order of the stick

My Birthday (And Continuing) Book Wish List

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Last summer, I made a list of books I was interested in with an eye towards pseudo-reviewing them and discussing them and their interesting ideas, or at least exposing myself to them. As it would be unlikely that I could buy them all (books are expensive, especially non-fiction ones, often running $20 a pop!), even after getting more gift cards from Barnes and Noble every gift-giving season than I had heretofore known what to do with, I would run the list on Da Blog as a “Christmas list” during a run of political posts in October and hope the mass of new readers I was hoping to attract would get them for me.

 

Then my USB drive stopped working and the planned run of political posts was a big bust anyway. Now that my drive has been recovered, a month out from my birthday on April 22, I’m posting the list – with some additions – as a birthday list, even though many of the books may be less topical and less interesting than they were before (especially before the election). It may seem odd that I would ask you to buy stuff to give to me (as opposed to buying stuff from me), but it’s with an eye to future posts on Da Blog (I hope), as well as other projects such as my idea of writing a book on the impact of the Internet. (Even though in most cases I don’t have much time to read any of them.) Besides, many of them should be eye-opening even if I never get them. I may institute a direct donation system of some sort at some point down the line. (If it weren’t for my distrust of PayPal, I’d have one already.)

 

If you want to get me anything, e-mail me at mwmailsea at yahoo dot com for a mailing address. I’ve organized the list by some broad topics:

 
MASS TRANSIT AND URBAN PLANNING
 
You may recall I started my abortive attempt at a series of political posts with a brief digression into global warming, which led to a brief discussion of mass transit’s role in correcting it. Originally that was going to turn into a larger project that would last until the start of the platform examinations, and I still want to revive that project in some form at some point. (The brief comeback of the platform examinations may have contained what was originally intended to be a hook into that revival.) I have three books on this sort of thing already I was thinking of reviewing, but there are still more I’m interested in:
  • Who’s Your City? by Richard Florida
  • Suburban Transformations by Paul Lukez
  • Cities by John Reader
  • Cities in Full by Steve Belmont
  • Any book about urban planning

POLITICAL BOOKS

The first book on this list isn’t strictly “political”, but it still ties in to related interests. Many of these relate to the battles in the Media Bias Wars.

  • 10 Books that Screwed Up the World (and 5 Others that Didn’t Help) by Benjamin Wiker
  • Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News by Bernard Goldberg
  • The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain by George Lakoff (and any other books by the same author)
  • Right is Wrong by Arianna Huffington
  • Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren’t Fair (and What We Can Do About It) by William Poundstone
  • Behind the Ballot Box: A Citizen’s Guide to Voting Systems by Douglas J. Amy
  • Declaring Independence: The Beginning of the End of the Two-Party System by Douglas Schoen
  • Going Green: A Wise Consumer’s Guide to a Shrinking Planet by Sally and Sadie Kniedel

BOOKS RELATING TO MY INTERNET BOOK PROJECT

These books are interesting in some way in terms of research for my book on the Internet, and so they’re somewhat higher priority than the others. Some have the Internet as their topic, while others are interesting filters to look at Internet culture through, or unavoidably touch on the impact of the Internet. There are a couple of books I didn’t list, and if I included any that aren’t impact-making or at least critically acclaimed, forget about them.

  • Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World by Don Tapscott
  • Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet by Kathryn C. Montgomery
  • Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
  • The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
  • The Tipping Point: How Little Things can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell (and any other books by the same author)
  • Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
  • The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson

JUST FOR FUN: COMICS!

Hey, trying to think all the time is a good way to burn my brain out. As you can tell by the fact I don’t have as many thought-provoking posts as I probably should.

  • Any installments of The Complete Peanuts after 1970
  • Garfield Gets His Just Desserts
  • Any Order of the Stick book (this is somewhat difficult; the online shop is the most reliable place to find them, and even that’s not 100% reliable; certain comic book stores may have them, but not all; gaming stores – specializing in D&D and their ilk – are more likely, but in the latter two cases availability may be based on whether or not they’re in print)

Also, I’d really like to be able to play The Sims 3 when it comes out in June (unless it’s widely panned), but although the “Franken-computer” I have for a desktop was built in 2004 and was state-of-the-art then, and has been pretty close to it for five years, it only barely has enough processor power to play it and definitely not enough RAM, and I’m not sure if it has enough video RAM. I’d prefer not to have to get an entirely new computer just to play one game, but…

Because someone claimed Part V of “Webcomics’ Identity Crisis” didn’t count as February’s OOTS post. Also, mega MEGA spoilers.

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(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized four words… or maybe three. An epic strip deserves an epic post linked to from the OOTS forum, so look for a traffic influx.)

A lot can happen when you’re on a deserted island where the only other people to step foot on it are an imp, a pissed-off dragon, and three fiends.

If you’ve been reading The Order of the Stick at all in the current book (at least when it wasn’t focused on Haley, Celia, and Belkar), or even if you’ve been reading my OOTS posts, you know that Vaarsuvius has been undergoing a slow descent into madness out of his/her desperation to reunite the group and get Roy resurrected.

V has not slept tranced in a long time, with accompanying decline of his/her mental faculties, and quite a bit of physical deterioration as well, with his/her hair and clothes becoming dissheveled and (strangely purple) veins showing. He/she’s tried virtually everything to get something, anything through to her good friend Haley – homemade scrying spell, messenger birds, the works – but despite taking part in as many battles as he/she can to collect as much XP as he/she can, nothing’s cracked the Cloister she doesn’t even know exists (well, except the birds, but that didn’t end well). In the meantime his/her singleminded devotion to contacting Haley has led to becoming rather estranged from Durkon and Elan, and rather unwilling to tolerate any sort of distraction. This came to a head late in the 500s, the last time we checked in on that half of the Order, when Daimyo Kubota, chief villain for nearly a hundred strips, plotter to overthrow Hinjo, fresh from poisoning his ex-assassin Therkla to death, freshly surrendered to Elan’s custody, suddenly gets taken out by a single Disintegrate from Vaarsuvius, who asks, “Can we PLEASE resume saving the world?”

Kubota may have been a red herring all along, but his disposal is itself important as part of V’s ongoing descent. (And Elan’s character development, but that’s a story for another day.) Elan’s argument with V on the rightness of the move leads to V dismissing Therkla as a “bundle of experience points”, insinuating Elan had an affair with her when he categorically didn’t, and ultimately threatening to take out Elan himself. At this point, V becomes convinced (s)he could no longer continue his/her studies on the boat – not out of fear for retribution, but because of the constant distractions of having to deal with this quest or that one, and even more so, the lack of any help from Durkon or Elan (who (s)he doesn’t even guarantee (s)he’ll contact back should (s)he find Haley). Elan sends him/her off and covers for him/her despite having said he wouldn’t, and the real villain here, Qarr, takes off after him/her.

At this point – and this greatly added to the anticipation for #600 and the impact when it turned out to be a switch back to Roy and an anticlimax – it looked for all the world as though V’s infamous “four words” were imminent.

As OOTS has developed a rather complex plot, one of the guiding principles of forum speculation has been the prophecies given to the group by the Oracle of Sunken Valley. So far, two have already come to pass: Haley‘s, and Belkar’s. All in all, three prophecies were cryptic (Haley, Belkar, and V), while the other three were relatively straightforward (Roy (if unhelpful), Durkon, and Elan… although Elan’s leans more towards the cryptic side, and indeed is almost as cryptic as Belkar’s, it’s also not as conducive to speculation because people don’t like to think about the end of the strip). With two of the cryptic prophecies out of the way, that leaves V’s prophecy as one of the most talked-about single panels in the history of the strip (though Belkar’s prophecy got plenty of play back in the day).

Vaarsuvius asks “how (he/she) will attain ultimate arcane power”, and the Oracle responds that it will come “by saying the right four words to the right being at the right time for all the wrong reasons”.

For three hundred strips, nearly half the strip’s entire existence, that sentence has touched off almost as much debate as the question of V’s gender or the exact nature of that thing in the dark – and as V’s descent has progressed, forum speculators have taken to looking for any four-word string to come out of his mouth to, ultimately, turn out to be the four words that trigger “ultimate arcane power”, often completely ignoring the rest of the sentence. (To show how ridiculous it can get, one theory that was actually rather popular was that when V disintegrated Kubota, she actually said the four words as “Disintegrate. Gust of Wind”, the latter scattering Kubota’s ashes into the sea.) V’s descent into madness seemed to be a perfect moment of weakness, especially as #599 ended. Anyone could see what would happen next: Qarr would tempt V with the promise of ultimate arcane power, and V would say the right four words to agree to the deal.

As it turned out (and we would have to wait for an interlude with Haley’s group before finding this out), that’s not quite how it would happen… and it seems ridiculous in retrospect that the whole deal could be completed in a single strip. And we would have been a lot poorer if that was how it happened.

You see, Vaarsuvius may be sleep trance-deprived, but he/she’s not stupid. He/she can see what’s coming just as well as anyone else could. So when Qarr tempts him, not even with the catch being any sort of damnation (or hidden entirely), but merely helping him with “a certain project of my own”, V goes almost directly to the Disintegration finger. V wasn’t about to sell his soul over this minor setback; he’s going to solve his problem on his own, without any infernal assistance.

Funny how fast circumstances can change.

Right at that moment, an ancient black dragon shows up and proceeds to own V’s ass. She explains that she’s the mother of a dragon V killed nearly 450 strips earlier (nearly three fourths of the strip has passed in the interim), waiting and watching for V to first leave the boat and then use up all his spells fighting Qarr. But for her vengeance, she won’t kill V; that would be too easy. Instead, she’ll make V suffer the same pain she feels by eating V’s own children, bind their souls to herself to frustrate any attempt at simply reviving them, and leaving the material plane for good so V can’t locate her ever again.

The dragon pops out, and just like that V’s relationship with Qarr is drastically changed. Unable to come up with any way to save his/her kids even using Qarr, V is left practically begging him to arrange some sort of Faustian deal. Qarr warns him/her that the chances of success are low, the response time is long, and so will the process of filling out the paperwork even if it does happen, but almost instantly an envelope appears from the “IFCC”, and out pops three fiends in hoods and robes.

The fiends – representing the “Inter-Fiend Cooperation Commission”, out to broker a truce between the respective Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic Evil fiendish populations, who see V as a test case to prove their point – look pretty much exactly like the fiends Sabine was seen reporting to upon learning of the gates, to the extent that the forums are basically taking the idea that they’re the same as given. They offer to perform a “once-in-a-century” “Soul Splice”, grafting the souls of three powerful conjurers to V’s own, giving V power that would “dwarf that wielded by any ar[c]ane spellcaster who has ever lived” (since it’s double the power of just one fiend performing the Splice), which V would have complete control over for as long as V holds on to it. V won’t even get eternal damnation, only time with each fiend equal to the amount of time (s)he holds on to the splice.

Would you take the deal? To save your children’s lives, and their souls?

With regard to the Seven Deadly Sins, it’s easy to associate Faustian deals with Avarice or Envy. Someone wants some goal – youth, money, power – and is willing to sell his soul to the Devil to get it. Occasionally it’s Wrath, such as wanting revenge against some particular person or group. It’s far from unheard of for someone to sell their soul for rather benign, understandable ends, such as reversing a spell of bad luck (The Devil and Daniel Webster), where usually the problem (if there’s presented as being one) is having too much of a concern for earthly things rather than the glories of Heaven, or even (theoretically) for noble purposes, such as to give up your own soul for that of another or for a greater good. At first glance, this deal might appear to fall into this last category, where Vaarsuvius is sacrificing his/her own soul for not one, but two or three others, and the chief objection to these being the “four words” on the forums was that saving his/her family was hardly the “wrong reasons”. Personally, I felt it was sufficiently wrong given the larger context and the other priorities, especially if you read V’s motivation in the context of revenge, but that’s just heartless old me. But even if it was, that wouldn’t be nearly as rich of a motivation, or nearly as tragic a fall. This is an odd case of a Faustian deal being made primarily out of pride.

Already frustrated by his/her inability to find Haley and Co., Vaarsuvius is out to prove that arcane magic can solve his/her problems, and that leaving his/her home to study it wasn’t a complete waste of time that only cost her his family. There may well be several ways to save the day at less cost, and if there aren’t it’s probably better for V to just cut his/her losses rather than do something that could have far worse consequences. (Nothing says the fiends have to have his/her soul after (s)he dies.) But V is stubborn and arrogant, as we already knew, and it is proving to be his/her fatal flaw. He/she is not going to admit defeat – not for finding Haley (hence his/her problems with Durkon and Elan), not for saving his/her children, and in a broader sense, not for his/her devotion to magic. Even saving his family is secondary to proving herself right. It’s like the old saying goes, “pride cometh before a fall”, and V is falling, hard.

Rich drives the point home in the current strip (titled, in a deliberate callback to the Oracle’s prophecy and possible reference to the forumites’ problems, “The Wrong Reasons”), when the fiends present V with the alternative: kill herself, have Qarr teleport the head to Durkon and Co., be resurrected, and describe his mentor to Durkon so he can get a message through to him and get him to intervene. (Oddly, despite having a hairstyle similar to that that made me think V was female, Aarindarius seems pretty clearly male to me.) “But,” the fiends warn, “but then you would have to admit that your magic had failed you yet again. That a cleric and a monster had to run and tell Master to come clean up your mess. Hell, you couldn’t even claim to have come up with the idea, since we just gave it to you!” And the fiends know V would never do that – and the ultimate “four words” pound the message home further. This isn’t just a standard plot twist, or even a standard re-use of the Faustian deal. This is Christian morality meeting Greek tragedy, the journey into the belly of the whale (I considered making the line at the top “click for full-sized mouth of the whale”), a desperate hero’s hubris doing him/her in and leading to what will likely be a rather dear cost paid.

In Part IV of “Webcomics’ Identity Crisis”, I claimed that webcomics were not doing enough to break out of its routines, to become great literature rather than just entertain the masses (something all of comics are arguably guilty of), and that not even The Order of the Stick was “much more than a neat story for the masses, with plenty of plot upon subplot but not much in the way of subtext or meaning,” not really enough of that intangible timeless quality that would allow it to stand the test of time.

O great and powerful Rich Burlew, I hast forsaken thee, for I was wanting faith, and I was a fool to do so, and I humbly bow down before thee and beg thee for thy forgiveness. For thy story is truly great and worthy to take its place in the annals of great literature, and ist indeed in the upper eschelon of the great fantasy tales, and thy name shalt be spoken of in the same sentence with Tolkien, Lovecraft, and Pratchett. And certainly its spot in the Greatest Webcomics once the medium matures certainly seems secure now. Burlew has already presented a sort of classic tragic redemption tale with Miko, but that was fairly standard material by comparison. This is the sort of resonant, classic tragedy that’s actually rather rare in fantasy (off the top of my admittedly-not-immersed head, only Tolkien even comes close! Not coincidentially he’s the only surefire author I could think of for the above list, and the only one people could easily agree on), and it shows just how surprising that should be, how well-fit the trappings of fantasy really are for this sort of thing.

Cleverly, Rich has left some room for error as to whether or not these are really the “four words”, because two of them are really a stutter, they seem shoehorned in at the last minute and not really relevant or causal, and the fiends’ alternative is hopelessly convoluted, not guaranteed to work, and even assuming the fiends are telling the truth about the circumstances would take comparatively too long. It’s plausible – V says the four words, to him/herself, right as time is running out on the offer and time resumes, and for very, very wrong reasons – but the debate is allowed to go on as we wonder whether there’s even more ultimate arcane power awaiting him, the current debacle only sending V spiraling down the path of despair as he gets a taste of true power, leading to even more wrong reasons and even wronger reasons.

Who says comics can’t be art?

Because contrasting opinions are the spice of life.

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David Morgan-Mar wrote a reply to my recent Darths and Droids post, as I’m sure you figured would happen. It’s actually rather illuminating, so if you haven’t already, check out the comments to the original post.

Yes, I’ve read today’s Order of the Stick. Post coming, probably early in the morning. Like Vaarsuvius, I’m tormented by distractions everywhere.

Webcomics’ Identity Crisis, Part V: The Survivor’s Guide on How to Turn a Comic Book into a Webcomic

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(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized wildest imaginings. This line would have been so much easier if I had nabbed the previous strip…)

Finally, we get to the first of my reasons for writing this series in the first place. And yes, this counts as this month’s OOTS post.

Recently Diamond Comics Distributors, which basically holds a monopoly on distribution of comic books, announced some changes in their policy that have the effect of raising the bar for what might be called “independent” comic books.

They’re certainly not good – nearly doubling the dollar amount a comic would have to sell in order to be guaranteed a continued listing in Diamond’s catalog – but it’s hardly the first time Diamond’s raised its bar. Something about this time, though, has convinced people – as though the previous times didn’t – that Diamond doesn’t care about the little guy and only exists to benefit Marvel and DC – if even DC. According to Diamond’s latest figures DC only makes up 31⅔% of the comic market, compared to 46% for Marvel – basically, Marvel has a little less than 1.5 times the share of DC. (On a dollar basis, the margin is roughly 41% to 30%, so Marvel makes a little over 1.25 times the money of DC.)

Have a look at the most recent monthly sales charts for December and be depressed by the parade of “DC” and “MAR” in the publisher column as you go down. You can count on your hands the publishers other than those two to place anywhere in the top 200, in order of market share: Dark Horse, Image, IDW, Dynamite, Avatar, Boom!, Aspen, and Abstract – and the latter four all first appear between #176 and #200, and only Dark Horse and Image get primo placement in the front of Diamond’s catalog along with Marvel and DC rather than being tossed in the jumble with the rest. Even more depressingly, Dark Horse and IDW owe a lot of their standing to their Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel comics respectively, with Dark Horse getting an added boost from Star Wars; outside of Marvel, DC, the Buffyverse, and Star Wars, the highest-ranking comic is Dynamite’s Boys… at and a quarter of the sales of the top titles. Those are the companies – basically, Dark Horse, Image, IDW, and maybe Dynamite – that could survive if Diamond induced a contraction of the market to the point that it started having a practical constraint on the business of Marvel and DC, and there’s little practical reason to think that it couldn’t.

For numerous commentators, from Steven Grant to Christopher Butcher to Elin Winkler to Brian Clevinger, the latest changes are the last straw: it’s time for everyone else to bail out of the direct market as presently constituted, certainly in this economy, and move on to… something else. You could stay in the direct market and hop onboard the Image train and keep creative control while getting Image’s marketing savvy and catalog placement, but it’s far from impossible that Diamond contracts the market so much your title can’t get by regardless, and if it can Image becomes too conservative to publish it anyway. You could just do straight-up graphic novels, which as I mentioned earlier in the series are a form of infinite canvas compared to the 22-page monthly comic anyway, and send it to the bookstore market, but the bookstore market, as personified by Borders and Barnes & Noble, still has even higher barriers to entry, and still doesn’t give comics the respect they deserve. (When I went to Borders in Downtown Seattle to look for Reinventing Comics, the arrangement of the graphic novel section disappointed and disgusted me, with an explicit division between “manga”, “superheroes” and a single heading (rows include headings, which include shelves) of “other graphic novels”. Barf.)

Or you could go into a distribution mechanism where your presence is guaranteed even with a readership of zero… but where there’s little to no money to be had even with quite a bit of momentum.

Webcomics.com is STILL down, but in the comments to a post on New York Comic-Con (which for some reason I mistook for the infinite-canvas post I mentioned in Part III until checking Google’s cache right now, and may have made myself look like an ass in my own subsequent comments… oops, one way it’s a good thing Webcomics.com is down right now) Scott Bieser remarked that the new Diamond rules could lead to a mass exodus of “long-form” talent to the web, spawning not one but at least two posts (both down with the rest of the site right now) of advice to long-form creators on succeeding on the web. One of the two posts (the one that by all appearances went into greater detail) apparently was posted too soon to be indexed or cached by search engines before the site went down, and as it appears to be the more detailed one I’d like to see other webcomics bloggers’ take on this issue, but there’s still an interesting tidbit, worthy of further discussion, on the piece of it that I can see on one of the cache pages. I’ll get to that in a bit.

So, welcome to webcomics, comic-book refugees! Now that you’re here, what do you do?

First, before anything else, read Parts III and IV of this series and decide for yourself whether you want to go for the infinite canvas and join Scott McCloud’s revolution. If you do, you’ll probably learn more from McCloud’s books than you ever will from me, though I have a few important cautions in Part III. If you don’t, it’s worth it to read McCloud anyway.

Still here? That probably means you’ve decided not to pack your entire story into one installment that you read on a single page. That, in turn, means you’ve decided to put each page of your story – probably made to fit the 8½ x 11 format for easy printing later (or half-pages of that to fit on one screen, as McCloud proposes) – on one at a time. That, in turn, probably means you’re releasing comic book pages on a comic strip model, where you release one page at a time on a regular basis, and all the pages together make a single, coherent story. (You could release several pages at a time and change nothing, but…)

You’re probably going to need to unlearn much of what you learned about the comic book format.

Typically, learning from the ones that have come before you is a good place to start. Girl Genius is widely considered, if not the best, at least a significant trailblazer. Gunnerkrigg Court is worth studying too. But there are things both strips do that could trip you if you aren’t careful.

If you placed your hopes on the direct market in the first place, you’re probably used to the 22-page monthly “floppy” format (and in fact I’m assuming you want to make a story that continues indefinitely, rather than something that’s completely wrapped up in one book). That in and of itself is going to have to go; it’s now the individual pages that you’re going to be collecting in graphic novel form later. There’s no need to divide your story into neat 22-page chunks.

In turn, the way you think about those pages is probably going to be drastically different. You’re probably used to seeing the page chiefly as a part of the whole – understandably. But if you’re releasing those pages one at a time, your audience will experience them one at a time. Those pages have to stand on their own. You may be able to get away with massive, dramatic splash pages in print, but if that’s the only thing in that particular update, you’re giving your audience very little, and they may feel cheated. You have to move the plot substantially forward, or otherwise leave your audience satisfied, in every single update. (I don’t mean that you have to contort your story so every update has some sort of big dramatic cliffhanger, contrary to what some may have thought about my webcomics.com comment, only that you can’t have updates where nothing happens either. And if you’re going to have “cover” images for each chapter there damn well better be a VERY good reason.)

I touched on this issue when I reviewed Girl Genius, but it also applies to the Court, and what I said there bears repeating here: one “long-form” comic that seems to understand the difference between the webcomic format and the print comic format is The Order of the Stick. Even there, though, there are three caveats that make me wonder whether anyone has found the balance. OOTS is as much a humor comic as it is a “dramatic” comic, so Rich Burlew can and usually does fall back on a joke to end each comic; and two big parts of Burlew’s solution are piling on mounds of text and using the infinite canvas to extend an installment to two or even three pages if the story warrants.

(Also look at 8-Bit Theater, which hardly skates the first problem and doesn’t do much for the second, but never falls back on the infinite canvas to my knowledge. The Wotch is reliant on jokes but not too reliant on words.)

The latter approach, though, is one that you should definitely consider if all else fails – especially since the very fundamentals of how you write, especially pacing, may have to change to fit the web. Considering each page as an “issue” in and of itself means paying less attention to how they fit with each other (which is nonetheless still important, but becomes more akin to how each issue links with one another). In Reinventing, McCloud laments on the various contortions his story has to go through to fit the print format, such as stalling tactics. Such maneuvers won’t be entirely eliminated by the web if you’re not going whole-hog into the infinite canvas, but maintaining them for no good reason is a big mistake and will only be more noticable. You may find yourself restructuring your story to take full advantage of what the Web provides.

(But in all of this, remember that unless you’re already pretty successful, most of your audience will be reading your story all at once in an archive binge. Ideally, your comic should provide a satisfying read both on a one-at-a-time basis and all at once.)

There’s one more thing about translating a comic book to the web that bears mentioning, and it both ties in with what I’ve just said and serves as a segue to the next topic. Someone once said, “Every comic is someone’s first”. I had thought it was Julius Schwartz, then I thought maybe it was Mort Weisinger, now I see a source that claims Mark Waid. Regardless, it’s just as true in webcomics as it is in comic books, and that can be daunting when every page takes the role of what used to be a 22-page issue.

You could take steps to make every single page accessible to new readers, but it will probably force your comic to something closer to a humor comic and definitely will involve significant contortion to the story. More likely, if someone doesn’t want to binge through your entire archives, you can take steps to ease them into the story gently. Include recap pages to get new readers reasonably caught up on the story so far up to the start of the current chapter, or maybe even up-to-the-page updates. Eric “Websnark” Burns(-White) is insistent on the value of cast pages, even woefully out-of-date ones, in acclimating new readers into the comic as well. If your comic itself is done right, you can intrigue new readers into what’s going on right off the bat, while also piquing their interest on questions like “Hey, why is Character X acting like that towards Y?” and getting them diving into the archives to answer those questions and getting more questions, and eventually becoming completely hooked. (I finally became a fan of OOTS after being linked to a point just as the Azure City Battle was starting and it carried me basically to the then-current strip, and started me on an addiction to the rest of the archives.)

Building an audience is somewhat easier on the web than in the dog-eat-dog world of traditional comic books, but there are new parameters to keep in mind as well. Because there’s no solicitations, and you’re not a smaller part of the broader once-a-week habit of visiting the comic store, you have to set and keep a regular schedule for yourself to release each page. I recommend at least once a week, preferably more, or else it will drift from the memory of your readers. Even if you have an RSS feed, if you update too infrequently you may be asking your readers to do too much work to remember what came before. Select a certain set of days each week to update, such as Monday/Wednesday/Friday, and hold yourself to that, especially if you don’t have an RSS feed (or Twitter). 22 pages a month breaks down to 5-6 pages a week, but you may have to have less; you should have a substantial buffer if at all possible, and know the pace at which you complete each page and plan accordingly.

For several reasons I went over in Part III, but also because of some of the factors I mentioned in the preceding paragraph, webcomics have evolved under a comic strip model. Translating comic books to that format will necessarily involve some contortions. But is it necessarily true, as Tim Broderick claimed in the piece I can’t access even a cache of, that “long-form generally doesn’t attract as many readers on the web as short form”?

I don’t think so. There are certainly a good number of badly-done “long-form” webcomics, and comics where the necessary contortions may have produced an inferior reading experience. And long-form comics present a number of challenges that short-form comics don’t have to deal with. But comics that provide an unbroken thread of continuity from page to page offer one big advantage over “short-form”.

If you’ve been reading my webcomic reviews, you know that I typically take more kindly to a comic with a lot of continuity than a simple gag-a-day comic. Gag strips may give me a chuckle each day, but there’s little reason for me not to just read the day’s strip and be done with it, forever – no matter how much that day’s strip made me laugh. A gag strip doesn’t leave me waiting with baited breath for the next installment, waiting to find out if Vaarsuvius will finally say those prophesied four words that give him/her Ultimate Arcane Power. “Long-form” comics, done right, can attract a lasting readership less subject to certain ebbs, flows, and changing tastes than simple gag strips.

Broderick may be living in a time when long-form comics aren’t as popular as short-form ones, but with this key advantage, I think that as more long-form comics work out the kinks of how to work on the Web, the reverse will come to be true – especially with a potential explosion of new experimenters. Long-form comics may have to go through significant mutation to get there, but there’s a reason for all the short-form comics that have gone through Cerebus Syndrome.

I abandoned webcomics posts in the leadup to the election, and now it and RID may be the only two remaining regular features. Go figure.

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

I think I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for these OOTS posts, and I’m going to have to stop making them every month at some point. I’m thinking when I hit the one-year anniversary of when I started making them.

I have basically two left. One I sort of missed the window on because of Tangents, and which I’m not particularly interested in anymore because it was a little convoluted and weak and stupid. The second is the one I’m giving you today, and it too is a little crazy and stupid.

Part of the reason the current book has kind of been pissing a lot of fans off may be, paradoxically, that it is too OOTS-centric.

Honestly, “Team Evil” may be more popular than any single member of the Order. Xykon is downright snarky for an Evil Overlord, Redcloak is something of a tragic figure, the Monster in the Darkness is entertaining, and the demon roaches are always good for a side laugh. Checking in on their happenings used to be a regular feature in the lead-up to the Battle for Azure City. But we’ve only gotten one relatively brief check-in on them since, and O-Chul was the real star of the show there.

That may indicate that Team Evil may be in the process of being de-emphasized as villains, but if so, it’s not at all clear who’ll replace them. The Linear Guild, the only other major villain group (and entertaining in their own right – honestly, the three or four least interesting recurring characters might be members of the Order), have been completely unseen since their escape during the battle, the only real clue as to their remaining plans being Nale’s mention of “sneak[ing] off and capturing another [gate]”. Were it not for that, and the fact that an entire strip like this was dedicated to the Guild’s escape (and a few lingering questions, like just how Sabine is Haley’s opposite), one might think Rich had just written the Guild out of the strip entirely.

Nonetheless, I kind of wonder if the Guild’s influence is in fact being felt in everything going on now, or if we will in fact see them by the time the gang gets back together, and the reason for that is a result of my wild theory:

The Linear Guild is secretly helping the OOTS.

Nale heard of his brother’s existence and decided loyalty to his brother (he is admittedly Lawful) meant assisting the Order’s cause under the guise of opposing them. With Sabine’s help, he tends to know more than any of the Order do at any given time, almost to the point of being omniscient. In fact, maybe Sabine is the real player here trying to help Haley.

Now, there’s actually very little to back up this theory, and at least a little to oppose it, and it’s kind of masturbatory for me to devote an entire post to this. The point of the Linear Guild is that they are a set of Bumbling Villains(tm) whose schemes (unlike, and as opposed to, Team Evil) are never any true, real threat, and always fail spectacularly in an entertaining, comedic fashion. Nonetheless, it’s interesting to note that when Vaarsuvius noted the serendipity of the timing of the Linear Guild’s kidnap-Roy’s-sister plot in making sure the OOTS was in the right place at the right time for the Battle of Azure City, s/he was more right than s/he knew.

(My Latin teacher, incidentially, recently let it known that he absolutely hates constructions like “they” or “him or her” or especially “s/he” in sentences that could describe anyone of either gender, and wishes people would at least pick a gender for each specific instance, if not be consistent with which one. Personally, I pronounce “s/he” as s-he. In any case, I wonder how he’d react to Vaarsuvius…)

Every single thing the Linear Guild has done has ended up helping the OOTS in some way. It’s uncanny. Consider:

  • When the OOTS first “accidentially” met the Linear Guild, in that pivotal 43rd strip, and the Guild roped the Order into their scheme to crack open the Talisman of Dorukan, it nearly resulted in the death of the Order – but instead it introduced them to Celia, who in turn, accelerated their path to Xykon and indirectly may have helped make that “final” confrontation come a lot sooner in other ways. (Remind me to add a discussion of Celia’s present behavior to the OOTS post docket.)
  • As I mentioned in a very, very early OOTS post, when Sabine disguised herself as a blacksmith and sent the OOTS on a quest to find the starmetal, she arguably saved the OOTS from dissolution. And is it possible that she secretly knew the starmetal was real and that the OOTS had the means to succeed where others had failed?
  • As Vaarsuvius mentioned, Nale’s contacting Roy the instant they left the Oracle kept them busy for long enough not to go running halfway around the world while Xykon wiped out the Sapphire Guard and won the game. With a little assist from a drunk wizard, of course. If Shojo still has an able teleporter after the incident the OOTS ends up not having to spend another few days in the City.
  • Haley brought up another example during half the OOTS’ second trip to the Oracle: It’s because of Nale that Haley got her voice back, and that Haley finally got with Elan. Oh, and if Nale doesn’t leave Elan in jail Elan never becomes a Dashing Swordsman.

I could easily see a scenario where whichever gate the Linear Guild captures, between the other two groups Team Evil gets there first in plenty of time, but gets delayed enough trying to dislodge the Guild that the OOTS can show up and foil both their evil plans. If the almost-canon belief of the fans that Elan’s father is holding Haley’s father is true, I could see the meeting of the bunch, engineered by Nale, end up helping Elan, Haley, and the OOTS at the (apparent) expense of Nale and the Guild. I could even see a scenario – and this ties in to the prediction at the start of the discussion – where the eventual reunion of the OOTS happens because of the Linear Guild in some way. And even if my overall prediction is untrue, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Linear Guild and OOTS come together to stop Xykon’s plan at the final battle.

Maybe Elan wasn’t unintentionally ironic when he said, “Meeting the Linear Guild is the best thing that ever happened!!“

Okay, so for the delay this was a ridiculously short post. But no worries. The post I have planned for this Tuesday has been in the works for several weeks.

For some of the more overzealous forum members, re: 614: Celia may be ridiculously, stupidly naive, but that doesn’t translate into being dead meat. Just ask Elan.

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(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized minty-fresh breath.)

So my time this week has been monopolized by various other things, such as the whole college-football-tournament thing, and the webcomic post has been pushed to Thursday as a result, and this is what happens when I don’t have much time to write it: I fall back on OOTS and produce something fairly hastily thrown together. And still take much longer to write it than my schedule should by all rights allow.

So what the hell is going on with Belkar? I touched on this once before, but as just about every single thing Belkar does is being viewed in light of Shojo’s challenge to him, I think it’s important to establish a baseline for what that actually means.

So far, though more so in his first couple of strips back in action, not much seems to have actually changed in Belkar’s behavior, which has only stoked the speculation on what he will do differently, and how that’ll affect his much-prophesied death, and what it means for when that’ll happen. The general consensus, so far as I have observed on the forums (and as over-interpreted by me), seems to be that Belkar is going to toe the line and, outwardly, do everything Haley and later Roy asks of him, effectively turning into the ultimate team player, more committed to the main quest than anyone, appearing to have seen the light and turned good, trying to play the Great Hero, while only occasionally “cheating” somehow, out of sight of anyone else. And in an addendum that’s growing in popularity, actually becoming good in the process.

The most succinct interpretation of the matter I could find on short notice probably came from Robert A. Howard of Tangents:

One of the greatest flaws of Belkar’s character was that he has been a two-trick pony for the longest time. He was a violent comedic foil who had no social graces, no interest in blending in, and whose solution for everything was “stick a knife in it until it’s dead.” And it was getting old and boring. What’s worse, it was hurting the rest of the comic as well. The rest of the cast have undergone character growth and have had some truly intriguing stories behind them. Belkar? Outside of killing things, he was useless. The visitation of Lord Shojo (whether it was Shojo’s spirit, a manifestation of the curse Belkar was under, or even just a hallucination) ended up providing Belkar with a chance (and a reason) to grow, while staying fundamentally who and what he is.
Thus Belkar is going to pretend to have character growth. Yet I must wonder… in pretending, and while playing the same game everyone else is, some of that faked character growth may actually rub off. In the meanwhile, watching Belkar slaughter his way through a horde of low-level thieves, leaving the one girl alive after kissing her breathless, has actually become amusing again. What’s more, he may actually get to play the part of hero once again, and enjoy himself immensely while doing so. And while he is fated to die (according to the Oracle, whose death activated Belkar’s Mark of Justice to begin with), I can’t help but wonder if maybe he’ll gain a measure of redemption in the process… or at the very least enter into the Abyss ready to kick butt and chew bubblegum.
There is a bit of a problem with this interpretation, at least judging what it is by the first paragraph: it’s not necessarily new to Belkar. But in large measure it’s pretty much what I’ve seen presented elsewhere: Belkar making a show of being the hero, while still being his old self if he can get away with it, whatever that means.

Okay. What was Shojo actually saying when he made his challenge to Belkar?

For starters, he invites Belkar to play

The Game, the big one. The one that each of us plays every day when we get out of bed, put on our face, and go out into the world. Some of us play to get ahead, some of us just want to get through the day without breaking character. It’s called “Civilization”. No, wait, there’s already a game called that… OK, it’s called “Society”. Your problem is that you don’t want to play the game at all, you want to sit on the couch and eat Cheetos while everyone else is playing.
Belkar snaps back, “Well, why shouldn’t I? What’s the point of their Society, anyway? It never did anything for me.” Shojo’s response is that if he keeps mocking them and ignoring them, they’ll kill him.

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. The only reason he doesn’t simply kill the rest of the group is so he has people to back him up if he ever gets in deep, to be led to people to kill, because if he kills one the rest will turn on him, and as an audience to his deeds. (As I’ve said many times in the past, I have neither prequel book, but according to Wikipedia, the main reason he joined the Order in the first place is a variant of the first reason.) The purpose behind the quest doesn’t matter so much as “Those people? Bad. Take care of them.”

For further insight, look no further than strip #58, when Vaarsuvius gives Belkar Owl’s Wisdom so he can give Elan a couple last-minute healing spells. Before V dismisses the Owl’s Wisdom, Belkar briefly seems to undergo some actual character growth: “I’ve wasted my life on anger and needless rage, when I could have been healing. My eyes are finally open. From this day forward, I’m never hurting a living creature ever again.” (That last sentence would prove oddly prophetic…) With this piece of evidence, 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[s]” or not.

Interestingly, that Miko chase I mentioned? Might be a perfect metaphor for what Shojo was talking about. Belkar cared only about his own fun, and missed something far more interesting and important in the process. As many people have suggested, this whole episode may cast into a new light why Shojo afflicted Belkar with the Mark of Justice in the first place.

Belkar interprets “playing the game” as “show[ing] up and play[ing] by everyone else’s stupid rules”, and Shojo replies, “Of course not, my wooly friend [Belkar at this point has metaphorically turned into a sheep]. You can cheat.”

Nudge die rolls, palm cards, “forget” penalties… but you have to sit down to play first. As long as the people at the table see a fellow player across from them, they’ll tolerate you. A crooked player is a pain in the ass, but someone who refuses to play at all makes them start questioning their own lives – and people HATE to think. They’d rather lose to a cheater than dwell too long on why they’re playing in the first place.
The apparent implication of this speech is that it doesn’t even matter if the other players know Belkar is cheating, so long as he plays at all. It’s entirely possible that Belkar could continue to be the same stabby, backstabbing jerk he’s always been, so long as he gives a rat’s ass about what everyone else is doing, and doesn’t display a willful ignorance of the rules. But Belkar doesn’t seem to interpret it this way: “So, you’re saying that if I can trick all the other mindless drones into believing that I subscribe to their arbitrary moral framework, they’ll just leave me alone?” Shojo doesn’t correct him: “They all assumed I followed the Paladin’s Code, didn’t they?” That calls back to Shojo’s addendum to the “you can cheat” comment: “Twelve Gods know that I always did.”

Now, let’s refresh your memory as to the nature of Shojo’s deception. We first encountered him as a senile old fool who took advice from his cat. There was some evidence he wasn’t what he appeared, but only a speechless Haley seemed to catch on. As Shojo explains to Roy, he puts on an act of senility in order to shirk any public responsibility for his edicts, which might result in certain upset parties putting an end to his life. Shojo also explains that he is “the commander of the paladins of the Sapphire Guard by virtue of my inheritance, not merit. In other words, I command the paladins. I have never claimed to be one. … Technically, I’m a 14th level aristocrat. Heck, I’m not even Lawful!”

Shojo explains that he hides his true nature from the paladins to get away with acts he feels might be the right course of action but which technically violate the code the actual paladins swear to uphold – taking the Gates as an example. Shojo felt that with two gates down, there was a clear and present danger to the others, but none of the paladins would be willing or able to investigate or reinforce them without violating an oath of non-interference in the other gates, so he created a complex scheme to bring in the OOTS and have them do his dirty work instead, including misleading Miko as to the true purpose of the arrest and putting on a show trial with a largely predetermined outcome issued by Roy’s own disguised father’s ghost.

(Incidentially, this is why Roy is pretty much blameless for not leaving open the possibility that Xykon might strike against Azure City when consulting with the Oracle: that’s not why he was hired. Re-read #290: Shojo did not even technically hire the Order to reinforce either of the other two gates, only to report on their status so Shojo would have an excuse to, presumably, send the Sapphire Guard to do the reinforcing.)

For two or three reasons, this isn’t completely applicable to Belkar’s situation. Belkar’s evil, his only “responsibility” is to the OOTS, and he’s far from in a position to make any decisions, or manipulate anyone. He barely even has any “true” motivations to work towards while technically still following the Order’s “arbitrary moral framework”. Even if viewed from the lens of his desire to kill as many bodies as possible, it’s not necessarily in line with the Order’s goals. The point is that Shojo wasn’t pretending to have the good of Azure City, or even the universe, at heart. If anything, Shojo had the exact same goal as the paladins – but he still felt the need to be deceptive in the way he achieved that goal.
The Order of the Stick has a place for non-Good members. Haley has described herself as “Chaotic Good-ish“, and even before going insane Vaarsuvius had a decidedly Neutral streak. For that matter, there’s nothing preventing Belkar from achieving anything just from being Chaotic Evil at all – Xykon is Chaotic Evil, and he has his sights set on nothing less than world domination, yet oddly, the old Belkar probably would not get along well with him, as he wouldn’t care so much about the mission as about the next target to kill.

Shojo’s not saying Belkar needs to stop being evil, even outwardly. Really, nothing about the conversation says Belkar needs to stop acting outwardly evil; only the circumstances would determine that at any time. I think there are two more appropriate interpretations, and both feed into each other, and which is more correct depends more on where Belkar is than on what Shojo says.

The first of which is that Shojo wants Belkar to act more Lawful. Shojo was a Chaotic passing off as at least a reluctant Lawful, and it’s a Chaotic alignment that Shojo and Belkar have in common – rather important when Shojo starts the conversation by saying “We’re rather alike, you know.”

The second interpretation is that Belkar needs to stop acting like he’s above the alignment system entirely, and start acting Chaotic Evil.

There is a difference, although the TV Tropes description may be more helpful in illuminating it than anything in any “official” source (which may suggest it’s a wild misinterpretation):

Chaotic Evil characters might intentionally help the heroes save the world by doing terribly evil things. … Chaotic Evil characters are incredibly self-centered and evil, but can get along with good guys by being eerily charming at times. They are often crazy, but they don’t have to be. Only Chaotic Stupid characters will trek 500 miles to slaughter a random village for no reason. Chaotic Evil’s goals may well make no sense to anybody but himself, but he does have goals. He may “want to watch the world burn”, or prove that he’s the best, or the most feared, or get the most attention.
If Belkar were to strictly emulate Shojo’s example, he’d attempt to hide anything he did that might be seen as flouting the normal rules of society, evil or not, but otherwise do anything he wished openly as long as that still consisted following the rules. That doesn’t mean giving the impression of good – D&D 3rd edition does have the “Lawful Evil” alignment – just so long as he at least appears to fit in with his surroundings. But the second interpretation may be more interesting, and at least as backed-up by Shojo’s words. 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.

Of course, Belkar’s own interpretation practically matters at least as much or more as Shojo’s outward intent. But early indications are that, while he is turning into more of a team player on the outside, he hasn’t exactly abandoned his old ways entirely, and if anything, has only refined them. So what can we expect from Belkar in the future? A Belkar with a little more refined palate than Vaarsuvius’ “hate/lust” distinction, one who knows who his friends are and who his enemies are, one who appears to be a little more controllable in his dealings with the rest of the OOTS, but who’s still quick to slit the throat of any captured enemy and may even be more dangerous, in a certain sick, twisted way, than ever before.

(Hmm. Maybe I should take Shojo’s advice and do something with my life rather than post OOTS exegeses every month.)

For added effect, have “Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s entrance music, or something similarly badass, playing as you read.

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(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized sexy shoeless god of war.)

Yes, it’s a second webcomic post this week! I’ve got another planned for tomorrow as well, so you get three webcomic posts for the price of one this week! Consider it your little Thanksgiving “second and third helpings”. And no, this isn’t just because Robert A. “Tangents” Howard felt moved to comment on this strip.

I’m afraid I’ve been remiss in not commenting on the previous strip, a strip so epic and pivotal at least one person on the forums suggested it was originally intended to be #600 but Burlew couldn’t condense the story enough.

Perhaps it’s somewhat fitting that last week I aired the complaints of many an OOTS fan that has complained about the story lagging, because all evidence is we may be looking at the light at the end of the tunnel. (Incidentially, I never intended for that post to turn into an OOTS complaint, or even a place where I defended OGTS sufferers, it just ended up that way.)

Of course the Haley/Celia/Belkar half of the OOTS has been approaching their own goal for some time, dating back to the end of our last stint with them. But when we returned to them, things were going… badly. No sooner did the long-awaited cleric show up than their benefactor promptly sold them all out to the Thieves’ Guild. Haley started the cleric on contacting Durkon and then took off to… well… attempt to hold off her former friends.

So we finally got the battle OOTS fans had been waiting for since the end of the last stint with the Haley-Celia-Belkar group: Haley v. Crystal. Which turns out to be rather disappointing, with Crystal having the intelligence of a, well, pickle and all, but still ends with Haley bowless and down for the count. And Celia powerless to stop her.

This stint with this half has really been about Belkar. Belkar was visited in his sleep by the long-dead Lord Shojo, the one character so far Belkar ever came close to identifying with. It’s a standard “vision”/”message from beyond the grave” sequence, but one with a rather unusual moral: “I need to pretend to have character growth!” Shojo’s advice essentially amounts to becoming sneakier, less overtly evil, and staying in line with what others expect of him outwardly, but fiddling around with the rules when it suits him.

It’s a word of advice that has been debated quite a bit on the forums, with fans looking to plumb its meaning, or if it’s really any different from what Belkar was like before, certainly before Roy died when there were still people who insisted that no, Belkar really wasn’t that evil after all. Quite a number of people, including Howard, have wondered if faked character growth will lead to actual character growth. But the general consensus interpretation is that Shojo has effectively been saying that Belkar needs to act Good in order to get ahead. But I can’t help but wonder if what’s really going to happen is that – despite Shojo’s own Chaotic nature – Belkar is going to look more Lawful than strictly Good – playing by the rules when it suits him, avoiding getting caught, but otherwise still participating with those around him only because they happen to be the ones around him. We’ve yet to see it put into practice, but with Belkar likely coming to Haley’s rescue in #612, we’re probably about to.

The reason I was remiss not to comment on #610 when it came out has less to do with its epic, recap nature, and more with what actually happens in it, the scope of which I only recently realized. In a move apparently intended to appeal to the legions of Belkar fans on the forums, Shojo’s last comments to Belkar challenge him to figure out who he is, as more than a bunch of numbers and letters on a character sheet. Belkar ultimately responds by calling back to one of the Belkar fans’ all-time favorite strips, one which established a lasting nickname for Belkar likely to last straight to the end of the strip, perhaps even more so now – just in time for the cleric to hear, just in time for most of the Thieves’ Guild to start banging down the door, just in time for the cleric to take the Mark of Justice off.

To put that moment in perspective, we were first introduced to the Mark of Justice all the way back in strip 295. More than half the strip’s existence has been spent with Belkar under the weight of the Mark of Justice, unable to kill anyone or stray too far from Roy’s body. #610 is, in more ways than one, an analog to strip 393, which in almost as dramatic fashion granted Haley her voice back, but for Haley’s voiceless stint to have lasted as long on a fractional basis to that point it would have needed to start in the late 100s, and for it to have lasted as many strips it would need to have started with strip 78, the actual version of which was during the original Linear Guild story arc (admittedly after the Guild was gone and the last loose end was Durkon’s return to the group)!

Much of that time was spent with the Mark as a subplot and an inconvenience that, most prominently, reduced Belkar’s role during the Battle of Azure City, apart from the aforementioned all-time favorite strip above. Its role has increased in the current book, arguably starting with just how bloodthirsty Belkar became upon leaving Azure City, and kicking into high gear once it was actually activated.

If I have a quibble with how Rich handled this whole thing, it’s that the dream sequence doesn’t feel like much of a climax to one of the longest-running subplots in the history of the strip. Shojo’s message seems almost to stand alone, if not even a deus ex machina, disconnected from anything Belkar might have learned from being under the Mark’s control. Belkar’s last few appearances with an inactive Mark show he’s arguably regressed, and he can’t learn anything from its actual activation because it occured in the memory-charmed Sunken Valley. Even the lesson Belkar does learn is effectively how not to learn a lesson at all, and – pending seeing exactly how it manifests – it doesn’t seem to follow from anything Belkar’s experienced in “real” life either.

Nonetheless, it’s out of the way and Belkar’s on the prowl, causing even people who were among the loudest “yes, he’s very much Chaotic Evil” backers to cheer him on as he… well… let’s just say turns into Chuck Norris in the strip above. Even the previously scared-to-death cleric seems to gain a new level of confidence just from being in the presence of the Belkinator. Not only does he cut through no fewer than ten Guild members, he woos an eleventh and downs a tub of beer (I don’t care what it’s supposed to be, I’m saying it’s beer) like any big-name Hollywood action hero. Rich might even want to be careful about Mary Sue-ization! I can’t help but wonder if part of the cheering for Belkar has come out of a sense that at long last, after upwards of a hundred strips of angst, it’s now fun to read Order of the Stick again – and the slow update schedule until recently hasn’t really hurt.

It’s too bad Belkar’s eventual death has been all but shouted more than a few times over the course of the past couple hundred strips…

(P.S. After my suggesting several times that Vaarsuvius may have de facto kicked Durkon and Elan out of the Order of the Stick, it now occurs to me that perhaps just the opposite has happened, and V in fact kicked him/herself out with Durkon and Elan potentially about to rejoin Haley and Belkar. Which might suggest he/she may be slowly becoming a villain, and also seems to jibe with previous statements indicating V was a last-minute addition to the cast, possibly returning Rich to something closer to his original plans…)

If this post is full of the HTML code for an ampersand in hyperlinks that get broken as a result, blame Blogger’s “draft” post editor.

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(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized lingering resentment.)

I’m here to talk about a serious malady sweeping the nation. It’s called OOTS Gamer Theory Syndrome, or OGTS.

The malady is restricted to readers and fans of the popular webcomic Order of the Stick, and is caused by falling under the perception that the strip is actually a chronicle of a D&D campaign, rather than merely being set in a universe that runs on D&D rules. Symptoms are generally only manifest on the OOTS forums, and include referring to “_____’s player” and “the DM” (which may or may not actually be a representation of Rich Burlew), and interpreting characters’ actions through the lens of the “player” supposedly carrying those actions out.

It’s reasonable to fall under this perception anytime (I myself once proposed that the strip would end with just such a revelation), as the distinction can be hard to grasp for new readers (especially those already immersed in D&D), and to some extent Rich has played with the notion of a GM being present from time to time, but for whatever reason it has become particularly common recently, with virtually every strip’s thread (and a few others as well) eventually including some post that looks at what’s happening from a “game” point of view, despite Rich being on record in stating that there are no “players” at all, and despite evidence ranging from NPCs as fleshed out as any PCs (especially the main villains) to the very existence of the prequel books. Rich even made reference to the phenomenon in a recent strip.

One result has been a mere shift in terminology: “_____’s hypothetical player, if there was a player…”

It’s hard to figure out what’s causing this sudden move to proclaim it merely a game. Perhaps it’s a result of a few people happening upon and reading too much Darths and Droids for whatever reason. Perhaps it’s a result of impatience with the seeming abandonment of the megaplot.

Or perhaps it has something to do with the specific content. At least one forum member recently complained that the strip had traded in being “consistently funny” for “player motivated drama”. More than a few people, including one thread I linked to above, have compared the current state of the OOTS to a gaming party in disarray, with everyone upset at the DM and the DM himself slowly losing control of everything. (Oddly, although the interpretation of OOTS-as-campaign has become popular, the exact nature varies: some see the split as partly player-driven – possibly as a means of filibustering a main plot they didn’t sign up for – some see it as the DM railroading the players and wasting everyone’s time, and some even see it as being the victim of circumstances.)

That may at first be just a variant of the megaplot being abandoned, but consider:

  • Celia has effectively slid into Roy’s role in the Order, if only in filling out the Order’s nominal six members.
  • Within the current book, we have seen what has been happening with Team Evil for exactly one stint. We haven’t seen the Linear Guild at all. Not since the first book has any book been so Order-centric.
  • Similarly, Vaarsuvius appears to be the only member of the Order that cares that much about the gates anymore. (Well, and Roy.) Durkon and Elan don’t even seem concerned about reuniting the Order, and Haley, Celia, and Belkar (and for that matter, V) are powerless to do anything about it, and are a bit distracted at the moment.
  • The whole sequence with Roy’s pseudo-ghost seems more pointless than the sidequest itself. Roy can’t affect the material plane, the use of his looking down on the mortal world as a framing device has mostly been abandoned, etc. This strip may be the most pivotal strip of his time as a ghost.
  • Vaarsuvius’ behavior has been seen as out-of-character by many fans. Either V’s player is sending a not-so-subtle message to the DM to get the plot moving, or he’s been taken over by someone else. (This is undermined both by V’s decision to splinter the group further, and by considerable evidence in earlier strips that, if not un-Good, V’s certainly not Lawful.)
  • Previously, there was a fairly straight line, with only a slight diversion for the climactic confrontation with the Linear Guild, from the revelation of the nature of the gates to the Battle of Azure City. (As I may have mentioned in the past, the end of the Azure City arc could well, had it ended slightly differently, been a potential stopping point for the whole strip.) The tone of the strip now is actually quite similar to what it was prior to that revelation, and could be seen as a reaction to the considerable darkening of the strip/campaign that didn’t come that long before.
  • The OOTS has been split for nearly a quarter of the strip’s entire existence, and Roy has been dead for more than a quarter. As I’ve mentioned in the past, Rich has never been shy about shaking up the status quo, but this shake-up is literally blocking the plot from moving. If you don’t have faith in the relevancy of all this to the main plot – and that faith has been waning with every strip, especially those focusing on the Therkla and Thieves’ Guild subplots – you might think Rich had written himself into a corner, intending a fairly brief diversion to cool down from the ramped-into-gear main plot and going out of control. Forget a breather episode, this is an entire breather book and most of the forum-bound fandom thinks it’s overstayed its welcome.

Last time I wrote about OOTS, I said that “this section of the OOTS’ story is going to have far-ranging consequences that could prevent some of those goals from ever being completely fulfilled.” I was referring to V’s decision to leave the Durkon/Elan branch of the OOTS in #599, which I suspected could result in the de facto permanent removal of Durkon and Elan from the OOTS. That’s one far-ranging consequence that may be being set up, but what about everything else? What was the point of introducing Kubota and fleshing him out just to abruptly kill him? What was the point of the whole Therkla thing? What’s the point of what’s happening now with the Thieves’ Guild? What’s the point of stretching out the split itself this long?

Not only is the fandom starting to get restless about their ability to believe that this will all matter in the end, it’s starting to take several leaps of faith to link this to the main plot. Kubota was just a feint to introduce Qarr; Elan and Haley’s relationship is going to be strained; the Thieves’ Guild is going to become a recurring villain group; by the time the OOTS get back together Team Evil is already at Girard’s Gate. The mere fact I’m making these leaps of faith rather than treating it as a diversion is a sign of how it’s gone longer than most people would probably have expected or liked.

The OOTS has drifted off the beaten path before, of course. Their lengthy encounter with the bandits has had zero impact on anything that’s happened since then, but it came before the Order met Miko, let alone learned about the Snarl, and can be excused by the strip still being at least partially a gag strip then. All their encounters with the Linear Guild have of course had next to nothing to do with the gates (so far, but that will almost certainly end the next time they show up, given evidence here and here), but the encounter in War and XPs, besides tying up a loose end from the pre-Snarl era, leads to Haley getting her voice back and keeps the OOTS distracted enough not to run off to the wrong gate – which in fact, given some of what we know about Girard’s Gate and the potential of the Oracle’s prophecy to be twisted, could well be what’s happening here. (More on how the Linear Guild’s encounters with the OOTS has really affected them in a later post.) So far, it’s far from clear even if this will have any long-term impact.

It’s possible that Rich had over-emphasized the plot from about #275 (or even #200) onward, and that the plot has only ever been incidential to the humor. In this theory, people who are complaining about the pace at which the plot is moving are misinterpreting the nature of the entire strip. But if so, it’s a widespread enough misconception that at least some of the blame has to be heaped at the feet of Rich Burlew, because he created the circumstances that are now ruining people’s enjoyment of what might be, beyond the surface, actually a fairly entertaining part of the strip’s history. And if it’s not a misconception, and Rich really is taking a long time on what might be a comparatively small plot point, it may well be the most major blemish on the Giant’s record. (The first snag in a new fabric of reality, perhaps?)

None of the people complaining, to my knowledge, have ditched the strip. And I’m not among those who isn’t appreciating the strip for what it is at the moment. I’m not one of the players complaining to the GM. But it’s clear that the player mutiny is growing to disturbing levels, and it’s something the GM may have to address with more than a wink and a nod soon. Ultimately, the spread of OGTS may be most directly attributable to Rich Burlew himself.

I would have at least revised, if not done away with, the third-to-last panel. Awk-ward.

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(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized anti-climax.)

Once again, this post has nothing to do with politics, despite my spending two days and a weekend without a word on the subject. I should be returning to it later today.

“I bet everyone was expecting a big battle for strip #600.”

Apparently Grandpa really hasn’t spent much time looking at the world of the living.

There are a lot of things that people were wondering about for strip #600. Perhaps a return peek at Team Evil, with potential huge ramifications, or a look at some other faction we haven’t looked at for a while. Perhaps contact finally being made between the two halves of the Order. Perhaps the prophecied death of Belkar. The previous sequence of strips probably led many to expect either a confrontation or alliance between Vaarsuvius and the imp Qarr. The start of this strip led me to wonder if it was going to end with Roy being called to be resurrected.

But a “big battle”? Not given the state of the OOTS right now, where they’d settle for being in one piece. The closest thing anyone would have predicted to a “big battle” was a confrontation between Haley and the Thieves’ Guild’s Crystal. Maybe, before #599, a confrontation between Vaarsuvius and the rest of that half of the OOTS plus the remnants of the Sapphire Guard.

Since nothing big happened in #600 (unless you count the start of the switch back to Haley, Celia, and Belkar), it’s looking increasingly likely that none of the major objectives of this book will be completed until it’s about over. No resurrection of Roy, no union of the two halves of the Order, no retaking of Azure City, nothing.

Now, given the pace at which Rich Burlew writes, it’s possible that “it’s about over” may be sooner than many of us think. Certainly the union of the Order and resurrection of Roy are things that should probably be taken care of by the end of this book if they are to be taken care of at all. Those are things that need to be set up in turn, and that may take multiple tens of strips. Judging by the last two books, we’d expect this book to end somewhere in the 660s, which means we might expect one of those objectives to be completed possibly as early as the 640s. Or maybe the build will begin about now, considering how much into high gear both plots were starting to move last we checked.

But it’s becoming apparent that this section of the OOTS’ story is going to have far-ranging consequences that could prevent some of those goals from ever being completely fulfilled. This first really became apparent last strip, where Vaarsuvius announced his departure from the ship to find Haley and Roy’s body without distractions, referring specifically to Elan and Durkon. And announcing “I have no intention of returning”. And that he might decide to arrange a meeting between Haley and Elan/Durkon elsewhere… “but probably not”.

It may well turn out that with this action, Vaarsuvius just unilaterally, in an instant, without Roy even being alive to object, kicked Elan and Durkon out of the Order of the Stick. This is especially likely when you consider this strip, in which Vaarsuvius not only fails to grasp who Therkla is but comes to the conclusion that she was Elan’s active girlfriend (despite being present in disguised form when Elan brushed her off). If V can convince Haley of that idea, (s)he might dissuade her from pressing V to chase Elan and Durkon back down.

(Incidentially, early on in my reading of OOTS I had trouble seeing Vaarsuvius as anything but female, partly because of the hair… but as he’s grown more insane and his hair has become more frazzled I’ve found myself using male pronouns more often. Is that worth reading anything into?)

Now comes evidence that Roy hasn’t paid any attention to the travails of Haley, Celia, or Belkar since this strip – he’s still talking about that group having reached Cliffport by now. Which sort of makes me wonder if he’ll even be able to find them. Unlikely, but he will have no idea what’s been going on. (And neither will we. No way “weeks” passed between #572 and the end of our last look-in on Haley/Celia/Belkar.) In a more important development, Roy probably will even be confused by something in evidence towards the end of the last check of Haley and Co.: the curse of the Mark of Justice potentially starting to wane from Belkar.

And there are other far-ranging consequences that have been built for a while that seem inevitable. Vaarsuvius’ insanity won’t be fixed just by finding Haley, or even by finding Haley and a good, long trance, because the last strip seems to suggest V has given up trances for good. Belkar’s been afflicted by the curse of his Mark of Justice and “will draw his last breath – ever – before the end of the year. (That’s an “in-comic” year, not a real-time year, Oracle fans!)” Unless Roy keeps all his memories of what happened while he was dead, including his memories of his conversation with the Oracle, it’s likely that, at the least, something important will happen before he’s resurrected.

It is even entirely possible that no one’s predictions on the future or ending of the comic are correct, because they all assume that the composition of the Order at the end of the strip will consist of some combination of Roy, Haley, Durkon, Vaarsuvius, Elan, and Belkar, and almost always all of the above. The revelation that Belkar’s death would come “before the end of this [in-comic] year” first put a wrench in those plans, but one could easily deal with that. But now that it’s possible that, for the moment, Elan and Durkon are no longer members of the Order, we could be looking at a semi-full-fledged Order of the Stick at the end of this book that shares only Roy and Haley with the Order of the first 500 strips or so (with V insane or even a god, Belkar dead, and Celia officially one of the new members), one that spends as much if not more time trying to find and rope back Elan and Durkon than trying to foil Xykon’s plot. And the prospect of a very different Order of the Stick becomes especially chilling when you consider the Oracle’s prediction of a “happy ending – for [Elan], at least”. If Elan is no longer a member of the Order, what does that say about the Order?

And who’s to say this wasn’t an incredibly important strip… in its very lack of importance?

Four straight OOTS posts! Four straight!

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(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized vigilante justice.)

I can’t tell if this is because I’m starting to succumb to my temptations to post on every edition of OOTS, or just because things are really ramping up in anticipation of the 600th strip.

But it certainly seems odd that a villain built up as much as Kubota has would be wiped out of the plot that easily. Of course, this is hardly the end; Qarr still lurks behind the scenes (and who knows who he represents), for one thing, and Vaarsuvius almost certainly would be brought in for his/her own trial if there’s even one supporter of Kubota left (and we did see a ninja seemingly disappear from the fight a few strips back), and maybe even if not – with, if the general consensus on the forums is to be believed, potentially massive consequences.

(If Elan is true Chaotic Good, he sure as hell won’t be the one bringing charges against V, freaked-out look aside.)

More interesting is what this says about V’s state of mind, which for nearly the past hundred strips has been slowly deteriorating as a result of his/her single-minded quest to find Haley and return her, hopefully with Roy or his body in tow, and go ahead and include Belkar if he’s there as well. Whatever moment (s)he doesn’t spend on some harebrained scheme to find them is spent on boosting his/her level to the skies to further advance those goals even more.

So it’s interesting to read his/her last line: “Now can we PLEASE resume saving the world?”

Now, V has said in the past that “any attempt to locate and resuscitate Sir Greenhilt is also the most reliable means of finding Girard’s Gate”, which would be the next step in “saving the world”, but it seems obvious that V would probably have nothing to do with any trial, and everyone else would only have something to do with his/her quest insofar as they could find things for him/her to fight and gain experience. Which, it would seem, giving Kubota a chance to win aquittal may be the better way to go. (I mean, V just vanquished a gigantic demon summoned by Qarr as a distraction. No matter how high level Kubota may be, he can’t compare to a massive demon whose toe is about as big as Durkon.)

So is this a sign that V has finally gotten into contact with Haley? That (s)he has given up the hunt and intends to move on without her or Roy, taking Hinjo and the in-exile government of Azure City instead? Something else? Am I reading too much into a throwaway line?

Well, I’m certainly eagerly anticipating the next episode, at any rate. Then again, I eagerly anticipate every episode.

(PS: I linked to this post from the OOTS forums, so there’s a short-term bump going on here.)