Thor's sanity and attitude

[Sniccups]

Strips 1139 and 1140 were are really hard for me to accept. I can't handle "millions of worlds over hundreds of millions of years" in a previously light-hearted parody comic. It pushes it from fantasy parody all the way into cosmic horror.

I have one big question about what's going on:
How is Thor so optimistic and fun?
If I were forced to live 100,000,000 years and build inhabited worlds that are just going to get destroyed anyway, and be forced to remember every part of it, I definitely wouldn't have the type of attitude Thor has. Honestly, I'm surprised that any of the gods are still functioning people, and not just jaded to everything. They just don't seem millions of years old and trapped in such a cycle.

[hamishspence]

Thor does seem a little jaded toward Durkon's fate here:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0353.html

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Strips 1139 and 1140 were are really hard for me to accept. I can't handle "millions of worlds over hundreds of millions of years" in a previously light-hearted parody comic. It pushes it from fantasy parody all the way into cosmic horror.

I have one big question about what's going on:
How is Thor so optimistic and fun?
If I were forced to live 100,000,000 years and build inhabited worlds that are just going to get destroyed anyway, and be forced to remember every part of it, I definitely wouldn't have the type of attitude Thor has. Honestly, I'm surprised that any of the gods are still functioning people, and not just jaded to everything. They just don't seem millions of years old and trapped in such a cycle.

You are mortal. He is not. A year is a long time to you, because you only get 100 of them. For the last billion nanoseconds, things in the world have been bad, and yet presumably you are capable of being cheerful and enjoying a beverage of choice, because that billion nanoseconds were but a blink of an eye to you, and there is still time to make things better in your lifetime.

How much more, then, when there is no time limit to what Thor wants to accomplish?

Grey Wolf

[Fyraltari]

Strips 1139 and 1140 were are really hard for me to accept. I can't handle "millions of worlds over hundreds of millions of years" in a previously light-hearted parody comic. It pushes it from fantasy parody all the way into cosmic horror.

I have one big question about what's going on:
How is Thor so optimistic and fun?
If I were forced to live 100,000,000 years and build inhabited worlds that are just going to get destroyed anyway, and be forced to remember every part of it, I definitely wouldn't have the type of attitude Thor has. Honestly, I'm surprised that any of the gods are still functioning people, and not just jaded to everything. They just don't seem millions of years old and trapped in such a cycle.

100,000,000 is a lot for a human, not for a god. Besides a lot (most ?) of the souls the gods made evaded obliteration. People die eventually, c'est la vie, you either deal with it and keep going or you don't.

Alternatively, that's why he drinks.

[Lacuna Caster]

Alternatively, that's why he drinks.

Hotel California comes to mind, for some reason.

[mucat]

Honestly, I'm surprised that any of the gods are still functioning people, and not just jaded to everything. They just don't seem millions of years old and trapped in such a cycle.
http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i294/trytoguess/Thor.png - "Oh, that? I went stark raving mad with despair eons ago. Fortunately, I keep hallucinating that I'm cheerful and sane."

[Linneris]

Strips 1139 and 1140 were are really hard for me to accept. I can't handle "millions of worlds over hundreds of millions of years" in a previously light-hearted parody comic. It pushes it from fantasy parody all the way into cosmic horror.

I agree; I don't like this revelation, even if it's something Rich was planning from the moment he originally came up with the Gates/Snarl plot. It doesn't really fit the mood of the story and doesn't really fit the personalities of the gods as depicted.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I agree; I don't like this revelation, even if it's something Rich was planning from the moment he originally came up with the Gates/Snarl plot. It doesn't really fit the mood of the story and doesn't really fit the personalities of the gods as depicted.

Hopefully you meant to type "in my personal opinion" in there somewhere, because I absolutely believe it fits the mood of the story perfectly, and it really does fit the personalities of the gods as depicted in #999 and beyond.

Grey Wolf

[Jay R]

If I were forced to live 100,000,000 years and build inhabited worlds that are just going to get destroyed anyway, and be forced to remember every part of it, I definitely wouldn't have the type of attitude Thor has.

First of all, you are working with mortal limitations. Thor isn't. Yes, he can remember every pert of it - but that includes every noble and lovely part of it, and every souls saved. He remembers them all the time.

Yes, he remembers every lost soul as a defeat. But he also remembers every saved soul as a victory.

Every creator god spends an eternity creating mortals who will eventually die. When these gods successfully harvest the souls, then the only difference here is that the dirt is destroyed too.

[Rrmcklin]

I agree that looking at it through a human or "mortal" perspective it's insane, but that's not what Thor is doing.

For him and the other gods, they're existence is theoretically infinite. When you know that you can keep going no matter what (except for one, specific thing you're trying to contain) something like this is bound to affect you less, even if Thor still does obviously care.

[King of Nowhere]

pets die much faster than humans. Pet owners see a lot of their beloved pets die. they can still be optimistic and fun.
Also, keep in mind that mortals die regardless of circumstances. It's in the very descriptor: they are mortals, because eventually they die. So if you've been around as long as oots gods, you see billions die regardless of whether wordls are destroied or not.

Finally, you either deal with it and keep going, or you don't.

[Mike Havran]

Honestly, I'm surprised that any of the gods are still functioning people, and not just jaded to everything. They are not functioning people, because they are no people at all. They are Gods. They are not affected by the passage of time the way mortals are.

[Rynael]

I agree; I don't like this revelation, even if it's something Rich was planning from the moment he originally came up with the Gates/Snarl plot. It doesn't really fit the mood of the story and doesn't really fit the personalities of the gods as depicted.

Both to this and to the OP, I felt the same way in the moment upon reading that page, and it does not help that we're sitting on these pages at a serial pace now instead of turning the page immediately on an archive binge, but I'd argue this isn't at all unusual in the context of the story.

For one, it's composed almost exactly like Familicide, and to evoke similar feelings. Two, we already knew that an entire world was probably destroyed, and I don't think the extra orders of magnitude of numbers of lives lost were actually a qualitative change—it's still essentially "a lot of people." If anything, it's punched through the narrative detachment and given the feeling that the loss of one planet should've done all along. And three, there have actually been... kind of a lot of massacres in Order of the Stick? Things still mostly work out in the end.

It was a brutal page. I just don't think it's unfitting, or changes the genre any. It just raises the stakes more than ever, since there's no telling whether any future worlds would get a chance like this! I'm hoping that after they've processed it, Durkon's, the Order's, and maybe even Minrah's determination to fight for this cause at any cost will be bolstered.

P.S. On Thor's sanity, I can only guess, but I don't feel like it really matters whether he has "godly resolve" or anything. Even a mortal mind, given all eternity to cope with absolute despair, the bleakness of life without a visible meaning, and the sheer scope of everything... at some point, most people deal with those feelings, but many people come out the other side with their optimism and ability to enjoy life surprisingly intact, and perhaps stronger with the added dimension of understanding. Maybe Thor's like that. Or maybe it's just god powers. Either way, I think it absolutely makes sense for Thor to be the way he is now.

[Particle_Man]

I wonder if that is what happens to any deified mortals of previous worlds. They simply could not handle the deaths of all their worshippers, because they used to be mortal themselves and still had some of that mortal mindset. And then finding out how long this has been going on, and likely will be going on . . . well, it might be too much to handle.

I mean, do the demigods even know the whole score? Are they new with this world too?

[ZZTRaider]

Don't forget that the gods are made out of ideas.

Does the number of failed worlds somehow change the ideas that make up Thor? Not really.
If it were common knowledge it might change the idea people have about who Thor is -- it seems to have changed yours, after all! -- but it's a closely guarded secret in the comic.
Even then, I'm not sure that would be enough to fundamentally change Thor. The ideas that brought him into existence clearly predate the mortals in the comic.

[factotum]

Simple fact is, the way a god's mind works has to be different than a mortal's. A mortal, faced with eternity, would probably get bored before they hit a thousand years--that doesn't happen to gods.

[MoiMagnus]

Strips 1139 and 1140 were are really hard for me to accept. I can't handle "millions of worlds over hundreds of millions of years" in a previously light-hearted parody comic. It pushes it from fantasy parody all the way into cosmic horror.

Those regular world destruction are still treated in a parodic way, not in a horror one.

What's the difference between "your world is 100,000,000,000 year old, and a likely world destruction is coming" and "your world is young and millions of worlds existed before, and yet another world destruction is coming"?
In both case, everyone from the past is dead a long time ago, empire were build and then fall apart.

At the contrary, I feel like having millions of worlds already destroyed allow to talk about the incoming world destruction in a light hearted way ("we sure ain't quitter!"), while if the incoming world destruction was the "destruction of the only world that exists and will ever exist" would be much more serious.

Sure, there is some dark humor in it, but there was already a lot of it when Xykon was routinely torturing/killing peoples.

I agree that the comic is more serious than at its beginning, but for me the transition was when Durkon became a Vampire. Because that's the beginning of the doubt "what if they lose?" which gives a more serious tone.

[Razade]

Strips 1139 and 1140 were are really hard for me to accept. I can't handle "millions of worlds over hundreds of millions of years" in a previously light-hearted parody comic. It pushes it from fantasy parody all the way into cosmic horror.

I have one big question about what's going on:
How is Thor so optimistic and fun?
If I were forced to live 100,000,000 years and build inhabited worlds that are just going to get destroyed anyway, and be forced to remember every part of it, I definitely wouldn't have the type of attitude Thor has. Honestly, I'm surprised that any of the gods are still functioning people, and not just jaded to everything. They just don't seem millions of years old and trapped in such a cycle.

They aren't people. They're Gods. That's the difference. They don't see Time like you or I do. Or Mortal Life. Or anything like that. The Gods are alien.

[Mad Humanist]

I'm pretty sure that at some point in his long existence, Thor got round to reading Camus' Myth of Sisyphus - and unlike me - actually appreciated it. He probably really got into other existentialist philosophers too. I think that's all we need to explain Thor. Each world is just pushing a boulder up a mountain and watching it roll back down again and each time you try different things. Some work, some give you real hope. But after each time that boulder rolls back down you just shrug your shoulders and start all over again.

[Mordaedil]

I mean, each world represents a game session discarded, so uh, might as well ask why people stay sane after playing hundreds of games of D&D.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

It just raises the stakes more than ever

...

I've seen this sentiment expressed a lot, and I'm not sure I quite understand what you are getting at. The stakes are the same as they ever where: the Order better get their shtick together, or they and their entire world - including everyone they care for that isn't already dead - will not just die, but cease to exist. The stakes cannot be higher for the Order - and therefore, the story - without somehow risking Eric's, Roy's mom's, etc.'s souls as well.

What this page does is establish, in no uncertain terms, that the gods can't solve this. That despite there existing deific level creatures out there, they are literally incapable of solving this... and yet, that there is hope for a succesful resolution. But unlike in greek tragedy, where the hope was always a god coming in at the end and solving it - a Deus Ex Machina in the original sense, this world's hope is its opposite: an Anthropos Ex Machina, if you will.

Grey Wolf

[Linneris]

I don't buy the "alien minds" argument. The OOTS gods are shown to have human-like emotions, and we're clearly meant to empathize with Thor and to some small extent even with Hel. However, this sounds more believable to me:


Don't forget that the gods are made out of ideas.

Does the number of failed worlds somehow change the ideas that make up Thor? Not really.

I would imagine that the gods simply can't not be themselves. It's not that the gods force themselves to keep creating worlds again and again through sheer persistence, but that creating worlds is what gods do, it's part of the conception of what gods are — one of the ideas that they're made of. They would simply never seriously consider the possibility of stopping. Similarly, Thor would never seriously consider the possibility of ceasing to be a god of thunder, because the concept of a god of thunder is literally part of what he is made of.

[Roland Itiative]

In many mythologies, gods really aren't allowed to change. They don't learn, adapt and mature like mortals do, they just are. Thor can't change from being cheerful, as much as Loki can't change from being a trickster, no matter how often these personality traits get them into trouble. As much as it may seem that his mind works just like a human's, it fundamentally doesn't.

And it's quite possible to be sad for all the dead worlds without letting this consume your being, even with a human-like mindset. The gods don't see mortals as their equals. Each world is more like a project that eventually reached an early end. A story that was fun while it lasted, but never got finished. An RPG campaign that led to some cool memories, but never reached a conclusion.

[martianmister]

How is Thor so optimistic and fun?
If I were forced to live 100,000,000 years and build inhabited worlds that are just going to get destroyed anyway, and be forced to remember every part of it, I definitely wouldn't have the type of attitude Thor has.

Does he remember every part of it, or only the parts about his clerics? He probably don't remember or care about the random Loki worshipper in New Haven City-state from Earth-182778888009. And it's not like normal people from WWII turned crazy from all that death and destruction, they founded welfare states in Western Europe.

[Goblin_Priest]

I think the gods are somewhat immutable. Since they reflect ideas, and are fueled by them, they are bound within the constraints of those ideas, and thus cannot evolve past them.

[Cinevei]

Strips 1139 and 1140 were are really hard for me to accept. I can't handle "millions of worlds over hundreds of millions of years" in a previously light-hearted parody comic. It pushes it from fantasy parody all the way into cosmic horror.


At the contrary, I feel like having millions of worlds already destroyed allow to talk about the incoming world destruction in a light hearted way ("we sure ain't quitter!"), while if the incoming world destruction was the "destruction of the only world that exists and will ever exist" would be much more serious.

Sure, there is some dark humor in it, but there was already a lot of it when Xykon was routinely torturing/killing peoples.

Strip #1139 did in fact push this comic into a significantly darker genre for me, but only briefly. It wasn't the implied number of people who died because of the Snarl, or any sort of increased stakes. It was a sense of hopelessness/despair caused by the number of iterations of the cycle. If it has been going for millions of worlds, what could possibly break it now? The first or second time the world is threatened with wholesale destruction in a story, I have no problems assuming a happy ending of some form, especially in a humorous format like this. A sudden change after millions of mostly identical scenarios seems so much more unlikely that it actually made me fear an unhappy/bittersweet ending.

Of course, that's when my narrative reasoning piped in and explained that of course OotS is going to end more or less happily, therefore a good reason for a cycle break would be provided in due time (which was then partially achieved in #1141). So in a sense I rejected the darker storyline implied by #1139 precisely because it did not fit the mood of OotS up to this point.

[Rrmcklin]

I don't buy the "alien minds" argument. The OOTS gods are shown to have human-like emotions, and we're clearly meant to empathize with Thor and to some small extent even with Hel. However, this sounds more believable to me:

I mean, Thor himself commented on with his "mortal limitations" line and the jealousy he occasionally feels toward it; that the gods are "human-like" in some areas does not preclude them being distinctly "unhuman-like" in others.

And one of those areas is being able to maintain sanity doing something where any human would have gone insane a long time ago, largely because by their very nature they're going to keep going longer than any human ever could possibly hope to live.

[Synesthesy]

I think for you to fully understand the meaning of Thor's experience, you should play a RPG Minecraft server. I remember the pain when I had one and we needed to reboot and start a new world, deleting forever every players' creation... But you did it in hope that the next world will be better!

[Rynael]

...

I've seen this sentiment expressed a lot, and I'm not sure I quite understand what you are getting at. The stakes are the same as they ever where: the Order better get their shtick together, or they and their entire world - including everyone they care for that isn't already dead - will not just die, but cease to exist. The stakes cannot be higher for the Order - and therefore, the story - without somehow risking Eric's, Roy's mom's, etc.'s souls as well.

Getting at three things: For one, we didn't actually know, for sure, that the planet was in danger by whatever was in the Rift. A ton of now-incorrect forum speculation said it might not be, and more importantly, the conclusion to Blood Runs in the Family showed that Roy himself was considering the possibility that they weren't actually saving the world anymore, except from Xykon. This now confirms that whatever the "planet in the rift" thread means, the world is 100% still in the same danger set out in Crayons of Time.

Two, if this were World 2.0, and there had been no prior failures (World 1 doesn't count, since the mortals never got a chance in the first place), and one success (the Order of the Scribble), the Order's chance of victory was looking pretty high. Now it's been reduced to the proverbial "one in a million chance," not just by saying it's so unlikely, but showing a page full of all the people who failed before them.

Three, if the Order had failed here, then under our old understanding of the circumstances, World 3.0 would've almost certainly succeeded. In fact, they would've just fixed the prison, problem solved. Doesn't help the Order too much, but it would've taken all future worlds out of the stakes. Now? If it took them a billion worlds to come to a solution, who says World 1,000,000,001 has a realistic chance of doing it? They've probably been stable at "a few thousand years, give or take," for millions of worlds, now. It might be another half-billion worlds before they have yet another chance to break the cycle. That's what's at stake.

[Sniccups]

I think for you to fully understand the meaning of Thor's experience, you should play a RPG Minecraft server. I remember the pain when I had one and we needed to reboot and start a new world, deleting forever every players' creation... But you did it in hope that the next world will be better!

But with Minecraft, you can make backups.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Getting at three things: For one, we didn't actually know, for sure, that the planet was in danger by whatever was in the Rift. A ton of now-incorrect forum speculation said it might not be, and more importantly, the conclusion to Blood Runs in the Family showed that Roy himself was considering the possibility that they weren't actually saving the world anymore, except from Xykon. This now confirms that whatever the "planet in the rift" thread means, the world is 100% still in the same danger set out in Crayons of Time.

Two, if this were World 2.0, and there had been no prior failures (World 1 doesn't count, since the mortals never got a chance in the first place), and one success (the Order of the Scribble), the Order's chance of victory was looking pretty high. Now it's been reduced to the proverbial "one in a million chance," not just by saying it's so unlikely, but showing a page full of all the people who failed before them.

Three, if the Order had failed here, then under our old understanding of the circumstances, World 3.0 would've almost certainly succeeded. In fact, they would've just fixed the prison, problem solved. Doesn't help the Order too much, but it would've taken all future worlds out of the stakes. Now? If it took them a billion worlds to come to a solution, who says World 1,000,000,001 has a realistic chance of doing it? They've probably been stable at "a few thousand years, give or take," for millions of worlds, now. It might be another half-billion worlds before they have yet another chance to break the cycle. That's what's at stake.

You seem to be using a meaning of "stakes" I am unfamiliar with, or alternatively, you disagree with the author about the nature of the story.

This is the story of the Order of the Stick. Not the story of a billion worlds, or of the gods. The stakes for the Order of the Stick are what happens to them, and what happens to those they care about. We have known that the Snarl was a thread since the end of BRitF when it poked out. Besides, if these hypothetical people that didn't believe the Snarl was a danger to the world weren't willing to believe a Paladin when he said the Snarl was dangerous, I'm not sure why they'd take a god's word on it, but that's on them. They aren't the measure of canon or stakes.

The chance of succeeding is NOT connected to the stakes. Whether it is 100:1 or 1:100000 is irrelevant, the stakes remain the same: the fate of the world. And all you say about "world 3" is irrelevant. The Order would be Dead, the story would be over, and the stakes of the story at that point would also be gone, because the story is about the Order of the Stick, not the Gods of OotS.

Grey Wolf

[Rynael]

They're not hypothetical. There were a lot of people saying the Snarl wasn't going to destroy the world, despite the fact that, yeah, the end of Blood Runs in the Family did pretty well confirm that the Snarl was in there. And also, speaking of the story being about the Order, the danger being confirmed for them matters.

What actually happens to future worlds doesn't matter. What the Order knows might happen if they fail? Does.

As for whether "stakes" are connected to their probability of success, that thread's basically semantics. But seeing the failures does make the existing stakes feel more real, whether it actually changes any numbers or not.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

As for whether "stakes" are connected to their probability of success, that thread's basically semantics.
Indeed it is: semantics, the study of meaning. If you are trying to talk about chances of success, used those words. Don't expect me to be able to read your mind to figure out what you "meant" when you used the wrong words to express your ideas.


But seeing the failures does make the existing stakes feel more real, whether it actually changes any numbers or not.

Speak for yourself. Don't make broad declarations of how things "feel" to you as if they applied to everyone.

Grey Wolf

[Doug Lampert]

Simple fact is, the way a god's mind works has to be different than a mortal's. A mortal, faced with eternity, would probably get bored before they hit a thousand years--that doesn't happen to gods.

What makes you think that? A two year old can get bored in seconds, a twelve year old it probably takes minutes, I'd be disappointed in a 22 year old who couldn't handle hours, ...

My father has been retired for decades and claims not to have been bored in all that time. I don't think I've been bored in the last 10 years or so, and I'm not all that old or experienced.

More experience lets you have more things to think about and more ways to pass time and more skill at observing just how much interesting stuff is out there.

As long as there are people to interact with, books to read, games to play, music to hear, and sunsets to watch I'm not all that worried. And I don't think I'm a god.

[Rrmcklin]

Like, this explains some of the gods cavalier attitudes towards the destruction of the world, but it doesn't really change the stakes: we knew the gods could possibly destroy the world and kill everyone to make a new one, and the Order knew that as well.

That they've done so billions of times before adds some perspective, but it doesn't actually make the circumstances somehow less dire. Well, for the gods, I guess, but who is following this story for them?

[Prinygod]

Its a gamblers fallacy. When calculating the likely hood of something happening you don't consider what has already happened to get to that point. If you flip a coin 9 times and its heads every time, that final flip is still only 50-50. The fact that the Dark one is so rare that it took a billion worlds to happen doesn't affect the chance for success because it already happened. In fact the odds are even better because the hardest part has already been accomplished, like the 9 heads in the example.

[Fyraltari]

I don't buy the "alien minds" argument. The OOTS gods are shown to have human-like emotions, and we're clearly meant to empathize with Thor and to some small extent even with Hel. However, this sounds more believable to me:



I would imagine that the gods simply can't not be themselves. It's not that the gods force themselves to keep creating worlds again and again through sheer persistence, but that creating worlds is what gods do, it's part of the conception of what gods are — one of the ideas that they're made of. They would simply never seriously consider the possibility of stopping. Similarly, Thor would never seriously consider the possibility of ceasing to be a god of thunder, because the concept of a god of thunder is literally part of what he is made of.
Being unable to change unless somebody else believed you have changed seems pretty alien to me.

In many mythologies, gods really aren't allowed to change. They don't learn, adapt and mature like mortals do, they just are. Thor can't change from being cheerful, as much as Loki can't change from being a trickster, no matter how often these personality traits get them into trouble. As much as it may seem that his mind works just like a human's, it fundamentally doesn't.
Mythologies are not written by a single person with character development in mind. Mythologies are collections of stories from different sources with as many authors as people telling them using characters that are intentionally archetypal (to empower the metaphor). of course the cast will not change from story to story, it needs to be recognizable.

And when the multiple myths are compiled to form a cohesivie story there sometime is character development. It is not unheard of to present Loki as evolving from a (mostly) harmless prankster to a much more cruel manipulator as time passes and he reacts to the Æzirs' reactions to his actions until the murder of Baldr and his subsequent quasi-eternal torture.


And it's quite possible to be sad for all the dead worlds without letting this consume your being, even with a human-like mindset. The gods don't see mortals as their equals. Each world is more like a project that eventually reached an early end. A story that was fun while it lasted, but never got finished. An RPG campaign that led to some cool memories, but never reached a conclusion.
Thor does see the mortals as people however.

[Jay R]

Just to complicate the consideration:

If the first or second world had not been destroyed, then all the people in all those other worlds would never have been able to exist - including the Order of the Stick. They would not have had a short existence snuffed out by the Snarl; they would have never had souls at all.

[Rrmcklin]

Just to complicate the consideration:

If the first or second world had not been destroyed, then all the people in all those other worlds would never have been able to exist - including the Order of the Stick. They would not have had a short existence snuffed out by the Snarl; they would have never had souls at all.

I don't see how that complicates anything. Real life works very much the same way; tragedies often lead to circumstances in which people are born who otherwise wouldn't exist (in one way or the other).

[Rynael]

Because I missed it in my previous post:


Besides, if these hypothetical people that didn't believe the Snarl was a danger to the world weren't willing to believe a Paladin when he said the Snarl was dangerous, I'm not sure why they'd take a god's word on it, but that's on them.

I've blanked on who you can be talking about other than Lord Shojo (Soon?), and might just be misremembering something, but if you're talking about the Crayons of Time, that was before we got multiple revelations and book endings to the effect of, "Yet it hasn't stepped one tangled foot outside that rift," and "Perhaps we do not know everything we ought to regarding the task which we are undertaking," and, "Maybe someone's been yanking everyone's chain," and, "I don't even know if we are saving the world anymore." From the characters.

It's not a stretch to say, over and over again, that you shouldn't take a particular story at its word, and then not take it at its word. This is different. We have no such reason not to believe Thor, not yet.


Indeed it is: semantics, the study of meaning. If you are trying to talk about chances of success, used those words. Don't expect me to be able to read your mind to figure out what you "meant" when you used the wrong words to express your ideas.

The point of saying that an argument is semantics is to say that, on that specific thread of this argument, we were on the same page, and are not going to get anywhere constructive by continuing it. It's also why I didn't bother to address your "nature of the story" comment, since I'd almost quoted the Giant's, "the setting is not the protagonist," post in a previous draft of a post before that and threw it out as bloat.


Speak for yourself. Don't make broad declarations of how things "feel" to you as if they applied to everyone.

Now, see, there's a fundamental disagreement we have. It's the difference between showing and telling. An author can tell me, "there's a million-to-one chance of failure," all they want; it's a dramatic cliché that's not even remotely convincing anymore, if it ever was. The stakes of failure are only worth caring about if there's any believable chance that the failure could ever actually happen. And a billion such failures were just shown.

Yes, how things feel matters, and I can only ever have a sample size of one (also, I'd rather not get into another "hypothetical people" thread that I can prove by quoting, like, a hundred forum posts, but don't really want to do that kind of work just for an argument). It's a major part of how many people engage with stories. Besides, it's not just the audience—Durkon expressed a similar feeling on-panel. Seeing all the lost worlds took him from, "we will save the world," to, "our failure is inevitable." Obviously he's not staying at that conclusion, but it's there.

I've already argued that the number of lives at stake was raised. You've said those hypothetical future worlds didn't count in this argument, because they aren't the people whose names we know. I'm also separately arguing that the existing stakes were raised in substance by emphasizing that the Order's success isn't a virtual certainty, and that billions of failures predate them. If we're talking the about the "number of lives" sense of stakes, the future worlds count. If we're talking about emotional stakes, the only kind that exclusively applies to the people the Order cares about, then giving them a real reason to believe they might fail counts. Either way, the stakes rise.


Its a gamblers fallacy. When calculating the likely hood of something happening you don't consider what has already happened to get to that point. If you flip a coin 9 times and its heads every time, that final flip is still only 50-50. The fact that the Dark one is so rare that it took a billion worlds to happen doesn't affect the chance for success because it already happened. In fact the odds are even better because the hardest part has already been accomplished, like the 9 heads in the example.

If I flip a coin a billion times and it lands heads every time, I assume something's up with the coin flip, and that the chances were never, at any point, 50/50.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I've blanked on who you can be talking about other than Lord Shojo (Soon?), and might just be misremembering something, but if you're talking about the Crayons of Time, that was before we got multiple revelations and book endings to the effect of, "Yet it hasn't stepped one tangled foot outside that rift," and "Perhaps we do not know everything we ought to regarding the task which we are undertaking," and, "Maybe someone's been yanking everyone's chain," and, "I don't even know if we are saving the world anymore." From the characters.

Something in the rifts killed Soon's wife. The exact nature of the Snarl has long been contested, but to deny its danger is to suggest a paladin lied about the death of his wife. What he might or might not have known about the gods and what preceded the world creation might be in doubt in the crayons. But his wife was dead. Crayons or not, there was never a reason to disbelieve that bit of the story.

Edit to Add:

If I flip a coin a billion times and it lands heads every time, I assume something's up with the coin flip, and that the chances were never, at any point, 50/50.

Irrelevant, since this is more akin to flipping a billion different coins, until one finally gets head 20 times in a row. Whether most of the others were fair, loaded or something else does not in any way change the chances of this one.

Grey Wolf

[Rynael]

I think I actually jumped the gun on responding to that last "coin flip" post because I saw the problem with the first three sentences and misinterpreted what they were getting at with the latter two.

[Zenzis]

I actually have really appreciated the recent comics and thought The Giant did an excellent job of portraying deities in a way I haven't seen before, or at least haven't felt the magnitude of as much before. Thor possesses traits in such an abundance that it is impossible for mortals to comprehend.

He has the persistence to continuously make uncountable worlds.
He has the memory to remember uncountable faces.
He has the capacity to care about an uncountable number of people.
Hell, he even has the ability to count an uncountable number of things!

I think the story has done an excellent job of conveying how gods exist on a different level through qualities that we recognize, but have such quantities of those qualities that we can even begin to understand what their existence is like. Imagine watching billions upon billions of worlds and people pass through existence over trillions of years and still having the capacity to truly care about the feelings of one low level fighter-cleric you are talking to for the first time. It is hard to image, and that is kind of the point.

[Prinygod]

If I flip a coin a billion times and it lands heads every time, I assume something's up with the coin flip, and that the chances were never, at any point, 50/50.

You missed the point. We have by word of Thor this time is different because of the dark one. If we needed a second dark one, we would know the odds were terrible, but we don't. In fact previously the order didn't actually have a solution other than stop the baddies, figure out how to fix the gates, and hope nothing else comes along to to mess with them. Now it seems that in addition to their original plan, they have a chance to seal snarl for good.

[Rynael]

Sorry, I was tired from an hour of writing posts and hastily added that refutation about the problem with the example you led with (gambler's fallacy would assume the tenth flip will be tails), without looking closer at your real, and much stronger, point not being based around it. Still a Pixie, not used to making long-winded forum arguments.

[Draconi Redfir]

If I were forced to live 100,000,000 years and build inhabited worlds that are just going to get destroyed anyway, and be forced to remember every part of it, I definitely wouldn't have the type of attitude Thor has. Honestly, I'm surprised that any of the gods are still functioning people, and not just jaded to everything. They just don't seem millions of years old and trapped in such a cycle.

Maybe that's the thing though. They've lived so long and experianced so much, that they DID go go insane, jaded, or whatnot. but so much time after THAT passed, that they just became sane again.

Just watch this for a few secconds (https://youtu.be/Gwo6O8wYJBQ?t=56s):smalltongue:

[KorvinStarmast]

Maybe that's the thing though. They've lived so long and experianced so much, that they DID go go insane, jaded, or whatnot. Not seeing it. Just because a deity/being things or perceives differently from you, or me, or another mortal, does not mean that they are or have gone insane. I'd offer that any deity has to have a different profile (in terms of senses and reactions thereunto) than a mortal, if for no other reason than to handle the never ending stream of adulation and praise (https://yourplayersaidwhat.tumblr.com/post/157521876428/thank-you-for-heeding-my-praises).

[Fyraltari]

Just watch this for a few secconds (https://youtu.be/Gwo6O8wYJBQ?t=56s):smalltongue:

Did... did Ben 10 just quote HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
Neat.

[Valynie]

How is Thor so optimistic and fun?
If I were forced to live 100,000,000 years and build inhabited worlds that are just going to get destroyed anyway, and be forced to remember every part of it, I definitely wouldn't have the type of attitude Thor has. Honestly, I'm surprised that any of the gods are still functioning people, and not just jaded to everything. They just don't seem millions of years old and trapped in such a cycle.

Think of it as he were a surgeon on a battlefield : You might lose some patients BUt as long as you helped the majority of them , you can be happy .
Also , the destruction of a world is only a material thing . As long as the souls are saved , you come out the winner since you accept them into Valhalla and can still visit them.

He has the same problem with dwarves and Hel . He might be depressed because of the souls he lose to her but he focus of the souls of those who died in honor and they look to be the majority
(Now Hel is sure depressed and angry ... )

[Draconi Redfir]

Did... did Ben 10 just quote HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
Neat.

i don't know, is that a hitchhikers's quote? i'm only aware of the "very sane" thing from that clip.