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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:I guarantee you we’re gonna get at least one trippy “philosophical” page from parson’s perspective and then one of two things is gonna happen: either the spell sent him somewhere other than Ohio, or there’s gonna be a new Summon Perfect Warlord cast The first time Judy used her shoes to go "home", she went to el-Efbaum, not to Kansas - the destination depended on what she thought was home. I'm hoping that's what's happening here. Parson magically appearing in Spacerock or
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Dec 31, 2017 04:20
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| # ? May 8, 2024 06:25 |
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Main Paineframe posted:The first time Judy used her shoes to go "home", she went to el-Efbaum, not to Kansas - the destination depended on what she thought was home. I'm hoping that's what's happening here. Parson magically appearing in Spacerock or That really would be wonderful. And he technically has never met Jillian EDIT: Probably worth pointing out that FOREVER ago that Baldur talked about the gamer friends eventually showing up again. I think the overall thought was they would wind up as Warlords opposing Parson? Honestly to me that really reeks of "Plot point that should be left dropped" as I feel Erfworld's gone so far away from that concept that it's like... please don't. Onmi fucked around with this message at 13:28 on Dec 31, 2017 |
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Dec 31, 2017 13:25
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Onmi posted:EDIT: Probably worth pointing out that FOREVER ago that Baldur talked about the gamer friends eventually showing up again. Wasn't he talking about it in the context of an Erfworld spinoff that never happened?
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Dec 31, 2017 13:36
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Cat Mattress posted:Wasn't he talking about it in the context of an Erfworld spinoff that never happened? I don't really remember
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Dec 31, 2017 14:07
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The way the speech bubbles are laid out in that panel really bothers me.
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Dec 31, 2017 22:04
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well he spent forty hours getting them just right!!!
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Dec 31, 2017 23:58
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Can we at least see Vanna disbanded? Bunny was a much more interesting character, and there's less than no reason for Transylvito to keep her around.
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Jan 1, 2018 10:47
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Well, that sure is a reveal. 
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Jan 3, 2018 07:46
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Seriously, why does Ceaser tolerate Vanna? I blinked when he didn't murk her the second his head was back in the game after Don went out.
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Jan 3, 2018 07:49
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It's odd that we are seeing more of Erfworld if Parson has been banished back to where he came from. I wonder if the spell is supposed to send him "home" but it's Parson's definition of home instead of Earth. It's possible that Parson was sent to Gobwin Knob. Maybe deep down he thinks of that place as home, as it's the place where he has actual power and influence, instead of Earth where he is a nobody. This might finally tie him into the Jillian plot.
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Jan 3, 2018 09:54
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Caidin posted:Seriously, why does Ceaser tolerate Vanna? I blinked when he didn't murk her the second his head was back in the game after Don went out. I believe the sideways looks from Jack, the interrupted sentence (and shock from Shirley), on top of Bill's pleas to "not hurt her" mean that Caesar is currently mid-murder.
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Jan 3, 2018 10:37
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Mister Olympus posted:I believe the sideways looks from Jack, the interrupted sentence (and shock from Shirley), on top of Bill's pleas to "not hurt her" mean that Caesar is currently mid-murder. No wait, your right. He has her by the throat in the that little projection above Bill.
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Jan 3, 2018 10:57
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I'd call it even odds that he's about to either croak or straight-up disband her.
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Jan 3, 2018 16:29
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PMush Perfect posted:I'd call it even odds that he's about to either croak or straight-up disband her. Looks to me like he's going for the more direct approach with this. Also, if Bill shows up with that Bunny doll...
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Jan 3, 2018 20:36
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Two guesses: - the scroll sent him to the literal same place as ruby red slippers sent Dorothy (because "home" might not even be a thing in Erf so the concept translates weirdly) - there's no place like home, and the setting loves literal puns. Parson is in limbo somewhere, looking the board from above or something.
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Jan 3, 2018 22:20
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Hob_Gadling posted:Two guesses: Third guess: It somehow sent him back to GK HQ.
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Jan 4, 2018 22:31
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So I read the entire archive after giving up some time during Book 2 way back when. Thoughts: - The text stuff reads a lot better archivally. I remember the format shift in Book 2 was pretty hard to follow at the time, you had new characters getting introduced in one or two pages and then fleshed out in text updates weeks later. When you're reading those two points within minutes of each other, like you would in a novel, it flows fine and is mostly very readable. - A lot of these characters are super loveable, and Balder does a good job of giving even tiny side characters their own voice and motivations. Parson somehow manages to evade being incredibly grating, although in his worse moments he sometimes reminds me of reading that Harry Potter fanfic where Harry is a supergenius atheist. It's really weird that the comic has progressively cutesified a character visually based on, and named after, Margaret Thatcher. - Parson's lack of moral qualms about the Decrypted just gets weirder the longer the elephant sits in the room. They're tactically necessary for his side to survive, so maybe it's easier for him to ignore it, but with his hard stances against rape and abuse of authority you'd expect he'd at least feel a little uneasy about turning unwilling people into subservient slaves who are completely loyal to you. - Ivan Poe and Claud Gauntlet are extremely boring. I think I'm past my limit on how many new Decrypted bad guys who are suddenly loyal to Wanda I'm capable of caring about. Also, Wanda escaping thanks to her Decryption of Marie incidentally hitting Ivan and Claud, who she didn't know were there, feels clumsy as hell. All in all, though, I enjoyed it a lot! A lot of it's really rich stuff and I think I'll keep following serially.
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Jan 5, 2018 01:29
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Android Blues posted:Also, Wanda escaping thanks to her Decryption of Marie incidentally hitting Ivan and Claud, who she didn't know were there, feels clumsy as hell. I liked it because I liked how Charlies actions came back on him via theirs decryption
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Jan 5, 2018 01:45
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I'm also pretty sure Wanda deliberately just hit "Decrypt/Target All" on the assumption that it would probably hit somebody dead in the Magic Kingdom and they'd probably be useful. That said, Wanda doesn't generally do normal-person tactical decisions, as her behavior in this chapter indicates, because she doesn't have a normal person's fear of death.
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Jan 5, 2018 02:41
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I suspect Parson doesn't feel more twigged out about Decrypted because, to his perspective, everybody is under some creepy nebulous mind control thing, what with the Loyalty and Duty stuff. (And then it got proven that Decrypted aren't actually absolutely loyal) Also he might be deliberately not thinking very deeply about it. He did feel a bit bothered when Jack got decrypted, but then it turned out he was pretty much the same. WRT Wanda I'm pretty sure as a Croakamancer she has an innate sense for corpses in the hex and the MK counts as one big hex, so she probably noticed them lying just right there and went "hey, free casters".
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Jan 5, 2018 03:19
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I don't think that's a normal Croakamancy ability as such. Back when she was a normal Croakamancer, Wanda's powers were dependent on how much time and juice she could devote to the reanimation. It's only since she gained access to Decryption that she can do point-and-click resurrection. (Plus if it was a normal ability Janis would probably have been more wary of the possibility, since she seems to know a fair amount about different kinds of magic.)
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Jan 5, 2018 03:45
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Wanda could uncroak all corpses in a hex at once (she did it at one point in Book 1), it just wasn't that useful of an ability since it would produce extremely low-quality Uncroaked that would expire in only a couple of turns. Decrypted are always perfect quality and last forever, though, so that downside is gone now that she's attuned. She just hasn't really had the chance to use that power on-panel since then.
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Jan 5, 2018 05:43
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Kyte posted:I suspect Parson doesn't feel more twigged out about Decrypted because, to his perspective, everybody is under some creepy nebulous mind control thing, what with the Loyalty and Duty stuff. (And then it got proven that Decrypted aren't actually absolutely loyal) Yeah, this is the only way it makes sense to me too, but it's still a little weird when you look at characters like Ansom, where Decryption has to a degree subverted their personality and morals even beyond Loyalty to their side. Ansom's belief in honourable combat and the divine right of nobility to rule are very much shunted to the back of his mind after he gets Decrypted. Also, and maybe creepiest to me, the Decrypted all seem to feel an intense love for Wanda that isn't necessarily analogous to what a unit would normally feel for their ruler, even a Loyal unit. Benny was Loyal to Don King, but his fondness for him was entirely organic and built on years of friendship rather than being forcibly instilled by Loyalty. Even Charlie's Archons seem to love him as much because he pays attention to them and shows an individual care in their progression as because of their natural Loyalty. The fact that the Arkenpliers instil the Decrypted with this kind of creepy, worshipful affection for someone they may have previously hated is mind control-y on a level beyond just switching their Loyalty string. Main Paineframe posted:Wanda could uncroak all corpses in a hex at once (she did it at one point in Book 1), it just wasn't that useful of an ability since it would produce extremely low-quality Uncroaked that would expire in only a couple of turns. Decrypted are always perfect quality and last forever, though, so that downside is gone now that she's attuned. She just hasn't really had the chance to use that power on-panel since then. Oh for sure she can do it, it just seems a little cheat-y since those two were 100% her get out of jail free card and she seems to have had no idea she was resurrecting them. It's a little more egregious because they're two of Charlie's most powerful allies and are the lynchpins of his technological supremacy, and yet Wanda yanks them out from under him on sheer dumb luck. Then, later, she gets saved from being murdered by Archons on another stroke of sheer dumb luck. I get that she's favoured by Fate, but it feels a little weak when she doesn't have to try for her victories.
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Jan 5, 2018 11:11
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Android Blues posted:Yeah, this is the only way it makes sense to me too, but it's still a little weird when you look at characters like Ansom, where Decryption has to a degree subverted their personality and morals even beyond Loyalty to their side. Ansom's belief in honourable combat and the divine right of nobility to rule are very much shunted to the back of his mind after he gets Decrypted. Subverted is a good word; shunted in the back isn't. Ansom was always a religious nut, caring about the will of the Titans. His belief in the divine right of royalty was an expression of that. Before he was croaked and decrypted, Parson got under his skin by telling him royalty was obsolete, and that arkentool attunement was the highest measure of the Titans' favor. All his royalty and his belief in honorable combat brought him was death; which is typically for this mindset the proof of divine disfavor. He has fully embraced Toolism because it's what can reconcile his earlier mindset with his death and his new existence.
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Jan 5, 2018 14:11
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Much of what we see of Anson post-Decryption is the exploration of his own psyche, and how he never really held any deep-seated convictions of his own. His religious fanaticism is, in a way, a way to cope with his own lack of direction. Hell, he isn't even sure if he really did love Jillian. But if you discount Ansom, it's pretty clear that, aside of giving them a creepy love for Wanda, their core values remain the same. That's why Ossomer defected, and why Marie did so as well. As for the creepy love, I'm pretty sure it'd been made pretty clear that the Archons feel the same to Charlie. Charlie himself was disturbed that Lilith didn't feel that anymore.
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Jan 5, 2018 14:16
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When we actually got to see into the heads of the other Archons, most of them actually seemed to still have that. There was basically a whole text update on them thinking it was Wrong that Charlie and Wanda were fighting, which combined with the Ansom/Ossomer comparison suggests that Lillith might not have EVER loved Charlie the way the rest of the Archons do.
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Jan 5, 2018 15:01
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Yeah, and the Fox Force aren't afraid to talk smack to Charlie or question his decisions, which is something you really can't imagine the Decrypted doing to Wanda. Even though he's a skeevy dude, Charlie does make a point of expressing genuine affection for his Archons, praising them for levelling up, calling them on their birthdays, all this micro-scale people management stuff. I'm inclined to think their adoration for him stems from a combination of that and the culture in Charlescomm, and if there's a supernatural compulsion element that goes beyond Loyalty, it's a lot less significant than what the Arkenpliers seem to be doing.
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Jan 5, 2018 15:21
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Charlie doesn't need mind control, he's a Carnie with the Arkendish. Perfect communication, perfect sense of people's feelings, emotions, and needs... It's emotional manipulation on an incredibly insidious level because if you asked the archons, they'd say the affection was earned, through his compassion and brilliance. Meanwhile, Charlie doesn't see them as people, more like each one of them is a puzzle attached to a work of art, attached to a very powerful tool. He cultivates them like a garden, and he may love his gardening very much, but his response to their deaths is like a prized rose bush getting trampled, not the loss of a loved one. TL;DR: Charlie is a sociopath who sees his archons as valuable works of art, not as people.
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Jan 6, 2018 23:03
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He seems legitimately broken up over his Fox Forcers dying. Tondy's death sends him into a grief spiral that he nearly doesn't recover from, and a lot of his emotional pain after Lilith's escape is caused by the deaths of Belle and Fifi as much as it is his loss of a Shocked connection. Charlie's definitely not a good person, and he doesn't treat the Archons as well as he ought to (that "full service" contract mentioned in one of the text updates, yikes), but I think his love for them is genuine. It's not pure, or wholly good, but it seems real.
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Jan 7, 2018 00:38
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I always got the impression that Charlie’s grief was the grief of someone losing a powerful weapon, kind of an “oh-poo poo-I’m-in-trouble-now” type reaction, rather than genuine affection.
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Jan 7, 2018 01:01
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I'd say the real pain there was him feeling helpless, but I haven't reread in a while.
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Jan 7, 2018 02:13
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I'm going off this segment just before Tondelayo's death:quote:Leading the incursion herself had also been Tondelayo's idea, but Charlie had been a lot less thrilled with that one. "Please. I can't looh - lose you, too. Noddafter Fifi. And Belle." Like, he begs her to stay and cries when she doesn't, and she gives him the business and asserts her own agency over his. That's definitely not the behaviour of a prized object to its owner, and he's clearly pretty broken up about the loss of two (soon to be three) of the people who were closest to him in the world. Charlie's an rear end in a top hat, but I don't think he's an inhuman monster. He has friends and feelings and bits of softness, which I think serve to make him a more interesting and effective antagonist on the whole.
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Jan 7, 2018 03:41
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He also describes the surviving Fox Forcers as "his dearest and oldest friends".
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Jan 7, 2018 03:55
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In some ways I think Charlie's ideology pushes him to be heartless in ways he doesn't even really want to be, exactly. Like, the whole idea of "full service" contracts where you can have sex with an Archon and send her off to die—who does that serve? Charlie isn't getting off on the idea of people controlling his girls. It doesn't seem like he's doing it for the money, because he pretty explicitly makes it so drat expensive that nobody is ever going to pay for it. It's even a little contrary to the image he wants to put across, because it's been mentioned several times that the Archons are careful to present themselves as unique and elite (hence not referring to them as "knight-type units" or the like), and not as resources that can be wasted. So why is that option on the table at all? I think it's a matter of ideology. Everything can be measured in money, so there has to be a price on the table that everything is available for, even if the quantity is "use my friends as sex objects and then get them killed." Even the Fox Forcers are explicitly for sale; they're just so valuable in Charlie's mind that they don't think anybody could afford them. This doesn't really serve Charlescomm even in a ruthlessly evil sense; it's just a reflection of Charlie's desire to boil everything down to Schmuckers.
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Jan 7, 2018 04:13
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Updated. Well, that was...predictable. I'm glad we're spared the side-quest, but what a boring way to resolve the problem.
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Jan 13, 2018 04:24
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I like that parsons first move is to get a drat drink. Also there was an update Wednesday and I didn't notice because I thought they just skipped.
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Jan 13, 2018 05:58
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Caidin posted:I like that parsons first move is to get a drat drink. The update "schedule" is so incoherent that I wish they'd just ditch it and upload whenever. There's basically no reason to actually check the site on update days. "We're gonna update once a week!" "But only sometimes." "And we're going to skip updates without saying anything about it." "And regularly post late even when we do update." Like I've genuinely checked multiple times to see if the update schedule has changed again. Supposedly it hasn't but it's not like you'd ever be able to tell. ArchRanger fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Jan 13, 2018 |
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Jan 13, 2018 06:30
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Reene posted:Updated.
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Jan 13, 2018 08:15
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Ditocoaf posted:Even though it's predictable, the good it does for the "fraying narrative" problem is more than worth it. Parson was going to have to get back to Spacerock eventually, that scroll was gonna have to do something eventually, and all the various betrayal cards in Transylvito were gonna have to get played. All of those plot threads are tied off pretty quickly, hopefully allowing the story to find some momentum again.
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Jan 13, 2018 08:34
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Ignoring all the overarching plot threads and stuff, I feel it had some pretty good comic timing. Jed's quip as he fills the room with water, the two big panels in the middle, Parson's first action being to grab a drink, it all works out pretty well. Incidentally, the previous page (the text one) had quite a bit of rhyme, which must've been a bitch and a half to write.
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Jan 13, 2018 13:15
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