OOTS #1247 - The Discussion Thread

[Carl]

I don't think you should take smugness out of consideration if said smugness actively hampers one's ability to reason. I mean, the Order specifically didn't act like they knew everything before destroying the Girard gate, they discussed how they don't know enough and don't have time to get more information and voted on how to act. Serini on the other hand had weeks to get info, was offered the info multiple times (latest as recently as several strips ago), but refused all the info and chose to act like she knows the order when she in fact does not.



Why can't she? Tarquin knew it right away. Of course, he's much more genre savvy than your average NPC, but we're still canonically in a self-aware parody stick figure comic, she could've figured that out. I'm not holding it against her that she didn't, but she certainly could.


I mean, she specifically doesn't solve problems with her own hands, she solves it with others' hands (and paws and tentacles and pseudopods and eyes).

To that point -- we only saw Serini's competence when she successfully devised and managed the construction of the dungeon around this gate, and when she took out the paladins. She herself had only hit people in the Order four times (2 darts at Roy, 1 bolt at V, a potpourri at Belkar) out of her 15+ attacks, she got her ass handed to her by both Xykon and Haley, she babbled and blew her invisibility, it seems she severely overestimated her power vs the Order's power, she refused the information (about the Godsmoot) that is crucial to her own stated goal of protecting the world, and of course she endangered the whole world by not keeping the super secret info on the gates' location in a safe place or destroying the info altogether, but instead carrying in with her in a diary, which led Xykon to all the gates after Lirian's

Do we even know if she's an epic rogue, or do people just assume she's one because her teammates are epic?
For someone with that amount of sass she certainly doesn't show enough to back it up, I think. If she was as cool as she says she is, she would've captured the Order by now.

And as far as likable/unlikable character discourse goes, Xykon is the most unrepentantly depraved in the comic, but to me still somehow more likeable as a character than Serini.
And maybe that goes to another point I wanted to make. Multiple people earlier said that she doesn't make the Order look incompetent, but for one reason I disagree with it. She indeed doesn't make them look incompetent in a fight, but she makes them look incompetent in their job. The protagonist's job is to move the story forward and to achieve at least some goals. Currently her attempt to stall the Order had taken up four and a half (real-life) months, and still counting. Arguably, nothing of real consequence yet happened besides the Order meeting her and Sunny, and spending some spells. If it were a game, players would be gnashing their teeth by now. As it's a web comic, it just feels very slow

And as for people being surprised at negative reception she gets, I think it's partially because when someone criticizes her, a number of people come to her defense, and the defense is often whataboutism (like "why didn't you criticize Roy or V about the similar issue") or misinterpretation of the criticism (like claims that "people say Serini should submit to the Order"), which then leads to critics re-iterating their arguments and leads to the illusion that there's a mountain of Serini hate, when in reality it's chiefly just a couple of issues many people have with her (mostly, I think, her toxic and undeserved attitude and her refusal to communicate, that is both unreasonable and counterproductive for her own goals)

Let me reiterate somthing, despite a gap in the middle she's been involved in the gate situation since before basically anyone else in the comic was even born, (Jullio and Tarquin's team being possibble exceptions), and certainly longer than any other specific individual has been involved in the gates situation. If she thinks she knows more than everyone about the gates situation, i would in the absence of evidence to the contrary be willing to believe her.

We know there's info she doesn't know, (Godsmoot situation), and there's somthing else she may not know, (Planet in the rifts situation, though i'm not going to write that off as a certainty). But she has no way of knowing this, and for better or worse she's in the position of being the last gates semi-official defender. For better or worse that puts her in the position of having to make a decision, and one piece of wisdom I've allways heard and found sound is: "You can only evaluate your decision on the basis of what you knew at the time". Serreni is at the point where she has to decide on a course of action and based on what she knows and her priorities, (keep the world from being destroyed), it's not a bad decision at all. It's not a good one either, but she's out of good choices at this point.

Now yes there's vital information she doesn't know, but she also doesn't know she doesn't know, and she's a high level rouge, she's used to assuming that someone may be trying to manipulate her, and at this point no one has actually indicated to ehr they might have any information she doesn't already have. The Paladins and the Order both wanting to talk it out is expected. She's never claimed they don't honestly want stop what they see as a potentiol threat to the gates. Trying to talk it out and recruit her is expected behaviour for them.

There's also the question of what she knows. There's clearly gaps in her knowledge, for all we know she's assessing the orders chances on the assumption that the MitD will help Xykon, depending on how powerful he really is it's quite probable that her assesment is acurratte. We know he probably won't fight the order. But she doesn't necessarily know that, even his extra X's painted on doors could be just him being a ditz from her PoV.


As far as her competency. She's a rouge. Even Epic level rouges don't excel at any one single thing. They're strength is their sheer adaptability, and a lot of that applies outside of direct "punch the enemy in the face" situations. So far she's shown that in spades. Hell we don't even know that her current idea isn't just a plan C rather than an outright retreat. In which case the orders really in trouble TBH. If it wasn't for the fact that i'm not convinced Sunny will actual disable Elan and Minnrah on his own imitative i'd say she's doing pretty well with 4/7th's of the order disabled and one more temporarily out of it. So far only Elan and Haley have done anything meaningful vs her and her plans. Thats not bad when the party includes 2 high level primary spell-casters and a pair of high level strong martial types.

Heck, Belkar is going to be completely out of it whilst he free's V. Depending on how long that takes Serreni could easily tap herself with another wand of invisibility and then proceed to dart Haley and Belkar before V gets free. At that point she's pretty much won unless Elan's managed to get the rest of the order back on their feet in that time.