17th October, 2013: No!

[stevedj]

Okay, can Ruby like, catch a horrific disease and then get attacked by several Mr. Fingers' at once? Seriously? Because that was really awful of her.

Wasn't the fact that there was true love between MM and Kin the reason total oblivion didn't work in the first place?
Wouldn't Ruby's actions to remove that love from the equation bring back Psymax or at the very least doom the maze to total oblivion.

Along these lines, maybe that hole Ruby is sitting next to at this instant could just start opening wider... and Ruby just conveniently falls in... Good riddance!

[willpell]

Obviously Ruby doesn't think so, but trust in MinMax is a pretty rotten thing to take away from Kin, IMO, and that's the tragedy.

Now that I think about it, it's a bit odd that a battle-spec'ed Ruby would have enough Sleight of Hand skill to steal the necklace at all. And I still think the whole "Kin is based on my mom" thing makes it seem strange that Thunt would sabotage the relationshp, even for Rule of Drama.

a) She is a traumatised victim of violence, basically is slightly less than capable of rational thought on the topic of "Kins being trusting of males". In a real way she isn't capable of being blamed for this, any more than we would blame a burn victim for throwing water in a smokers face. It is bad behaviour, and disrespectful of the targets autonomy, but really, they are a moral cripple at that point.

No. No, fuck that, a thousand times no. This is exactly what people who are looking for an excuse to justify their actions want to hear. Anyone can come up with some explanation of why they aren't responsible for their actions, and the result is a society where nobody acknowledges personal responsibility, and people do things like sue their parents for not loving them enough. Nobody gets to escape moral culpability for their actions just because they're a little fucked up in the head - we all have our own issues, and there's no excuse for not rising above them.

b) Her intent wasn't to harm either Minmax OR Kin, the opposite in fact.

I'm pretty sure her intent WAS to harm Minmax, because he's a filthy brutal human male warrior and therefore little different from Dellyn. She thinks she's protecting a fellow Kin from him, by denying her the option to have a feeling that Ruby herself is clearly incapable of. I side with the earlier poster who says Ruby deserves to get her leash held again.

c) Killing people is bad behaviour. Worse than interfering with their love life or memories.

That is a matter of opinion.

Death is permanent

Resurrection spells.

and terrible.

Good souls go to the paradisical Higher Planes. The only reason killing such people isn't doing them a flat-out favor is that it risks exterminating Good on the material plane and thus shifting the cosmic balance toward Evil, eventually dooming the Heavens to be overrun.

[Motorcycle]

Well I am reduced to feeling total rage & extremely sorry at the same time. Rage at Ruby for being a "I know what's best for you so I'm going to ignore anything you say" bitch & sorry for Minmax. Poor guy just seem to get to keep any happiness. Finds out a guy he looks up to is a dink, other things I am too tired to recall, gets his kiss interrupted, & now he's effectively lost Kin.

[Iron Sun 254]

First off, this broke my heart.

Secondly, I don't think their feelings are gone, maybe altered, but not gone. Kin was in the act of asking them to come with her, i.e. back to her home. It was an act that would have taken extreme trust, trust born of the knowledge that despite the fact that one human treated her unimaginably bad, another puts her feelings first. However, "feelings mostly intact" is much, much harder than "feelings gone" because Minmax is now going to lose the person he loves, maybe forever, as opposed to just having his feelings disappear.

I hope that this doesn't end, I hope they work it out, but I think it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

[ForgetsOldName]

The pants were not just destroyed, they were obliterated. Minmax never bought them. He may have been in a shop in Brassmoon, but they didn't have any pants for sale there. The necklace never existed. Minmax never made it. He did give her a party with mice, but he didn't think of making a gift. That said, they figured out why Minmax was naked, and they should be able to figure this out if they go over it a few times.

[Loyal Backstabber]

Since mist people seem to agree that Thunt feeds on our sorrows and Ruby should fall into the oblivion hole, I'm just going to point out something: Kin says that the teapot teleports through magical tea, but they don't have any tea leaves or hot water. This means that the teapot probably can make the tea from nothing, which makes me wonder why you need to brew it.

Well, now that that's said, I'm off to the MoM. Infinite tea supply, here I come!

[Alarikun]

The pants were not just destroyed, they were obliterated. Minmax never bought them. He may have been in a shop in Brassmoon, but they didn't have any pants for sale there. The necklace never existed. Minmax never made it. He did give her a party with mice, but he didn't think of making a gift. That said, they figured out why Minmax was naked, and they should be able to figure this out if they go over it a few times.

-.- Pretty sure it's 'scratching the surface of reality' for the Oblivion Holes. The only thing they did is remove the memory of him buying pants, and remove them. Technically he still bought them, and they existed up until the point he threw them into the hole. It's just that the memories are altered. Hell, I'm fully convinced that, if they were to go back to that city and ask the shop-owner, he would remember selling the pants to Minmax... because he's outside of the Maze of Many, and likely the "Oblivion-Hole" influence.

That said, Kin is smart. Unbelievably smart. If Minmax persists, I think she will figure it out. He just needs to not give up...

But god... his face in the last panel... ugh... so sad....

[IonDragonX]

Either way, I wish Kin had realized that she HAD indeed had a reason for trusting Minmax. You'd think that her saying that she trusted him because of "this" would be enough evidence that something fell into an oblivion hole. Maybe she'd think that something he had given her had just slipped off into the hole during the climb or something.

She knows something is wrong. The confusion in her eyes at the end show that she's thinking fast. Unfortunately, a lot of emotions are in flux as well (for no reason she can understand right now) therefore her thinking is very inefficient.

[IonDragonX]

The necklace may have been a catalyst, but the feelings both felt were real. Minmax has done lots of things that could help kindle the same feelings, it's just Kin's logical mind that's confusing her now. She will still remember Her Birthday party, with the "live mice", him rescuing her from the upside-down growing trees, and everything else that has happened, and while the Necklace was important, it wasn't the only thing on which her feelings were based. She will also remember the "Love is annoying my calculations" monologue from Psimax.

Your post has struck me with a suspicion.

Kin is on a quest to give an object to her tribe. What if that tribe holds very specific consequences of gifting physical objects? As she held her birthday present (which her tribe shuns, apparently) she burst into tears and said, "This is the most wonderful thing anyone has ever done for me!" The emphasis on the for me. She has no description of her father. IIRC, children aren't parented they are amalgamated by the tribe. What if her tribe only awards a sense of the self after they have 'gifted' something to the tribe itself? (initiation) Before that, perhaps they are the lowest of the low classes, with no rights to anything, much less any property? (and therefore cannot receive gifts)

Minmax might have rolled a critical strike to her social system and moral compass by giving her a rock necklace with her misspelled name scratched into it. Think Dobby and his sock, here.

[Rayston]

I have a half formed theory in my head that in the near future when MinMax reaches for Oblivious that is going to have some sort of consequence related to the Necklace.

Think about it, he will be reaching into the past, into a time in which he and Kin had "seen" eachother. Maybe this will cause him to remember the necklace. Then because they are linked via the "seeing" Kin will remember as well.

Making the line "Remember Me?" have multiple meanings. Perhaps a line echoed throughout time and space saying "Remember Me?" to Kin. Causing her, well to remember him. (remember in my theory he is saying this to her twice, once via the sight in what will then be "current time" and simultaneously she will remember having heard it from the future, this could be a powerful way to overcome oblivion).

Kin could then theoretically use the teapot to go directly to MinMax (sacrificing her mission in the process, love often requires sacrifice).

[Jangers]

I had to read the comic twice. I couldn't believe it.

Ruby didn't agree with the decision Kin was making, so she acted to take the ability to make that decision away from her. Just like the collars have done to both of them. She essentially mind-raped Kin.

Shit like that has been done to Ruby. She knows how awful it is. The fact that she would be able to do something like this to Kin is horrifying.

I reached the same conclusion many of you have reached: She needs to die now.

[willpell]

The pants were not just destroyed, they were obliterated. Minmax never bought them. He may have been in a shop in Brassmoon, but they didn't have any pants for sale there. The necklace never existed. Minmax never made it. He did give her a party with mice, but he didn't think of making a gift. That said, they figured out why Minmax was naked, and they should be able to figure this out if they go over it a few times.

You must not remember the blog entry where Thunt clarified how the oblivion holes work. It's not that the pants were never manufactured or anything; they're only very shallowly obliterated from reality, and it's not hard to follow a chain of consequentiality and figure out that something must be missing. Plus there's the Forgath's Beard thing. If Kin went and touched the reconstruction gear of the machine again, she'd probably get a glowy green Ken-neclace and remember that it had been lost. (That said, not knowing that she's missing anything, she has no real reason to go touch the gear, as Forgath did accidentally.)

Well, now that that's said, I'm off to the MoM. Infinite tea supply, here I come!

But you'd keep teleporting away after each drink....

[Davis8488]

-.- Pretty sure it's 'scratching the surface of reality' for the Oblivion Holes. The only thing they did is remove the memory of him buying pants, and remove them. Technically he still bought them, and they existed up until the point he threw them into the hole. It's just that the memories are altered. Hell, I'm fully convinced that, if they were to go back to that city and ask the shop-owner, he would remember selling the pants to Minmax... because he's outside of the Maze of Many, and likely the "Oblivion-Hole" influence.

My understanding is that the shop keeper won't remember the pants either. He probably has an odd memory of a bald warrior being dragged in by a dwarf who made him try on several pairs of pants and then left empty-handed after leaving some money on the counter. In retrospect, I sincerely hope Thunt draws that flashback someday.

[AntMac]

This strip hit me so unbelievably hard that I was forced to register for the forums. Consider this my introductory post!
Hello everyone! Thunt made me feel bad feelings!

Hello.

Please show us on this model of the human heart, where the naughty cartoonist touched you wrongly. Take your time, we are all friends and safe here.



Of course, he also has touched us properly, repeatedly, and we didn't complain and cry about that, did we?.

[AntMac]

a) She is a traumatised victim of violence, basically is slightly less than capable of rational thought on the topic of "Kins being trusting of males". In a real way she isn't capable of being blamed for this, any more than we would blame a burn victim for throwing water in a smokers face. It is bad behaviour, and disrespectful of the targets autonomy, but really, they are a moral cripple at that point.

No. No, fuck that, a thousand times no. This is exactly what people who are looking for an excuse to justify their actions want to hear. Anyone can come up with some explanation of why they aren't responsible for their actions, and the result is a society where nobody acknowledges personal responsibility, and people do things like sue their parents for not loving them enough. Nobody gets to escape moral culpability for their actions just because they're a little fucked up in the head - we all have our own issues, and there's no excuse for not rising above them.

b) Her intent wasn't to harm either Minmax OR Kin, the opposite in fact.

I'm pretty sure her intent WAS to harm Minmax, because he's a filthy brutal human male warrior and therefore little different from Dellyn. She thinks she's protecting a fellow Kin from him, by denying her the option to have a feeling that Ruby herself is clearly incapable of. I side with the earlier poster who says Ruby deserves to get her leash held again.

Edit to remove something which looked too critical, in retrospect. Suffice to say i think your post lacks the humane virtue of compassion.

If you had ever been badly burnt yourself, I think you should have more compassion and understanding for the water-thrower in my analogy. And would have resisted the opportunity to insert words in my mouth.

Edit to add, she couldn't have been thinking she was hurting Minmax, because OBVIOUSLY she couldn't bring herself to believe good of him. If she can't believe he could love and cherish Kin, have a great deal of value in his mind associating with having a Kin who cared for him, how could she think breaking their love could hurt him?.
The only way she could consider what she did as "harming" Minmax or his interests, is if she thought truly that he had put a spell on Kin and was somehow benefitting from it. So she could consider she was "hurting" him by taking away a possession he had. And she DIDN'T believe that, really. If she had, she would have proven it to the Kinship and had them help her to kill Minmax and free Kin from the spell.

And not only didn't she try that, she actually tried to "reason" Kin out of her supposed "bewitchment" and THAT means, of course, she knew it wasn't a spell, but was Kins own volition.

[Glemp]

compassion is the least costly and most humane of the virtues, and people without it are the friction in societies.

First: Yes, compassion is very important in society, and it forms quite a lot of my personality.
However, that does not mean that it is not costly - I am obliged, for example, to give money to beggers and buskers, not knowing if they genuinely need it or not, and gave up meat because I was compassionate for the animals. These decisions cost me money daily and menu options at restaurants and cafes respectively, which is a huge inconvenience when everything they have has meat in in some way, or at least the most delicious things do.

[Alarikun]

-.- Pretty sure it's 'scratching the surface of reality' for the Oblivion Holes. The only thing they did is remove the memory of him buying pants, and remove them. Technically he still bought them, and they existed up until the point he threw them into the hole. It's just that the memories are altered. Hell, I'm fully convinced that, if they were to go back to that city and ask the shop-owner, he would remember selling the pants to Minmax... because he's outside of the Maze of Many, and likely the "Oblivion-Hole" influence.

My understanding is that the shop keeper won't remember the pants either. He probably has an odd memory of a bald warrior being dragged in by a dwarf who made him try on several pairs of pants and then left empty-handed after leaving some money on the counter. In retrospect, I sincerely hope Thunt draws that flashback someday.

Eh... if things obliviated in the Mini-Universe of the Maze of Many affected OUR Universe (#156), then it could get pretty damn complicated. I mean, we could talk about world-wide memory erasure if something like a "Hero of Legend" were to fall into an Oblivion Hole. It is my understanding that the Maze of Many is a self-contained universe, and that things that happen within it, will affect those within it.

That said, if I am wrong, then I imagine that scene would be rather hilarious to see (w/ the shopkeep, and pants).

[stevedj]

So, how exactly does that Teapot work? And how many times can one person use it?

What I'm thinking is this: MinMax, as he sips the tea, is still thinking intently about Kin... trying to understand what had just happened a few moments before. With Kin on his mind so much, he drinks... there is a poof... and MinMax is still there! Kin, not knowing the thoughts of MinMax, is quite confused... asks aloud to herself why didn't the teapot work... then MinMax explains what was on his mind...

Perhaps this exchange could even lead to the "I see you" line we all expect at some point...???

[AntMac]

compassion is the least costly and most humane of the virtues, and people without it are the friction in societies.

First: Yes, compassion is very important in society, and it forms quite a lot of my personality.
However, that does not mean that it is not costly - I am obliged, for example, to give money to beggers and buskers, not knowing if they genuinely need it or not, and gave up meat because I was compassionate for the animals. These decisions cost me money daily and menu options at restaurants and cafes respectively, which is a huge inconvenience when everything they have has meat in in some way, or at least the most delicious things do.

lol. I tried to remove that part of my post because, looking at it laid out on the screen it looked very badly phrased, it felt too much like a personal attack on the person I was replying to.

Anyway, sure, our compassion has us both do those things, and one way of looking at it would be it "costs" us the things you point out. But you know just like I do, that these things are only a pretend value in the first place. ( Menu options?. Most of humanity now has a tenth of the variety that we enjoy even with our "compassion costs" you know. Let alone across longer time frames.
"Todays menu contains grubs found under rocks, those berries the bears and pigs have not got first, and some fish that washed up on shore yesterday morning, and the seagulls didn't find.
Todays Special : Bear. Flip this flat stone, if it lands scratch side up, you get the Bear, scratch side down, Bear gets You")

Compassion is humanities Value Added Anti-Tax.

[Glemp]

compassion is the least costly and most humane of the virtues, and people without it are the friction in societies.

First: Yes, compassion is very important in society, and it forms quite a lot of my personality.
However, that does not mean that it is not costly - I am obliged, for example, to give money to beggers and buskers, not knowing if they genuinely need it or not, and gave up meat because I was compassionate for the animals. These decisions cost me money daily and menu options at restaurants and cafes respectively, which is a huge inconvenience when everything they have has meat in in some way, or at least the most delicious things do.

Anyway, sure, our compassion has us both do those things, and one way of looking at it would be it "costs" us the things you point out. But you know just like I do, that these things are only a pretend value in the first place. ( Menu options?. Most of humanity now has a tenth of the variety that we enjoy even with our "compassion costs" you know. Let alone across longer time frames.
"Todays menu contains grubs found under rocks, those berries the bears and pigs have not got first, and some fish that washed up on shore yesterday morning, and the seagulls didn't find.
Todays Special : Bear. Flip this flat stone, if it lands scratch side up, you get the Bear, scratch side down, Bear gets You")

Compassion is humanities Value Added Anti-Tax.

Money is not a pretend value.
The point is that compared to my peers, my compassion compels me to make sacrifices to maintain my morality, something any Linux FLOSS diehard knows only too well (No Steam, no DVD playback, no Flash...even I couldn't cope with it).

[AntMac]

Money is not a pretend value.
The point is that compared to my peers, my compassion compels me to make sacrifices to maintain my morality, something any Linux FLOSS diehard knows only too well (No Steam, no DVD playback, no Flash...even I couldn't cope with it).

Well, I take your actual point, and agree with it, but can't help pointing out it sort of is exactly a pretend value, you know. That is why it fluctuates, why inflation happens, or depressions and runs on banks happen too. People are not able to keep up the pretence, because really they know it is just a promissory note and promises are just a lot of wind and lip-flapping a lot of the time.

And if someone is drowning, and holding a bag of all the gold they own, they drop it and feel like they have lost nothing, and of course they have not, no rich men in caskets. And a true virtuous man, holding all the gold he owns on the riverbank, seeing a drowning man in the river, drops his bag, to extend his hand to the man in need. And when he does that, he hasn't lost a thing really.

Selfish people without compassion would stand there and make Libertarian noises and feel justified in holding onto their bag and watching their fellow drown, hell, we see them do it every day, and they will even get angry telling you why you should be the same way. But they are scum, and not human(e) imho, so fuck them, because ONE AND ALL of them would demand and insist that you or I drop our riches if it was THEM in the river drowning.

[dire18]

I find it hard to accept that the obliteration of the necklace, a trinket which was only the catalyst of trust, somehow negates all the other reasons Kin has come to have faith in MinMax (journeying to the MoM, battling in the MoM, the embrace in the potion river, MinMax sacrificing himself so they won't lose their memories of time together, the almost kiss, etc). The necklace WAS just a catalyst. This update basically conveys via that "Why do I trust you?" line that Kin's only rationale (not just her *initial* rationale) for trusting MinMax was this single material item, and apparently all of the experiences they've had since then just aren't enough to be her new reason for why she trusts him.

I get it, it's meant to be emotive, and it's a plot point. I just can't help but find it to be rather convenient story telling.

[willpell]

And if someone is drowning, and holding a bag of all the gold they own, they drop it and feel like they have lost nothing, and of course they have not, no rich men in caskets. And a true virtuous man, holding all the gold he owns on the riverbank, seeing a drowning man in the river, drops his bag, to extend his hand to the man in need. And when he does that, he hasn't lost a thing really.

Selfish people without compassion would stand there and make Libertarian noises and feel justified in holding onto their bag and watching their fellow drown, hell, we see them do it every day, and they will even get angry telling you why you should be the same way. But they are scum, and not human(e) imho, so fuck them, because ONE AND ALL of them would demand and insist that you or I drop our riches if it was THEM in the river drowning.

People who carry their bags of gold into rivers with them are probably not all that bright.

[AntMac]

And if someone is drowning, and holding a bag of all the gold they own, they drop it and feel like they have lost nothing, and of course they have not, no rich men in caskets. And a true virtuous man, holding all the gold he owns on the riverbank, seeing a drowning man in the river, drops his bag, to extend his hand to the man in need. And when he does that, he hasn't lost a thing really.

Selfish people without compassion would stand there and make Libertarian noises and feel justified in holding onto their bag and watching their fellow drown, hell, we see them do it every day, and they will even get angry telling you why you should be the same way. But they are scum, and not human(e) imho, so fuck them, because ONE AND ALL of them would demand and insist that you or I drop our riches if it was THEM in the river drowning.

People who carry their bags of gold into rivers with them are probably not all that bright.

Quite true. And ann rand would tell us we ought to let them drown because they were stupid. Of course the subtext of her comment would be "I am a inhuman fiend, you should burn me and all my works" but that is lost on a lot of people.

[Glemp]

And if someone is drowning, and holding a bag of all the gold they own, they drop it and feel like they have lost nothing, and of course they have not, no rich men in caskets. And a true virtuous man, holding all the gold he owns on the riverbank, seeing a drowning man in the river, drops his bag, to extend his hand to the man in need. And when he does that, he hasn't lost a thing really.

Selfish people without compassion would stand there and make Libertarian noises and feel justified in holding onto their bag and watching their fellow drown, hell, we see them do it every day, and they will even get angry telling you why you should be the same way. But they are scum, and not human(e) imho, so fuck them, because ONE AND ALL of them would demand and insist that you or I drop our riches if it was THEM in the river drowning.

People who carry their bags of gold into rivers with them are probably not all that bright.

Quite true. And ann rand would tell us we ought to let them drown because they were stupid. Of course the subtext of her comment would be "I am a inhuman fiend, you should burn me and all my works" but that is lost on a lot of people.

That's Ayn Rand.