xkcd

by **JoseB** » Fri Mar 27, 2009 10:29 am UTC

Moo wrote:The last line and that "photo" is a joke I'm not getting due to an unknown cultural reference, isn't it.

Awesome awesome story arc, though.

After reading other forums, I gather that it is a reference to the "March Madness" (big University basketball competition finals or something). It appears that the guys on the photo next to the fiend are the mascots from two University basketball teams, the "Arizona Sun Devil" from Arizona U. and the "Blue Devil" from Duke U.

Which would also lend credence to the theory that our orange-speaking friend is a devil as well and, therefore, Legal Evil

by **Maseiken** » Fri Mar 27, 2009 12:33 pm UTC

Incidentally, I assume V has maybe 1 or two greater Wishes now, so should be able to bring Roy back, even without a corpse, question is, will V?

by **Belial** » Fri Mar 27, 2009 12:57 pm UTC

Can't simulate divine spells. It was in the contract.

by **Maseiken** » Fri Mar 27, 2009 2:16 pm UTC

Ah yes, my bad.

by **Thadlerian** » Fri Mar 27, 2009 11:55 pm UTC

A good way to get a decent person to do something horrible is to convince them that they're not responsible for their actions.

The Milgram Experiment in one sentence.

by **Sir_Elderberry** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 5:59 pm UTC

"...those in the ventral position" is such a V thing to say.

Hopefully V's mate manages to talk some sense into V.

by **bigstrat2003** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 6:22 pm UTC

I doubt it. I think she's going to leave V, and take the kids with her.

by **Naurgul** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 6:49 pm UTC

Sir_Elderberry wrote:Hopefully V's mate manages to talk some sense into V.

Wouldn't it be better if V hurried and resolved as many open problems (getting the party back together, finding a way to get the dead back, foiling Xykon's plans, killing Xykon...) as he/she could before the Splice is over? He/she can't really take his word back and break the contract now anyway, can he/she? The plot is convoluted enough as it is; this whole Splice thing will probably add a lot of things to be resolved (at least as far as V is concerned) so it might as well tie some loose too, I won't mind.

by **Yakk** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 6:54 pm UTC

The longer V holds onto the splice, the more hold the fiends have on V.

by **Naurgul** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 7:05 pm UTC

Well, yes, but obviously there's a twist to that, which is probably irreversible at this point; or at least V can't act on it because he doesn't know it. In any case, wouldn't another 2 minutes of V in the fiends' hand (plus whatever twist he and us are unaware of) be worth resolving a bunch of things in the plot?

by **Yakk** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 7:18 pm UTC

So, here is a spoilerriffic speculation:

Spoiler:

by **JoseB** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 8:44 am UTC

bigstrat2003 wrote:I doubt it. I think she's going to leave V, and take the kids with her.

And, after seeing #642, I have to say: I am honoured to see you here, Mr. Burlew :lol:

by **Naurgul** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 10:00 am UTC

Well, I for one, care less for the well being of V's emotions than the advancement of the plot. Therefore, I am rather happy that he decided to 'fix everything'. Besides, his emotional problems from this will be resolved and amended in time, since this is a conventional story and all.

Spoiler:

by **Sir_Elderberry** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 11:11 pm UTC

Poor V. Pretty tough choice, really, because V's partner is not far from the truth: apart from the evil voices-in-head, that kind of power is exactly what V wanted. Duty to Plot vs Duty to Family I suppose.

And yeah, part of me is glad to see that V has decided that it's time to "fix everything". But I doubt we're going to get off quite that easily.

by **Yakk** » Fri Apr 03, 2009 12:10 am UTC

Note how ambiguous that statement is.

This is a real spoiler:

Spoiler:

by **Naurgul** » Fri Apr 03, 2009 7:06 am UTC

Yakk wrote:
Spoiler:
I think that Belkar's God of War plot arc was foreshadowing.

Belkar as a character has already had a bunch of stuff resolved. The whole "become a real character" thing with the curse and the dreams. I doubt he's going to change significantly now. In a similar note, Haley had her turn with the whole "I can't talk" thing and Elan's turn was probably when he got that prestige class and saved Haley. Also, V is having his turn now. So, if we count Roy's death and subsequent stuff that happened to him as his turn, that leaves, what, Durkon?

by **cephalopod9** » Fri Apr 03, 2009 9:57 am UTC

Except for that little prophecy aside.

Spoiler:

Poor little elf babies.

by **Maseiken** » Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:01 pm UTC

Ok, just in case it wasn't clear before? V is EVIL now.

by **Sir_Elderberry** » Sun Apr 05, 2009 1:38 am UTC

Maseiken wrote:Ok, just in case it wasn't clear before? V is EVIL now.

And of ever-increasing arrogance. Right now, V is just mad that V's not getting to solve all the problems.

by **Belial** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 6:48 pm UTC

Dear GiantITP:

If you are serious about this "being a webcomic" business, please invest in a server that will not shit itself and die under your normal, run-of-the-mill "new comic" load.

Thanks,

Everybody.

by **pseudoidiot** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 7:10 pm UTC

Hell even when it's not a new comic, I'm lucky to get the page to load without every other image being broken.

by **JoseB** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 7:31 pm UTC

For what it's worth, I have never experienced serious problems loading the comics or getting into the forum. Either I am incredibly lucky, or I have an obscene bandwidth with my ISP at home.

I live in the Netherlands, if that information can be of any help.

by **Yakk** » Thu Apr 09, 2009 7:38 pm UTC

JoseB, you use a proxy server or anything like that?

Us North Americans are used to raw, uncompromising, server access. Grr.

by **Belial** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 4:27 pm UTC

JoseB wrote:For what it's worth, I have never experienced serious problems loading the comics or getting into the forum. Either I am incredibly lucky, or I have an obscene bandwidth with my ISP at home.

Your bandwidth doesn't affect it.

It's his bandwidth and server that are limiting

by **Naurgul** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 4:33 pm UTC

Maybe there's some sort of inverse net-neutrality issue! Instead of ISPs discriminating based on site, you have site servers discriminating based on user location and/or ISP!

by **sio** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 8:05 am UTC

I've always had trouble accessing that site. I can get through maybe a third of the time.

by **Sir_Elderberry** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 2:39 pm UTC

What an anticlimactic reunion. Also, damn. Finally. I like where V's going--something big is going to happen soon.

And, Roy's resurrection is so close, if it doesn't happen now, I may have to kill something.

by **Maseiken** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 10:09 pm UTC

I'm intrigued by the duality of V's attitude, in which expedience, while still being a main point, seems to take a backseat to sheer ego. V is far more irritated at V's curtailed opportunities to show off than V ever was about irrelevant plotlines or useless bickering.

by **Belial** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 12:10 pm UTC

Well, yes. He sacrificed quite a lot to get this all done, and he's not getting the use out of it that he hoped.

by **Yakk** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 1:29 pm UTC

And every moment V spends with this power is giving V's soul one more tad to the forces of darkness.

It being not useful makes V frustrated. The point was that the evil V is doing is justified by the awesome usefulness of V's magic.

Now, V has teleported the entire fleet to an apparently good location to settle (admittedly, who knows how long ago the elves had last surveyed that set of islands...)

by **Sir_Elderberry** » Tue Apr 21, 2009 1:11 am UTC

Belial wrote:Well, yes. He sacrificed quite a lot to get this all done, and he's not getting the use out of it that he hoped.

It's like an evil version of Oppenheimer if the Japanese had surrendered in July.

by **Maseiken** » Tue Apr 21, 2009 6:07 am UTC

"I am become death, the destroyer o- OH GOD FUCKING DAMMIT"

by **Sir_Elderberry** » Sat Apr 25, 2009 8:10 pm UTC

Am I the only one scared that, if I expect Roy to get rezzed within the next five strips, I'll jinx it?

by **pseudoidiot** » Sat Apr 25, 2009 8:12 pm UTC

Too late!

by **Naurgul** » Sat Apr 25, 2009 8:40 pm UTC

This repeating thing of having V want to fix everything with his super-duper awesome new powers and failing every time is making me worry that my expectations of getting Roy resurrected, then all getting teleported to Xykon for a final showdown will remain dreams. The plot will likely continue to advance (mostly backwards) at that fiendishly frustrating pace it has us used to. The conclusion feels so close yet I know that Mr. Burlew has plans of stretching it to infinity. We will all be dead long before OotS reaches the credits. In fact, one might argue that this strip is a preemptive visual requiem for the inescapable death of humanity, a metaphor for the futility of the humans' efforts to matter, even ever so slightly, on the cosmic scale.

Spoiler:

by **Maseiken** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 1:59 am UTC

Don't worry, Durkon probably has some good resurrection spells now, with which to plot-block V once again.

Plot-block is my new favourite word.

by **Naurgul** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 9:26 am UTC

V can't use divine spells as part of his agreement with the fiends anyway, so that wouldn't count as a plot-block really.

by **Maseiken** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 12:50 pm UTC

Is there really no arcane resurrection spell?
huh, fair enough.

by **SecondTalon** » Sun Apr 26, 2009 11:46 pm UTC

Maseiken wrote:Is there really no arcane resurrection spell?
huh, fair enough.

Wish. Maybe Limited Wish. That's about it.

by **Sir_Elderberry** » Mon Apr 27, 2009 2:50 am UTC

SexyTalon wrote:
Maseiken wrote:Is there really no arcane resurrection spell?
huh, fair enough.

Wish. Maybe Limited Wish. That's about it.

And V is specifically barred from casting those.

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