Order of the Stick

[Hope_Caswell]

Not much to say, just glad the chase is continuing. (Hopefully Serini didn't know about V's scroll.)

[Krulle]

Pretty sure she does have a fall back plan for even such a situation.

Also, well done Belkar, good thinking (in making itmlook as if on purpose and not just outrageous outburst of frustration).

[Hope_Caswell]

Update!

1249 - Rate A Leaving

Not going to put a spoiler on this, because although it is a revelation, it's really just spelling out what has already been alluded to.

Sure, Serini can keep pulling out more monsters and magic items to keep the Order off base, but the harder she works to try and defeat them, the more inescapably obvious it becomes that she should have worked with them from the start. And in this exchange, she finally blurts out why she's acting antagonistically here. Ironically, it's a blend of trauma and arrogance, which I think we see a lot of in real life these days, but which is rarely invoked in fiction. Here's a person who was hurt, and broken, and scarred in ways she'll never recover from...in part because she pridefully assumes that nobody ever could. It couldn't possibly just be that SHE was weak, that another person who was crippled by Xykon wouldn't fear him the way she does. No, obviously, the fate she succumbed to is obviously so awful that you HAVE to run away in screaming terror instead of actually trying to fight back.
Otherwise, you're admitting that it was partly your own fault that you ended up in this state...either because you could have stopped the horrible thing from happening, or because you could have processed the trauma in some way other than to spend the entire rest of your life believing it was even *worse* than it factually, objectively was. And some people really can't stand the thought that, even with the inevitable potential for disaster in the world, they are still ultimately responsible for protecting themselves.

We think of ego or narcissism as a dominant, swaggering thing, but it's also very possible to be arrogant and self-assured about a state of learned helplessness, and that's very much what we see here. I think there are some pretty obvious metaphors at work in this situation, but it also works at face value without that extra reading-into-it that I find myself doing here. Had this been an actual D&D campaign, it seems clear that Serini was played in a past group by an *expert* min-maxer, and now the GM is using her as an NPC, possibly even getting the original player involved, but asking them to try as hard as possible to *lose* the game instead of winning it. It makes her a really neat foil to Belkar, who has that same kind of "brain-damaged cleverness" as Roy referred to it.

I also find myself hoping that Minrah will somehow make it past Sunny and show up here, so she and the paladins can do some kind of "this is about more than who's an NPC" thing. As presumably a former PC (however exactly that works in the extended metaphor of a world created intentionally by its gods as a self-aware parody), it makes sense for Serini to think of the Xykon ambush situation in terms of this being her own story, and now she thinks her heroic role is to prevent a disaster she sees as inevitable. Much as Belkar helped undermine vampire Durkon by seeing through the genre convention of a stoic good-guy with "extreme hardcore introspection", Serini is primed for another such speech from him, with Minrah also having major things to say on the topic.

[Krulle]

New update!
page 1250 - Dive In

Good question, Serini.
I'd also love to know what a "Ray-Zergo" is.
I know what *GO! GO!*s are, and how to *DANCE* with 'em.
But a "Ray-Zergo"?
Is it family of of the fish rays, which look like they're flying?

[Hope_Caswell]

Well, it's official. Oots has finally JUMPED THE SHARK.

[RocketScientist]

That was great.

[Hope_Caswell]

New update!
page 1251 - Bite Sized

That was...less conclusive than I'd hoped. I'm very ready for this Serini sidequest to wrap up so that we can get back to Xykon-thwarting.

[Krulle]

I liked the ending discussion on the page, although it contributes little to the story, besides distracting Belkar and Haley....

[Krulle]

New update!
page 1252 - Tied Up Nicely

The bard and his talking....

[RocketScientist]

Elan is underappreciated.

[Hope_Caswell]

Well it's about Frig'gin time. Also, called it:

I'm having a very hard time getting a read on Sunny's personality here. Before it seemed pretty clear, but this strip is quite confusing, particularly the exchange at the end. Still, I'm hoping Elan can pull this one off with pure Charisma+Perception, no magic required, to get the Eye-Thing to realize they're not enemies after all.

(are my old posts disappearing or something? I could have sworn I had 40 before this, like a couple of times.)

[RocketScientist]

(are my old posts disappearing or something? I could have sworn I had 40 before this, like a couple of times.)

That's weird. They shouldn't be, but keep an eye on it and let me know if they are.

[Krulle]

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Page 1253 - Catching Up

Finally O-Chul and Lien are unchained...

[Hope_Caswell]

Can't believe it took me a week to get around to reading this one after having noticed it. Gawd I've been busy.

Hrm, I rather assumed the arrow that shot Roy was dosed with the amnesia potion; I was really looking forward to having him wake up in a dungeon by himself with no memory, and wander off and get into trouble of various sorts. But apparently he just got a garden variety knockout poison (possibly obtained from Drow, or more likely Driders who killed a Drow and took her stuff). So the gang's all back together, possibly with a Thing-With-The-Eyes ally, if they can ever get Serini calmed down enough that she'd sign off on Sunny helping the Order actually beat the villain that she was so convinced they couldn't.

[Krulle]

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page 1254 - Changed Circumstances


I like her reasoning why she did what she did.
It's a bit bonkers, but I can't invalidate it completely.

[Hope_Caswell]

"bonkers" indeed, lol.

Not much to say, I'm just glad we're making progress.

[Krulle]

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page 1255 - And Poorly Lit Signs


Why would Serini believe them?
What did they smoke to partake in a God's Council?
Why would a non-cleric be allowed to partake?

[Krulle]

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page 1256 - Eye to Eye


Gods are thugs, without puppy eyes.

[Hope_Caswell]

At last, the alliance I prophecied is on. Time for the real final boss confrontation.

[Krulle]

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page 1257 - Mental Block

Beautiful use of the fourth wall to censor Roy's speech bubbles.

Is the third image in panel 2 the snarl?
Hopefully not, because that means the Beholder Sunny has seen/glimpsed the snarl.... :(
Hopefully it's just one of its first tries, trying to draw a picture of itself.

[Hope_Caswell]

One of the pictures does indeed resemble the Snarl (although the eye color is wrong, and you would think Sunny would pay attention to such things). It might be a coincidence, but it's also possible that Sunny has access to some weird font of knowledge because of his/her/its nature as a Thing With The Eyes. In the canon D&D universe, the Eye Tyrants have a deity known as the Great Mother, and I could see this version having a more literal representative, who like Hela is not normally part of the affairs of the gods, but might have opted to take an interest in what's going on here by sending a dream vision or something to Sunny. Then again, maybe Sunny just coincidentally made up a picture of a scary monster while scribbling with crayons. Not sure how much we can read into things like this.

In any event, it looks like Roy's ambush is spoiled. Maybe now they can take their time about planning a more strategic confrontation.

[RocketScientist]

Yeah, I don't think it's supposed to be Sunny. It appears to have (only) two eyes.

[Krulle]

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Page 1259 - By Size, Color, and Number of Holes

[Krulle]

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Page 1260 - Stew you

So, it's not Garfield under the umbrella?

Anyway: change of point of view.


Last panel is also interesting in how Xykon views his allies.

[RocketScientist]

I wonder where Serini recruited all the dungeon dwellers. Or do they just show up when you build a dungeon?