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that strip was 2 years ago 
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Aug 7, 2020 01:31
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Acerbatus posted:that strip was 2 years ago 1151 was 2019 so it's more like a year and a half.
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Aug 7, 2020 02:53
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I'm feel so damned dumb. Xykon's coffee speech in start of darkness is a metaphor about villains in stories and I didn't grasp that until just now. Sure, it fills other roles in the story too, but I cannot believe I missed that super obvious subtext.
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Aug 7, 2020 02:57
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Huh
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Aug 7, 2020 02:59
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sebmojo posted:Huh
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Aug 7, 2020 03:00
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ikanreed posted:I'm feel so damned dumb. Xykon's coffee speech in start of darkness is a metaphor about villains in stories and I didn't grasp that until just now. Can you elaborate? Is the idea something like, it's good even if villains are one note, or one dimensional or cheesy/trashy because you are prompted to remember the really good villains?
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Aug 7, 2020 03:04
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I mean what I thought is that it's about how RIch makes Xykon an utterly unrepentant monster with no character depth to really help contrast against the struggles of protagonists.
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Aug 7, 2020 03:09
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I think once OOTS is over, the thing I'm going to be most looking forward to is the flood of really cool literary analyses about the themes the story addresses. I am also terrified of the kinds of awful hot takes I'll see about said themes, but them's the breaks.
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Aug 7, 2020 03:34
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Xykon has his moments where I really like him as a villain. Off the top of my head, my favorite(outside of Start of Darkness) is when he's beating the snot out of soul-bound V while talking about the nature of power and how O-chul understands it better than V, because he earned his levels while V did not. Thinking back on that, I'm gonna laugh when Xykon's downfall ends up being that he imprisoned O-chul right next to the Monster and so indirectly let the two of them become friends.
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Aug 7, 2020 03:50
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He's a good example of an enjoyable villain who is also utterly irredeemable.
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Aug 7, 2020 03:59
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Yeah, that whole sequence where he's styling on V is one of my favorite moments of the whole comic. Power is power, and sometimes that comes in the form of a +8 racial bonus to listen checks. And we're still waiting for that extremely short period where Vaarsuvius is taken out of the game by the infernal trio... while still not knowing what their game is.
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Aug 7, 2020 03:59
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Shugojin posted:He's a good example of an enjoyable villain who is also utterly irredeemable. It also leaves him without a discernable tragic flaw. His downfall, while obviously deserved, seems like it's all but impossible to predict the form of. "Well you see, his contempt for all other living things came back to haunt him, because a living thing didn't like it" isn't exactly Romeo and Juliet dying from being too impulsive. We can talk for pages and pages about how redcloak is setting himself up for failure by refusing every off ramp on his collision course for death-by-Plan. Or how the vampire's lack of respect for the nuances of Durkon's death allowed him to be manipulated. Or even how Shojo's inability to trust his paladins with the truth of how he bent the rules led to both his death and Azure city's conquest. But Xykon isn't like that and I'm super interested to see how rich plays it.
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Aug 7, 2020 04:09
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My favorite is when Xykon tells how he killed an archmage and a bunch of other people to get a magic crown, which caused Roy's father to swear a blood oath that got passed on to Roy, which caused the whole series of events that started the story... except that the crown wasn't magic, and Xykon knew that all along. He just wanted it because it made him look "really badass".
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Aug 7, 2020 04:15
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My favorite line of his is probably the "power equals power" line from SoD, but I forget how exactly it goes. Something how a fine-tuned pocket watch is a lot less impressive if the other guy is a sledgehammer.ikanreed posted:It also leaves him without a discernable tragic flaw. His downfall, while obviously deserved, seems like it's all but impossible to predict the form of. Xykon was deliberately designed to not be tragic. I've been thinking he will end up being little more than an afterthought compared to whatever other factors are in play around his defeat. Roy's arc proceeded just fine without involving Xykon. He realized he was fighting to save the world instead of showing up his dad a long time ago, and he even had a climactic one-on-one fight with a powerful undead spellcaster to display that his specialization in fighting those had paid off. Redcloak and the Monster in the Darkness are the only other remaining characters tied to Xykon, and both of them are one or two epiphanies from turning against him.
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Aug 7, 2020 04:32
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:My favorite line of his is probably the "power equals power" line from SoD, but I forget how exactly it goes. Something how a fine-tuned pocket watch is a lot less impressive if the other guy is a sledgehammer. It kinda feels like Tarquin was right in naming him Sub-Boss Xykon. Defeating him isn't the point anymore, he's just an obstacle now.
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Aug 7, 2020 04:58
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PMush Perfect posted:I think once OOTS is over, the thing I'm going to be most looking forward to is the flood of really cool literary analyses about the themes the story addresses.
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Aug 7, 2020 05:01
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I really think going "Redcloak is targeting someone off-panel" or "Redcloak is targeting himself", or "Redcloak is casting it on Durkon, but isn't trying to kill Durkon" are grasping at straws. He's targeting Durkon and intends to kill Durkon.
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Aug 7, 2020 05:28
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I really think going "Redcloak is targeting someone off-panel" or "Redcloak is targeting himself", or "Redcloak is casting it on Durkon, but isn't trying to kill Durkon" are grasping at straws. He's targeting Durkon and intends to kill Durkon. Yep. The fact it's a showy and not particularly effective method (comparatively, at least) is interesting though.
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Aug 7, 2020 05:29
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I really think going "Redcloak is targeting someone off-panel" or "Redcloak is targeting himself", or "Redcloak is casting it on Durkon, but isn't trying to kill Durkon" are grasping at straws. He's targeting Durkon and intends to kill Durkon. I mean... SKULL.GIF posted:I don't think it's particularly insane theorycrafting, on a cliffhanger where the question is seemingly obviously "Is Durkon about to die next page?", to wonder whether the question is actually "Is Durkon being targeted?" given Burlew's habit of occasionally playing with narrative setups. Either it's "Redcloak is imploding Durkon and he's going to Fort save the implosion" or "We're being screwed with" The former is super obvious to any savvy reader, and we know Burlew doesn't like "super obvious"...
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Aug 7, 2020 05:38
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Obvious is okay sometimes. You can only ever give people what they expect or what they don't expect, after all. Also what really matters is: what happens next.
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Aug 7, 2020 05:45
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Xykon is a tragic villain. Start of Darkness spoiler: He really loved coffee, agreed to be turned into a lich to escape a trap and then experienced the tragedy of never tasting coffee again. That's why he's so angry, he hasn't had caffeine for years.
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Aug 7, 2020 05:58
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SuperKlaus posted:If Durkon succeeds he's on the level but if he fails he goes down a level. I'm pretty sure they're having the conversation on the ground so there's not any lower levels to send him to. Unless you're positing the existence of an underground dungeon, anyway, which I don't think holds all that much water. As far as I'm aware all of the tomb dungeons are set into the side of the cliff and are horizontal rather than vertical.
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Aug 7, 2020 06:07
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nimby posted:Xykon is a tragic villain. Start of Darkness spoiler: I have to be honest here, that would probably do it for me as well.
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Aug 7, 2020 06:22
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Colonel Cool posted:I'm pretty sure they're having the conversation on the ground so there's not any lower levels to send him to. Unless you're positing the existence of an underground dungeon, anyway, which I don't think holds all that much water. As far as I'm aware all of the tomb dungeons are set into the side of the cliff and are horizontal rather than vertical. Level in the sense of, a horizontal plane. It's an understandable mistake.
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Aug 7, 2020 07:08
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PMush Perfect posted:I think once OOTS is over, the thing I'm going to be most looking forward to is the flood of really cool literary analyses about the themes the story addresses. Hbomberguy did a whole video about CAD and Penny Arcade, how much do we have to give to Dolphins to get him to make one about OotS?
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Aug 7, 2020 12:21
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Per Xykon's grand theory of coffee, by the end of his life he would have gained greater enjoyment from drinking decaf than regular. A truer monster there never was.
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Aug 7, 2020 12:51
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I was thinking about a comment Xykon made back in Azure city. How he doesnt need to (or does he say Cant?) sleep, but can only devote 8 hours to creating magic items. The human mind is 100% NOT made for constant awakeness. Even if you don't need to physically sleep, your mind needs that downtime. or else insanity is in your future. Though, you'd have to be pretty insane to become a lich in the first place. There anything there for a lich to "turn off" for a while? How do sorcerers regain their spells? V only has to trance for a few hours, then just sort of just chills for X hours. Xykon just standing in the corner of a room for 8 hours, motionless.
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Aug 7, 2020 17:47
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Johnny Aztec posted:There anything there for a lich to "turn off" for a while? That's what paladins are for.
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Aug 7, 2020 18:31
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Johnny Aztec posted:I was thinking about a comment Xykon made back in Azure city. How he doesnt need to (or does he say Cant?) sleep, but can only devote 8 hours to creating magic items. The lich's mind stops having human psychology very quickly after I death, as it's no long operating on meat hardware and isn't subject to the same sensory inputs it is used to. They can still experience emotions, but without the input of an endocrine system, they're not necessarily going to have them for the same reasons the living do. It's not at all uncommon for a lich to be come nearly completely emotionless as time goes on, especially if the original being wasn't particularly emotional to start with. Certainly a lich can go insane, and quite a few do. However, since the whole purpose of lichdom is to preserve the mind to the exclusion of all other considerations, combined with the fact that there are more than a few notable liches that are sane and ancient, I would suggest that insanity is neither inherent nor inevitable for a lich. There's also the risk that a lich's actions might seem insane only because those effected by it simply do not understand all of the factors motivating it.
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Aug 7, 2020 19:25
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A.o.D. posted:There's also the risk that a lich's actions might seem insane only because those effected by it simply do not understand all of the factors motivating it. 
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Aug 7, 2020 19:36
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May not be running on physical meat hardware, but it's architecture is still there. A human mind NEEDS to sleep, to dream. Whether you're a lich, a vampire, a consciousness infused into a golem. Doesn't matter. it is needed.
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Aug 7, 2020 19:36
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It's magic.
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Aug 7, 2020 19:38
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I met a skeleton and it was asleep like, all the time
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Aug 7, 2020 19:46
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Johnny Aztec posted:May not be running on physical meat hardware, but it's architecture is still there. A human mind NEEDS to sleep, to dream. Whether you're a lich, a vampire, a consciousness infused into a golem. Doesn't matter. During sleep your meathead heals itself and removes metabolic wastes. It doesn't seem in any manner relevant for a lich - without a physical brain, how would toxins accumulate there in the first place?
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Aug 7, 2020 19:49
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I feel like this depends a lot on the setting. Faerun being the most lax in terms of how Lich's work.
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Aug 7, 2020 20:12
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Nenonen posted:During sleep your meathead heals itself and removes metabolic wastes. It doesn't seem in any manner relevant for a lich - without a physical brain, how would toxins accumulate there in the first place? It's not the physical stuff. It's the dreaming.
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Aug 7, 2020 20:17
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I would expect there to be a lot of psychological issues stemming from becoming a lich and you could explore it within your own game (this would be one heck of a high powered game if it's a PC  ) or you can just handwave it and assume something in the magic that takes your soul out of your body and sticks it into a little box or what have you also does something to the way dreaming works. Cause remember, this is D&D, a world where the thing that fundamentally makes you you can be directly manipulated with magic!
Shugojin fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Aug 7, 2020 |
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Aug 7, 2020 20:26
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do liches dream of skeletal sheep
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Aug 7, 2020 20:39
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Another important thing about Xykon is that as powerful as he is, he's TERRIBLE at being a lich.
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Aug 7, 2020 20:56
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Eh, I mean he murked a decent number of good-aligned high level spell-casters, conquered a city of paladins and is pretty drat close to destroying/conquering the world. I would say that's pretty impressive record even for a lich.
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Aug 7, 2020 21:25
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