover, you get the sense Durkon’s plot isn’t over either; he had to have some idea that by dragging Roy here he’d tip him off to what his true nature was, and that Roy wouldn’t just stand by and let them carry out their plot. If you look in the last panel, he and Hel are both smirking as Roy swoops down into the chamber, giving the sense that Roy taking on Durkon was part of their plan all along. Perhaps they figure there’s no way Roy (and maybe even Roy and Belkar together) are a match for a high-level spellcaster with vampiric powers (if V were in the room with them it might be another matter) – indeed there’s a disturbingly-good chance that now is when Belkar’s long-awaited death prophecy kicks in (which is fitting considering the last time it was teased, it ended in the resolution of Durkon‘s death prophecy that started this whole mess to begin with). Or more likely, they figure Roy’s little escapade will effectively swing the vote in their favor anyway because of some obscure violation of the rules of this little convocation.

Thinking about it, I almost think the most likely way for this to be resolved (other than Hel being wrong about how the demigods vote) is for the real Durkon to wrench control back of his body at a critical moment – perhaps spurred on by Roy realizing his plight at some point and giving him some encouraging words – and nullifying Hel’s vote by switching his allegiance back to Thor at least long enough for the result to be made official (although given what’s been hinted before I’m not sure that’s even possible). This is especially the case when one considers the Order’s divine casting situation; Durkula roped Roy into this plot to begin with by noting that the team would need more divine power than he could provide in his vampirized state, and no matter what else for them to simply lose Durkon right now would probably make them too weak at the worst possible moment. While bringing some of the assembled clerics with them to Kraagor’s Gate is an option (one Roy has already made some progress on), a more likely solution is for Roy to accomplish what he thought he was coming here for to begin with: resurrecting Durkon. Or perhaps the Durkula plotline isn’t over after all, considering the other prophecy hanging over his head from On the Origin of PCs (now available in PDF form!)

Whatever the case, I think I’m back to reading OOTS on a regular basis, at least through the next strip and the resolution of this cliffhanger.

(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized familial farewells.)

After nearly three hundred strips – after no previous book had lasted more than 188 in-comic strips, adding up to nearly a third of all OOTS comics – and nearly four and a half years – nearly half of OOTS’ entire existence – the fifth book of The Order of the Stick is finally winding its way to a close.

Over three years ago, when the book was only just over a year old, we were introduced to another in a long line of Rich’s fascinating, multi-layered, complex supporting characters. His name is Ian Starshine.

We knew who Ian was (and we certainly knew his daughter) for some time prior to his appearance in the cast. We knew it was him that got Haley in the thieving business, we knew his capture was what was motivating Haley and led to her joining the Order of the Stick, and we certainly ladled on the speculation that his captor was in fact his daughter’s potential future father-in-law. But everything we knew about him came in snippets and flashbacks from Haley. Now, we’ve seen him in the flesh, so to speak, and we’ve gotten his story.

Ian was in the midst of trying to overthrow Tarquin’s tyranny when he got the idea to get himself locked up to recruit other dissidents, only to find that those that could understand Tarquin’s modus operandi got killed pretty quickly, and that once locked up, he couldn’t escape for good. More interesting than Ian’s story, however, is his personality. Haley has been a mess of secrets from the start of the comic because Ian taught her never to trust anyone with anything, and while Haley has been slowly but surely opening up, at least to Elan, in Ian we have the picture of someone who went through absolutely none of Haley’s character development. And once Haley gets a glimpse of that picture, she realizes that for all that she wanted to be with him again, her father’s teachings nearly completely ruined her life.

When Ian’s brother-in-law Geoff finds Elan lurking about, everything Haley says to reassure her father only serves to make him more convinced that Tarquin planted him to serve as their downfall, to the extent that he actually refuses to leave with her, convinced she and Elan would just lead him into a trap. Even though Ian’s theory makes no sense given the family history of Elan and Tarquin, it serves to illuminate just how much character development Haley has gone through, because it’s exactly the sort of thing she might have once been worried about before finally getting together with him (and even then only under the most extreme duress).

But even as it illuminates Haley’s character development, it even more so illuminates Ian’s lack of same. It may not have been terribly surprising that Ian would be suspicious of the son of his captor, but what stands out in this sequence is how much it shows his general paranoia. When Haley tells Ian of how much she’s learned to open up to people, all he sees is weakness in his daughter, weakness that allowed the son of a despot to get into her heart. Both of them reflect on the death of his wife and her mother, who urged them in her dying words to “be better than this town. Than all of this.” But they came to completely different conclusions on what she meant: Ian feels the work he’s been doing against Tarquin has been a higher cause than “looting rich folk”, but Haley sees in her mother’s words something grander, a call to get away entirely from the world of trickery and deceit she was born into, and help do something far grander than Ian could even imagine.

But if it were strictly about paranoia for Ian, I don’t think he would have been quick to insult Tarquin out of the blue when they met face-to-face. I think an even more overriding principle for Ian lies in something he tells Haley during their conversation: “You can always trust in family, for good or for ill.” Thus, the flip side of Ian’s certainty that Elan must be a spy simply because Tarquin is his father is that he is so confident in the abilities and trustworthiness of his own family that he’s equally certain that Haley is the true leader of the Order of the Stick and Roy and Belkar were there to help rescue him all along.

But ultimately, that confidence may not only be misplaced, but may be his ultimate tragic downfall. Ian was originally recruited to the Western Continent to oppose Tarquin by his sister and her husband, and Geoff has been sitting in prison with him the whole time. It’s very possible that Geoff has in fact been working against Ian the whole time, tricking him into getting locked up and making sure he never escapes for good – especially when you consider the first hint we got regarding the circumstances of Ian’s capture, when Bozzok, the former boss of both Haley and Ian that both burned bridges with, let slip in passing that he arranged for Ian’s departure when he gave word to some “friends” on the Western Continent. The only thing sadder than it turning out that the one person he most needed to be paranoid of was the one person he never suspected would be if, instead of showing him that blood isn’t the sole determinant of one’s character, it only served to make him more paranoid, even of his own daughter, if he survived it.

These last two strips, though, have raised the possibility that, in some way, Ian has become more trusting while we weren’t looking – or at least that his real blind spot is simply his fanatical opposition to and desperate desire to overthrow Tarquin. Most obviously, when Ian asks his new boss, a former opponent of one of Tarquin’s secret allies who was betrayed after asking him for help, whether or not he can trust her, she replies, “You don’t, and you shouldn’t,” and Ian responds, “Just the way I like it. I’m in.” But what may be more telling is something in this strip Rich may not have even intended. Elan hands Ian his own plan for overthrowing Tarquin, and Ian is pleasantly surprised at its plausibility, affording himself the possibility that Elan might in fact be on the up and up after all – despite very little having changed regarding what Ian knows about Elan. The Ian of earlier in the book might well have decided that the plan’s very plausibility was a way to attempt to lure him into a trap. The only thing sadder than his betrayal by his own brother-in-law leaving Ian untrusting of literally anyone and everyone would be Ian misdiagnosing his betrayal by his own brother-in-law as his betrayal by his potential future son-in-law, reinforcing his misguided blind faith in family above all else rather than exposing it.

It may well be that in this, Ian is a rather fitting mirror image of Tarquin – knowing what we know of Elan and Tarquin, for Ian to find Elan’s plan plausible would probably imply at least some familiarity with the tropes of story Elan and Tarquin are (or, in Elan’s case, were) so devoted to. Tarquin is so desperate to be a villain going out in a blaze of glory at the hands of his own son he spends several strips trying to kill Roy in hopes of making Elan into the hero he so desperately wants him to be; Ian is so desperate to be a hero he’s willing to sacrifice his own principles to go along with anyone who claims to be out for the same goal he is, even if his ultimate goal may well be to usurp power away from them and take control of the resistance, even if in a rather Tarquin-like behind-the-scenes way. (In this, perhaps this isn’t so inconsistent with his prior portrayal; Geoff did, after all, marry into the “family” much like Elan might eventually do.) Either could prove to be their undoing; one would hope that, if Ian is ultimately responsible for Tarquin’s downfall, Tarquin could at least appreciate Ian’s credentials for the job.

(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized casual filicidal vengeance.)

I think we can pretty much declare the Linear Guild’s relevance in this comic to be at an end.

I had thought Malack was too noble to continue following the orders of Tarquin and Nale for very long, although his long-term planning probably put the lie to that. But then, out of nowhere, Nale turned on Malack, throwing his staff into the distance and having Zz’dtri dispel his protection spell, allowing him to kill Malack by simply waiting out the time it took for him to burn to ash. This might be considered rather short-sighted, as it allowed Durkon to get his free will back, which he promptly used to kill Zz’dtri and rejoin the OOTS, but Nale letting slip that he had been planning Malack’s demise since he was nine years old hints at a far bigger picture that allowed him to consider the possibility of Durkon rejoining the OOTS an acceptable sacrifice for an opportunity that might never present itself again, especially given his worrying about Tarquin and Malack turning on him first. Many forumites are rather curious as to what it was happened when Nale was nine that led him to vow vengeance on Malack, and that was part of the reason I didn’t post on it at the time.

So after Durkon helps the OOTS take care of the sand monster, Tarquin shows up, having picked up Nale along the way, and takes the destruction of the gate surprisingly well, admitting that “I was probably going to destroy it myself anyway”. I’m a bit surprised Elan informs Tarquin of the existence of one more gate and appeals to his desire to preserve his empire, especially since he and Haley then do an about-face in this comic and resist Tarquin’s offer to teleport them to Kraagor’s Gate. (As an aside, given that Team Evil teleported to what’s probably the exact location of Kraagor’s Gate and that the OOTS don’t have much in the way of other options but to accept Tarquin’s offer, I’m starting to wonder if we’re set for just one more book, with the last two books having enough material for three.)

Incensed at Tarquin’s lassiez-faire attitude at the destruction of the Gate, Nale calls out his father for falling into a rut, and then starts gloating over killing Malack. At that point, Tarquin reveals how he was actually using Malack, that Tarquin had no intention of letting him kill Nale but instead hoped to convince their friends Nale was too valuable an asset (after Nale succeeded in capturing the Gate) and so put pressure on Malack to let him live. Rather than kill him when he had the chance, Tarquin was still loyal to his son and hoped to welcome him back into the family.

Nale, however, has none of it. Tarquin had hoped Nale had come crawling back and willing to accept his place at Tarquin’s side, but Nale is still the same man who clashed with Tarquin lo those many years ago. He had no intention of joining with Tarquin for good, only sticking with him in hopes of capturing the Gate and for long enough to not get killed. He still saw himself as his own man, wanting to build his own place in the world, one far bigger than what Tarquin had settled for, and this, coupled with his continued shortsightedness, proves his undoing, as Tarquin’s hopes that Nale would get his rebellion out of his system were the only reason he had let Nale survive to this point, and once those hopes are dashed, he has no reason to allow Nale to live any longer.

It’s a bit of a shame Tarquin was kept unrevealed for so long and the backstory of the Linear Guild so far out of focus, because it’s apparent that that backstory may be another of Rich’s great literary achievements, an almost Shakespearean tale of the often-tenuous ties of family and the hubris of youth, a story we just saw the climax of while only getting secondhand bits and pieces of the play leading up to it. I almost wanted to delay this post for another strip in hopes of getting more of that backstory, with the underlying motivation of Nale’s killing of Malack still out there. I can’t help but imagine Rich intended for a third prequel book centering on the Linear Guild and Nale’s original split with Tarquin, which may have been intended to be released in the middle of this book but which may yet see the light of day.

On the flip side, in less than ten strips we’ve seen the death of three members of this version of the Linear Guild; Sabine remains banished and Tarquin and Kilkil were only members as part of the ongoing marriage of convenience, not to mention how Thog remains MIA. Another reason I considered delaying this post by a strip was to gauge Nale’s chances of being raised, by Durkon (in either fashion) or someone else, and if he doesn’t it’d be interesting to see what might happen if he joins Sabine in the infernal realms. Tarquin actually seems to have outmaneuvered the IFCC here; it’s unclear whether they knew Nale’s plans for Malack (Qarr’s reaction to Malack’s death may or may not say anything about what the IFCC knows, especially given Sabine’s admission that even she doesn’t quite know what they have cooked up sometimes) or about Tarquin’s attitude towards his son, but if they knew about both you have to imagine they figure the Linear Guild has outlived its usefulness; a third reason I considered delaying this post was in hopes of seeing their reaction. Do they intend to bring the Guild back somehow, or is Sabine now going to be working on a different plan of theirs, existing primarily as part of their side and not the Guild?

I haven’t said anything about Elan and his place in this drama, although there’s not much to say about his pained reaction to Nale’s death, since we know he’s wanted to have a real family for a long time, was so excited about meeting his twin he ignored all evidence of his evilness until it couldn’t be ignored any longer, and had his suspension of disbelief in the world created by Girard’s illusion broken by Nale being perfectly fine with the re-marriage of Tarquin and Elan’s mother. We’d already known that despite everything, he was still conflicted about his family… and had some sort of plan involving Durkon, his father, and “finding a sense of good inside [his] family”. Was Nale also important to that plan? Did seeing Tarquin kill Nale change the way he viewed his father in some way, to say nothing of his experiences inside the illusion? I’m very interested in seeing how he reacts to his father after seeing this much conflict inside the family he sought so much. Family – both Elan’s and Haley’s (I have a post sitting mostly-written about Haley’s father and his paranoia) – has been a key theme of this book, and it’s perhaps fitting that this peak of drama would occur right as the book appears to be winding down.

(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized loyalty roulette.)

Remember my Gunnerkrigg Court review, when I mentioned my inability to handle intensely dramatic scenes? Well, The Order of the Stick triggered it twice a few months back.

The first came when Belkar delivered the news of Durkon’s death to the rest of the group and Roy, to put it lightly, did not take it well. I was all set to write a lengthy post examining how Roy’s extreme denial, to the point of threatening to kill Belkar himself, was incomprehensible to those who hadn’t seen the deeper context to Roy and Durkon’s relationship in On the Origin of PCs… but I couldn’t bring myself to reread the comic, certainly not the sort of close, in-depth reading required to write a post, when I had already only skimmed it on first reading to avoid having to go through the intense emotional swings that were the very reason I felt the need to post. I could have just as easily posted on the following comic, where Roy is just about ready to give up on the entire quest before Belkar of all people snaps him out of it, but it also didn’t help with the emotional torque problem.

Then as the Order are walking down a corridor, they happen to bump into Xykon and company and engage in a battle involving the anti-climactic death of Belkar and Roy using his anti-magic-user trick he learned from his grandfather in the last book to ultimately put away Xykon… just in time for it to be revealed to all be an illusion caused by one of Girard’s traps. By itself, I could handle this, though it’s another painful strip to re-read… but the illusion keeps going, showing all sorts of events happening in the aftermath of the story, all of which only served to convince me that none of it would actually happen by virtue of its depiction in the illusion, all the way to the anti-magic-user trick I was convinced Roy would never get to use for real, and which left me and many of the fans wondering just how long the Order was standing there, struck dumb by the illusion. When it got to the point of a comic depicting the reunion and re-marriage of Tarquin and Elan’s mother, I didn’t even bother to zoom in to the strip on my iPhone. And I hadn’t read a single comic since.

Before starting work on this post, I would have figured the wedding being depicted was that of Elan and Haley, because that would have made sense (Malack’s presiding over the proceedings notwithstanding). As it turned out, the rather unconventional choice, which solely reflected Elan’s own wild fantasies, had a method to the madness, as Elan became tipped off to the nature of the illusion by the fact that his own self-admitted “childish ideas that should never have happened” still ended up happening. This by itself could have inspired another post about Elan’s own self-awareness and whether or not it might serve as the catalyst for further character growth, but I never would have been able to write that post either; fortunately, Robert A. “Tangents” Howard did (though I personally think it’s just as easy to see this as yet another point towards Elan’s Mary-Sue-dom).

(I also might have had plenty to say about Belkar’s own fantasy, but that’s another story.)

So what else did I miss? Well, the Linear Guild shows up again only to discover Girard left a Mario reference behind, but the OOTS doesn’t over-rely on spells to determine the situation and uncovers how it really hid the gate – which prompts Roy to unveil his plan to destroy it, on purpose this time. Vaarsuvius, having now travelled to directly underneath them, attempts to warn them not to do it – but it’s at that moment that the IFCC call in their little “favor”, bringing us to another point I might have posted on. Despite much speculation that the fiends would use it to control V for their own ends, they don’t really need to; all they really need is to stop him/her from warning the rest of the group.

So yeah, just like that, Girard’s Gate is destroyed just after Xykon and company arrive, the other four members of the OOTS get their look inside the rift, and we finally get to what it is that did prompt me to post: a look at the ongoing internal dynamics within Team Evil. Redcloak and Xykon are all set to begin Round 3 with the OOTS when the Monster in the Dark intervenes, not wanting them to attack a group he recognizes as allied with O-Chul. I don’t believe I’ve said anything about the MitD’s character development in the last two books, even though, as this comic proves, it has as much to do with the future direction of Team Evil as anything involving the relationship between Redcloak and Xykon themselves. The MitD has always tended to come off as more amoral than evil, and I wouldn’t say O-Chul’s influence has exactly turned him good, but it has given him a connection and loyalty to someone outside Team Evil, a connection and loyalty with the potential, and in fact the actuality, to clash with his loyalties to Xykon and Redcloak.

Despite stumbling to come up with a good justification why they shouldn’t attack the Order, the MitD actually manages to convince Xykon that O-Chul is the real hero of the story, and that the Order’s presence without O-Chul is a sign that this is just a diversion to weaken the team, despite the fact they just blew up the gate right in front of them. It’s apparent that Xykon’s willingness to listen to the MitD is influenced by how pissed off he is at what happened when he stayed at Azure City so long, and his willingness to listen to Redcloak’s more sensible thinking is compromised by his role in that and ulterior motives for taking that role. Whereas before Rich used that relationship to keep them in Azure City as long as possible, now he’s using it for the opposite effect, getting them to the next gate as quickly as possible. Although Redcloak’s increasing spine-growth isn’t directly a factor here, one wonders if Xykon’s own increasing resistance to Redcloak’s advice, even his good advice, may provide fuel to that growth and accelerate any eventual breakup of Team Evil, regardless of who triggers it. In any case, Redcloak does manage to leave one last parting shot, summoning a sand monster to take out the OOTS in their absence.

Some of the recent strips have given me an impression of Rich trying too hard to accelerate the end of the book, which has lasted well over two hundred comics (the last book was the longest to that point at 168, this book is already over 225) and close to four years, meaning we’ve spent as long in real time in this book as we had in the previous two and a half books (admittedly not helped by the Kickstarter and Rich’s thumb injury), slowed down immensely by just how much of the 700s we spent in the Empire of Blood, but even in the 800s it seemed like Rich was too eager to take his time to get everyone set up at Girard’s Gate for a confrontation that basically amounted to nothing, a brief clash between the Linear Guild and OOTS notwithstanding. Regardless, we appear to finally be reaching the end of this book and setting up the pieces for the next one… which may well be the last one, if Team Evil are already zipping off to Kraagor’s Gate.