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Dolash posted:The story has touched on the idea that characters see the solutions they want to see, and there might have been another way to defeat Lord English that doesn't require this mass sacrifice, but Vriska seized on it because killing people to solve problems is her modus operandi. Yeah, one big thing about Vriska's plan people are forgetting is what the actual endgame is- she's trying to find some sort of 'treasure'. Thing is she: doesn't know what it is, doesn't know what it does, doesn't know if it will actually help, doesn't even know if it actually exists. Hell, all the hundreds? thousands? millions? of ghosts she's sacrificed haven't strictly been necessary- they've gone in a circle right back to the start! Although to be fair she couldn't have known that. I mean it's pretty obvious that Vriska's being played hard here, still talking about how Lord English is such a fool and a chump, ignoring that her plan has achieved exactly nothing. On a more meta-note, we the readers know that LE's destroyed bubble circle is a large scale version of Caliborn's circle approximation, along with a green 'fat ugly whore' (ugggggghhhhh) in the middle. The character's couldn't possibly know this, but that's dramatic irony for you? vvv yeah, rereading the page that image is from was waaaaay worse than I remembered Mazerunner fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 03:16
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No joke, Caliborn's misogyny is way more jarring for me than Vriska throwing millions of Nepetas at a problem.
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Feb 27, 2013 03:19
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Mazerunner posted:Yeah, one big thing about Vriska's plan people are forgetting is what the actual endgame is- she's trying to find some sort of 'treasure'. Thing is she: doesn't know what it is, doesn't know what it does, doesn't know if it will actually help, doesn't even know if it actually exists. Hell, all the hundreds? thousands? millions? of ghosts she's sacrificed haven't strictly been necessary- they've gone in a circle right back to the start! Although to be fair she couldn't have known that. Ahahahaha, man, I forgot about that. Not only is Vriska's plan downright evil, but it's probably not even going to succeed and in fact hasn't even gone anywhere. Which is hilarious with all the people defending it on account of being "necessary" and such. Man, what a terrible plan.
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Feb 27, 2013 03:22
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I was reading bladekindeyewear's tumblr for kicks and came across this incidental theory regarding B1 Betty Crocker.quote:And nobody really knows what the hell was up with Sassacre. He could have been anything between manipulated, mind controlled, or really good at fish puns. Ha ha ha yesssssss  It was love at first pun. There is no doubt in my mind.EDIT: Wow, the rest of it is pretty god drat dumb. Ariong fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 03:30
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Seems like tempers have died down over the most recent update, so I thought I might throw this out - For me, the biggest sign in-comic that the pirate slave army is evil and misguided (and not just to be taken as another instance of dark humor involving the slaughter of faceless millions) is that Aranea has started dressing and acting a bit more like Mindfang. Mindfang is almost at Cronus' tier in the comic's hierarchy of repulsive people, so by having sweet, nerdy Aranea dress up like her I think the author's indicating very clearly that she's been led astray. As someone who tries to maintain some critical distance from the story, I'm confident that Hussie's going somewhere with this and there will be some resolution - even while, as an emotionally invested reader, I'm disappointed in Vriska and friends, and worried about how severe their comeuppance will be (wouldn't it be appropriate if English wiped out the whole drat crew on the boat for their sins...). (And speaking of critical distance, I'm hoping to have the next chunk of annotations up sometime over the hiatus. I hope you guys enjoy, and that it'll give us something to chew over instead of descending into madness) Cabbit posted:No joke, Caliborn's misogyny is way more jarring for me than Vriska throwing millions of Nepetas at a problem. That makes perfect sense to me - misogyny is real, and seeing it depicted so vividly in the comic is jarring, much more so than the ethics of using psychic superpowers on ghosts. Again, I think Hussie's indictment of internet misogyny is one of the comic's strongest statements. Indie Rocktopus fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 03:36
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I'm not sure that I would go so far as to call it "evil" given that their intentions are good and the whole thing isn't based on malice. At least, not malice for people who aren't space pimps.
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Feb 27, 2013 03:40
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Left field prediction time-- Vriska could be going in a circle, but she could also be going in a swirl, and this is just the outside. Once it swirls in to reach the Green Sun, then poo poo goes south hard.Indie Rocktopus posted:That makes perfect sense to me - misogyny is real, and seeing it depicted so vividly in the comic is jarring, much more so than the ethics of using psychic superpowers on ghosts. Again, I think Hussie's indictment of internet misogyny is one of the comic's strongest statements. Probably, yeah. Though I also just enjoy any plan which involves millions of Nepetas. Cabbit fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 03:42
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Ariong posted:I'm not sure that I would go so far as to call it "evil" given that their intentions are good and the whole thing isn't based on malice. At least, not malice for people who aren't space pimps. Maybe not "evil", but deffo incredibly stupid, self-serving, destructive and myopic. The Vriskaest plan, really.
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Feb 27, 2013 03:43
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This whole scene could really be improved in dramatic terms if, when it turns out Vriska's been played and all she's managed to do is feed Lord English thousands of souls, there's actually some sort of consequence. Like people are pissed with her, or she feels regret, or anything that would make this whole weird turn mean something in character development/relationship terms. Remember when Aradia haunted Vriska with the ghosts of her victims? Prime callback material. Also Caliborn's mysogeny, while terrible, is still pretty garden-variety. Actual horrible adolescents are like that in the real world. The existential horror of mind-controlling people into having their souls obliterated coupled with the narrative strangeness of none of the protagonists reacting strongly to this rates higher on the unsettling poo poo scale. edit - loaded words to avoid when Vriskatime is in effect: comeuppance, irredeemable, rationalize... Dolash fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 04:33
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Dolash posted:Look all jokes aside about worthless characters and one-dimensional throw-aways, this is pretty despicable and should probably warrant a stronger reaction from the characters than "oh those trolls and their shenanigans!" John was doing really good last intermission about not just passively absorbing hosed up poo poo without comment, this is kind of bleh. Not to mention it backtracks any imagined character growth from Vriska since she's just back to doing the same poo poo she did when she had a spidermom to feed. I started reading Homestuck in mid-December and got caught up in early February. As such, character development was compressed for me in real-time. My time from first reading about the trolls as shadowy, antagonist figures to cute and cuddly figure with zany romantic intrigues was about one week or two weeks...as opposed to what I must assume was months in real time, where the fanbase had time to digest the difference. As such, it was a pretty sharp turn for me. I don't know what the original intention was, whether the trolls were originally intended to be simple antagonists or something else. But I think that the popularity of cosplaying and fanart and focusing on the troll's convoluted but entertaining quadrants has meant that a lot of people have forgotten that troll society is vicious, brutal and celebrates violence. Some of the things that trolls regularly engage in are violent enough to be grotesque: such as the suggestions of cannibalism and the like. So I think that either inside of it or outside of it, the violence of troll society needs to be reconciled with the personal affection we have developed for them. And the conflict between Vriska, the sexy bad girl and Vriska, the scheming psychopath, is kind of part of that issue.
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Feb 27, 2013 05:15
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Dolash posted:This whole scene could really be improved in dramatic terms if, when it turns out Vriska's been played and all she's managed to do is feed Lord English thousands of souls, there's actually some sort of consequence. Like people are pissed with her, or she feels regret, or anything that would make this whole weird turn mean something in character development/relationship terms. Remember when Aradia haunted Vriska with the ghosts of her victims? Prime callback material. Like I said before, I think at this point the main cast is might well be pretty desensitized to large scale death. The lot of them have each personally watched their entire civilizations die, and that was on day one. Combine that with the kind of wide-ranging genocide against nameless mooks your average video game protagonist enacts, and they're probably each of them Joe Lieberman's living nightmare.
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Feb 27, 2013 06:06
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Cabbit posted:No joke, Caliborn's misogyny is way more jarring for me than Vriska throwing millions of Nepetas at a problem. Just to be perfectly clear here: You're saying that casual misogyny was less jarring than someone forcing hundreds of people to their deaths to accomplish her plan, going as far as to control them against their wills? I mean I'm not going to say what anybody should think, but straight up casual mass murder from a character who's already been shown to have questionable morals at best is less jarring than misogyny from a character who's defining trait is that he's an uncaring shithead?
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Feb 27, 2013 06:25
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Wrist Watch posted:Just to be perfectly clear here: You're saying that casual misogyny was less jarring than someone forcing hundreds of people to their deaths to accomplish her plan, going as far as to control them against their wills? Well the mass murder you're describing is actually mass double-murder of the already deceased. The deceased being, of course, a bunch of broad spoofs of internet culture in the form of flakey bug-teens from outer space. Most of whom have no real character to speak of, beyond their various one-note joke personalities. So I think one can be forgiven for finding the whole situation a mickle bit too goofy to take seriously.
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Feb 27, 2013 06:29
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Mind-controlling hundreds of dead (?) people into a suicide (?) attack is evil, but cartoonishly so, while Caliborn's relentless, sociopathic misogyny is something that real people express. I mean, while Caliborn is an exaggeration, he's less of an exaggeration than some of us wish.
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Feb 27, 2013 06:33
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I guess it's kind of the same effect as how cartoons aimed at children are allowed to be incredibly violent so long as they're not fighting people, then? Like you can show robots being dismembered, decapitated or I can understand why the concept works, I just think it's really stupid.
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Feb 27, 2013 06:44
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Dolash posted:The existential horror of mind-controlling people into having their souls obliterated I feel like pointing out here again that we still don't actually know what happens to a ghost that double-dies. I'm still going off of the non-reaction of the less-evil Trolls in this situation(Aradia and Aranea) to indicate that maybe it really isn't such a bad fate. Or even a fate at all. My running theory is that dreambubble selves are literally nothing more than an enabling mechanism for the dead to interact with the living, projections of spirits from the real afterlife, which we already know is a thing because there's where Jaspers and Nannasprite were pulled from, and they seemed just fine coming from there instead of real dreambubbles. So I'm saying that double death may not matter, not because they're already dead, and not because they're bit characters, but because they're not actually losing anything other than the equivalent of a telephone they use getting dropped in the washing machine and ruined. Somewhere, a dead vaporized Eridan is shaking his fist that he no longer can hit on living people. Only dead people now, which is surely a crime because it totally shrunk his dating pool nonetheless. Given it was created by the Horrorterrors for potentially less-than-friendly purposes, and how badly we see characters stagnate there, for all we know the dreambubbles may actually be worse than the standard afterlife, anyway.
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Feb 27, 2013 06:44
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This is the best panel
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Feb 27, 2013 06:56
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The more things change, the more things stay the same.
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Feb 27, 2013 06:57
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Aranea isn't so invested in mass double-murder yet that she can't take a time out for a good story-telling.
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Feb 27, 2013 07:01
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Never change storygirl.
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Feb 27, 2013 07:06
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Seriously, when it comes down to it LE might actually be doing them a favor. Can you imagine being stuck as a moody teenager FOREVER?? Can you imagine being stuck as a moody teenager with thousands of Cronus ghosts????  Edit: Wait wait wait, does this mean that Caliborn's horrible behavior IS actually perfectly normal for a cherub and what Hussie said to him was wrong?? 
No.44 fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 07:06
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I'll be real disappointed if this intermission doesn't end with John getting speared again.
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Feb 27, 2013 07:07
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I'm amazed they haven't thrown Aranea overboard yet. Or maybe they have and the Furthest Ring just loops her back onto it 
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Feb 27, 2013 07:07
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Eh, I'm not that excited. I have a good feeling that whatever story she knows of, it will likely turn out to be false. It's more likely than not that Calliope and Caliborn are the only Cherubs in existence, created through the ectobiology process like every other Sburb player, and the stories they know of about their own race are fictional and madeup to create the illusion of their race and the society they live in. They've probably been chained to the wall their entire life and were under the belief that their entire race was already dead by the time they were born, so they just take it for granted that there were other cherubs besides them. It makes for a great explanation as to why they are the way they are. Calliope thinks she is the opposite of a Cherub, while Caliborn thinks he is the ideal Cherub and both of their beliefs come from what they think Cherub culture is. The lovely twist is that there is no Cherub culture because they are the only two Cherubs to ever have existed and they never even spoke to one another face to face because of their shared body circumstance. Here's a great story for everyone. Once upon a time........Hussie updated Homestuck and left it on a cliffhanger. He then went to Seattle for a whole week and left everyone to suffer. The end.
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Feb 27, 2013 07:09
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Here we clearly see that with her fondness for overly long stories, Aranea is the true monster.
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Feb 27, 2013 07:13
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Wrist Watch posted:Just to be perfectly clear here: You're saying that casual misogyny was less jarring than someone forcing hundreds of people to their deaths to accomplish her plan, going as far as to control them against their wills? Like I've said a few times already, big body counts aren't a new thing in this story. The notion of exterminating all life on Earth as a preface threw me a bit at the start of the story, but it's something that I've acclimated to by this point. All of the big body counts also tends to happen more or less off screen. Somebody just straight up, artlessly calling Jane a dumb whore out of the clear blue and in plain view was pretty jarring, yeah. Caliborn's got redeeming factors in terms of entertainment value, but absolutely none of them were on display at that particular moment. Vriska does horrible things but, much like colonial-era Britain, does it with that certain agreeable swagger. Caliborn, not so much.
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Feb 27, 2013 07:20
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 Holy poo poo I wish I had money for an avatar right now.
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Feb 27, 2013 07:34
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I would just like to say that all you people that bitched, and moaned, and went on endless back and forths on the morality of ghost-mindcontrol for the past three or four pages. You guys. You are all personally responsible for this and the next few updates. I hope you all feel very proud.  -EDIT- gently caress, you people are still doing it despite the update. Holky gently caress.
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Feb 27, 2013 07:41
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Who What Now posted:I would just like to say that all you people that bitched, and moaned, and went on endless back and forths on the morality of ghost-mindcontrol for the past three or four pages. You guys. You are all personally responsible for this and the next few updates. I hope you all feel very proud. And we all deserve it, each and every one of us. You, me, and everyone here. That aside, we're going to get another intermission here, I'd bet money on it. Just watch. Like a seer, I can see the future, and it is one without horrible blue  all over everything.
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Feb 27, 2013 07:45
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Who What Now posted:I would just like to say that all you people that bitched, and moaned, and went on endless back and forths on the morality of ghost-mindcontrol for the past three or four pages. You guys. You are all personally responsible for this and the next few updates. I hope you all feel very proud. We told them about overanalyzing fictional events that aren't even completely described yet. We told them, but it keeps happening.
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Feb 27, 2013 07:46
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I like exposition time.
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Feb 27, 2013 07:47
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Seoinin posted:I like exposition time. Yeah, seriously. This is gonna be awesome.
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Feb 27, 2013 07:50
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Cabbit posted:Yeah, seriously. This is gonna be awesome. I've loved all the pirate updates, Vriska mind-control and everything. But I forsee stormy weathers for this thread in the coming weeks because of it...
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Feb 27, 2013 07:56
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Who What Now posted:I would just like to say that all you people that bitched, and moaned, and went on endless back and forths on the morality of ghost-mindcontrol for the past three or four pages. You guys. You are all personally responsible for this and the next few updates. I hope you all feel very proud. I was going to remark that Aranea had saved this thread from itself, but now it seems that I was right not to; such a claim would've been premature. What I hope to learn from this expodump is whether there can be credibly said to be any sessions other than the five we've seen.
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Feb 27, 2013 07:56
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If I can make my own intermission to this discussion, I have recently purchased and read "Pony Pals #17: Detective Pony". Cost me one penny plus three dollars and ninety nine cents in shipping fees. The books is pretty much what one would expect: the type of mass-produced kitsch series book that was so incredibly lucrative in the 80s/90s, following in the footsteps of The Baby Sitters Club. Only it was written for a slightly lower reading/interest level, with the book being more straight forward action and having a pretty cute plot. The book is about a cat that runs away after a fire, but luckily he has made friends with one of the Pony Pals' horses, who then sniffs him out in the woods and he is reunited and everyone is happy. A pretty thrilling 70-odd pages. I don't know how much to read into it, but I think the book might be pretty meaningful. Much like what we see over and over again in Homestuck, it is about a disaster that leaves people (or in this case, a cat) homeless, but a homelessness that is redeemed through the emotion called friendship. It is also about a group of three young adolescence bound together by adventure. So it might be more relevant than it seems. And while the children are incredibly kitschy and dull...when reading it, I also could imagine what might inspire Dirk Strider to mock it so much. While three pony obsessed girls living in a New England town with no major concerns but ponies is mockable, I can also read some loneliness in Dirk's decision to mock them. I get the feeling that his rewriting might have been done out of envy.
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Feb 27, 2013 08:03
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You're all kidding yourselves if you think the next page isn't going to be Act 6 Intermission 5 Intermission 3.
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Feb 27, 2013 08:10
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If you look up 'doofus' in the dictionary it should just be a picture of John.
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Feb 27, 2013 08:19
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So now we go back to talking about Caliborn's planet-hopping journey and get four pages of thread comprised mostly of "He's on the (colour) planet now! That means (next colour) is next! I can't wait to see that! And something something eight-ball Snowman Doc Scratch!", right? I've actually been enjoying Vriskachat over here.
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Feb 27, 2013 08:34
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Indecisive posted:If you look up 'doofus' in the dictionary it should just be a picture of John. I think that the players who get anywhere in the game are literally the smartest kids on the planet. We have Jade, who seems to be an Omnidisciplinary Scientist, and who can fight with a rifle at age 13. We have Rose, who grows up in a mansion with an observatory and is, well, Rose. We have Dave Strider who is scamming the internet with various schemes and is an accomplished swordsman and musician. And then we have John, who seems to be so much less accomplished than his friends, but who is actually the leader. John isn't a doofus. John figured out how to alchemize things, and since then he...um, well, he figured out that Con Air sucks. Well,okay, maybe he is a doofus.
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Feb 27, 2013 08:36
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glowing-fish posted:If I can make my own intermission to this discussion, I have recently purchased and read "Pony Pals #17: Detective Pony". Cost me one penny plus three dollars and ninety nine cents in shipping fees. Haha! I had those books (I think up to vol. 12) when I was 9. Acorn was the poo poo.
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Feb 27, 2013 08:51
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