The rapid change in Tarquin

[Boring McReader]

Tarquin provides insight into narrative roles that translates to actual concrete power in the OOTS world. You can make plans based on those things and they work. Basically, his contribution was to take five powerful evil people and keep them from making the same mistakes that clichéd villains always make. He has since revised that into believing that he is their leader and master strategist. He is, in a very real way, the Elan of his team, only his team's goal is conquer everything instead of save the world.

There's certainly been no evidence presented in the comic that Tarquin has even a passing understanding of valid military strategy, or political strategy, or personal relationships. What he understands are stories, and it just so happens that he was born into a world where that actually can help you win…for a while.

Ah. Ahahaha. I thought I had a handle on him, but you fooled me with this one.

I would go as far as saying you did not highlight this aspect of Tarquin clearly enough for an average reader to catch it. In the comic, he's been great at seeing through intrigues, keeping his empire secure and under control, staying on good terms with his partners, and still finding time to put it all aside and enjoy himself. He has a lot of people working hard to make that possible, but he's aware of that even as he continues to view them as inconsequential resources serving his needs. We've seen him make plenty of loopy dramatic decisions, but always in the context of him being in control and having the smarts to know what he can afford to spend a long way into the future. Emotionally he's a mess; as leader of his conspiracy he seemed to be doing just fine.

I've learned to trust what the comic presents as fact until there's a clear reason not to, and in this case Tarquin's other failings seemed like enough justification for his unraveling. There was no reason to suspect he was not a military and political genius, at least as far as he'd need to be with such a powerful core team available at the top. He dealt with his partners as friends and equals, and seemed to be competent at staying on good terms with all of them, within his obvious limits. But the comic hasn't caught up with Tarquin being less than he claimed. The average reader doesn't need to know that side of him yet. All of his actions continue to make sense viewing him as an indulgent despot who can lose control, yet nonetheless is controlled and competent enough to know his limits in normal circumstances. If I hadn't read your post here, I would be waiting for the next comic without second thoughts. So this is not at all a criticism of what you've shown us so far in the story. If we need to know more, I trust we'll see it eventually.

It certainly opens up interesting possibilities for the future of the story, whether or not Tarquin survives this round.

OK, this has been fun, guys, but I need to turn the internet off for a while. Because it turns out who I am under stress is someone who will sometimes spend hours engaged in a conversation about his work rather than doing his work.

But I'm trying to be better!

You're getting close to page 1000 of the best fantasy story on the internet. Whatever works for you works for all of us.

[Scow2]

Well, if few people think that, then count me as among those few. You reveal who you really are under stress—stress doesn't magically turn you into someone else unrelated to who you usually are. The fact that you may not have ever known that this is who you were doesn't change anything.

This is something I have to disagree with strongly, because everyone reacts to stress differently. A person is how they normally are, not how they are when forced into extraordinary circumstances - largely because there is frequently little consistency in how people behave when put under stress - One day might have them turn violent and aggressive, while another bad day could put them into debilitating depression, and a third high-stress event might turn that same person into an assertive hero. If "Who you really are" is never the same twice in a row, it can't be who you really are.

[Vaylon]

You're arguing against something I didn't say.

I am not, in fact. Here is what was originally said:

You can't be a torturing, mass-murdering rapist and then go home and turn your Evil Switch to the "off" position to spend time with your kids. It doesn't work that way. If you are the sort of person that can commit the acts that Tarquin does daily, then that will find its way into every aspect of your existence.

As I pointed out in my original response to this quote, it is an incorrect assumption that it's necessary for there to be an "Evil Switch" that lets Evil people spend time with their kids, as if Evil people can't genuinely love others or live normal lives when we have many examples -- in real life and in fiction -- of just that. The point of my original post and the point that I am making again now is that the quote above is flatly and simply wrong: you can indeed be a torturing, mass-murdering rapist and then go home to spend time with your kids. The fact of the matter is that Evil people are just as morally complex as Good people. As other posters correctly point out, the fact that Evil people can do these things then go home to spend time with their kids makes Evil all the more horrifying.

Being able to act like a good person some of the time does not make one a good person, it makes one a competent actor.

This is not an argument I have made. I never once said that acting like a good person makes one a good person, and I resent the implication that I said that.

It would have been entirely plausible for Tarquin to have never cracked his facade, to continue acting like a calm and collected person who separated his two lives, but I have no interest in writing that. First, it's boring, and second, it sends a message that you can totally commit atrocities and it's OK, that doesn't make you a bad person as long as you pet a dog afterward.

I'm sure that Tarquin could be just as scary and interesting and just as evil if depicted as a calm and collected person. It's not necessary to resort to caricaturization to depict him as evil -- we get it; he's evil. Anyone who would come away from such a characterization thinking "Gosh, the villain did some horrible stuff, but he was a nice guy to his family and so rational, too. Evil dictators are cool! The writer condones being an evil dictator!" is simply wrong and not worth addressing in the first place.

That is the message I am consciously conveying with my story, and if you disagree with it, that's fine, I guess. But I'm not going to take, "You conveyed the message you wanted to convey but I don't like it!" as a criticism that I need to pay attention to.

The belief that this is a message that needs to be conveyed is the problem. I'm not sure that "Guys, bad guys are still bad even if they occasionally pet a dog!" is a message that ought to be explicitly said. In my opinion, the message as presented in the comic is heavy-handed, preachy, and uninteresting.

I want to remind you that I have not personally attacked anyone in this post. I am posting my opinion.

I'm not complaining that they love the villain as a character, I'm complaining that they love the villain as a person. I want them to love Tarquin as a well-developed element of the fiction that serves his purpose in the story well while raising interesting points about both the way people act in the real world and the way that stories are often constructed these days, and gets off some funny jokes in the process. I don't want them to love him because it's so cool that he can do all these horrible things and still be totally emotionally untouched by it because yeah, doin' evil is awesome and totally should be portrayed as just another lifestyle choice!

And I wasn't really complaining so much as saying I have no interest in making that easy for them. It undercuts the point I am trying to make, which is that evil isn't cool. Which is challenging the traditional narrative—at least the narrative of the last 40 years of pop culture which has told us relentlessly that the character who is more morally questionable is always cooler than the one who is more morally upright.

I fear punishment for responding to this -- despite it badly needing a response -- so I must sadly pass over it without comment.

[masamune1]

Ah. Ahahaha. I thought I had a handle on him, but you fooled me with this one.

I would go as far as saying you did not highlight this aspect of Tarquin clearly enough for an average reader to catch it. In the comic, he's been great at seeing through intrigues, keeping his empire secure and under control, staying on good terms with his partners, and still finding time to put it all aside and enjoy himself. He has a lot of people working hard to make that possible, but he's aware of that even as he continues to view them as inconsequential resources serving his needs. We've seen him make plenty of loopy dramatic decisions, but always in the context of him being in control and having the smarts to know what he can afford to spend a long way into the future. Emotionally he's a mess; as leader of his conspiracy he seemed to be doing just fine.

I've learned to trust what the comic presents as fact until there's a clear reason not to, and in this case Tarquin's other failings seemed like enough justification for his unraveling. There was no reason to suspect he was not a military and political genius, at least as far as he'd need to be with such a powerful core team available at the top. He dealt with his partners as friends and equals, and seemed to be competent at staying on good terms with all of them, within his obvious limits. But the comic hasn't caught up with Tarquin being less than he claimed. The average reader doesn't need to know that side of him yet. All of his actions continue to make sense viewing him as an indulgent despot who can lose control, yet nonetheless is controlled and competent enough to know his limits in normal circumstances. If I hadn't read your post here, I would be waiting for the next comic without second thoughts. So this is not at all a criticism of what you've shown us so far in the story. If we need to know more, I trust we'll see it eventually.

It certainly opens up interesting possibilities for the future of the story, whether or not Tarquin survives this round.

Looking over the story once again, I don't agree with the Giants' assessment. "
There's certainly been no evidence presented in the comic that Tarquin has even a passing understanding of valid military strategy, or political strategy"- just isn't true. Case in point:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0758.html

"When he first appeared on the continent, he conquered eleven nations in 8 months. It took a coalition of no less than twenty-six other countries to defeat him and drive him out".

Tarquin then admits that he underestimated the complex political divisions of the Western Continent, and that he would learn from his mistakes. Which he did. Even if he exaggerates / lied about being the leader of his adventuring band (and though his teammates don't always respect him, they seem to follow his lead thusfar, mostly, so that hasn't been fully contradicted), it was his idea and his conspiracy, and its worked, so the idea that he's really a military and political genius is entirely believable and backed-up in-story.

And later, he takes on the entire OotS, and holds his own. And he's shown that with just one or two other teammates, he can beat and kill them all. So he's a genuine badass as well, even if he is an evil one.

I think the Giant is actually making the same mistake with Tarquin that Tarquin made with Roy- he's making him look cool; he's showing he is somewhat cool, even if he is evil.

[Porthos]

Looks like I missed a lot overnight,

One thing that I feel should be noted:

: Is yours like this all of the time?
: Yes. Yours?
: Sadly.

That's in one of the very first Tarquin strips. Seems a pretty big clue on the, well, Elan-like nature of Tarquin and how the rest of the team views him.

[SaintRidley]

Looks like I missed a lot overnight,

One thing thatI feel should be noted:

:malack:: Is yours like this all of the time?
: Yes. Yours?
:malack:: Sadly.

That's in one of the very first Tarquin strips. Seems a pretty big clue on the, well, Elan-like nature of Tarquin and how the rest of the team views him.

Yep. Add to it the way Laurin and Miron dismiss the whole story thing repeatedly once they come on the scene and it paints a very clear Elanesque picture and the varying degrees of patience they have for it.

masamune, there's a Xykon line about overwhelming force trumping tactics somewhere (too lazy to find it), as well as this strip and this one which point out the role of mid-high level adventurers in a war. The role is basically able to steamroll the things that aren't anywhere close to your level, which is most everything in a typical war scenario.

It doesn't take Tarquin being a tactical genius to conquer the continent. It takes having a team and sufficient levels over the opposition. The actual armies of his three empires? Rather inconsequential, really.

[Kish]

I think the Giant is actually making the same mistake with Tarquin that Tarquin made with Roy- he's making him look cool; he's showing he is somewhat cool, even if he is evil.

I don't think making a character stupid as well as crazy and evil should be necessary to establish that he's not cool...

...or, contrary to what you say, is necessary. Every time Tarquin does something that costs him a few dozen fans and provokes a storm of screaming on the forum, it demonstrates that being intelligent and powerful is not enough to make him cool.

[The Fury]

masamune, there's a Xykon line about overwhelming force trumping tactics somewhere (too lazy to find it).

If it's the same one I'm thinking of it's from Start of Darkness. If not maybe you mean this, or maybe this one.

[BlackDragonKing]

Yep. Add to it the way Laurin and Miron dismiss the whole story thing repeatedly once they come on the scene and it paints a very clear Elanesque picture and the varying degrees of patience they have for it.

masamune, there's a Xykon line about overwhelming force trumping tactics somewhere (too lazy to find it), as well as this strip and this one which point out the role of mid-high level adventurers in a war. The role is basically able to steamroll the things that aren't anywhere close to your level, which is most everything in a typical war scenario.

It doesn't take Tarquin being a tactical genius to conquer the continent. It takes having a team and sufficient levels over the opposition. The actual armies of his three empires? Rather inconsequential, really.

Except, if Tarquin hit on the idea of getting his band back together and doing things the smart way AFTER an overt invasion failed, that means most of Team Tarquin was in all likelihood doing whatever they'd been doing while Tarquin got hitched and the team broke up when all this happened.

Tarquin completely lacking tactical insight just doesn't work; his tactical insight can be worse than you might think, but either his army was well-led enough that it conquered eleven nations with ridiculous ease and then required a united coalition to drive off, or Tarquin triumphed in spite of not having good tactics, which indicates he pulled an army that dwarfs Redcloak's several times over OUT OF NOWHERE.

Which sounds more plausible? That Tarquin knew what he was doing as a warlord and has gotten sloppy as his career has progressed into easy victory and excess, or that Tarquin was somehow able to pull a conquering horde that threatened an entire continent out of a hole in the ground and lead it to conquer eleven nations and fight 26 more despite not being a tactician?

He might overestimate his role in Team Tarquin, which is clearly a more equal unit than Tarquin presents it as, but I'm pretty sure Tarquin had to know a LITTLE about being a general for his backstory to make any sense.

[SaintRidley]

If it's the same one I'm thinking of it's from Start of Darkness. If not maybe you mean this, or maybe this one.

Probably Start of Darkness, and a little of that first one. The power speech to V isn't quite there.

[Kish]

Probably Start of Darkness, and a little of that first one. The power speech to V isn't quite there.

Spoiler

Show

"In any battle, there is a level of force against which no tactics can prevail." --Xykon to Dorukan, near the end of Start of Darkness.

[SaintRidley]

Except, if Tarquin hit on the idea of getting his band back together and doing things the smart way AFTER an overt invasion failed, that means most of Team Tarquin was in all likelihood doing whatever they'd been doing while Tarquin got hitched and the team broke up when all this happened.

An overt invasion by himself. The difference in tactic here is simple: bring more force than he did before, in the form of high-powered adventurers. Not advanced military tactics, but more dakka. That he split the group into three groups and came up with the shell game wasn't a matter of difference in actual tactic, but in making himself a less obvious target. It also means he can apply the greater force in three areas at once.

Tarquin's actual military tactics? Unchanged. He got smarter about how much firepower he needed to keep from getting his butt kicked, but not about actually employing a tactic.

Wherever he got his initial armies is, as I pointed out, incidental. Because the armies themselves are incidental. Sure, they keep the other armies kind of busy, but Tarquin's high enough level to just wade through a bunch of them and slaughter his way to their leader and kill that guy. And when that happens the battle's all but over.

[BlackDragonKing]

An overt invasion by himself. The difference in tactic here is simple: bring more force than he did before, in the form of high-powered adventurers. Not advanced military tactics, but more dakka. That he split the group into three groups and came up with the shell game wasn't a matter of difference in actual tactic, but in making himself a less obvious target. It also means he can apply the greater force in three areas at once.

Tarquin's actual military tactics? Unchanged. He got smarter about how much firepower he needed to keep from getting his butt kicked, but not about actually employing a tactic.

Wherever he got his initial armies is, as I pointed out, incidental. Because the armies themselves are incidental. Sure, they keep the other armies kind of busy, but Tarquin's high enough level to just wade through a bunch of them and slaughter his way to their leader and kill that guy. And when that happens the battle's all but over.

So you're suggesting one high-level fighter, pretty much BY HIMSELF, just power-walked through an army, killed their leaders, and won pretty much instantly?

I'm pretty sure war doesn't work that way in Order Of The Stick. Tarquin would need an army that outnumbered the eleven nations he clobbered by an utterly ridiculous degree to get by without tactics, and if he didn't have any leadership chops, where the hell do the troops come from in the first place?

[Razgriez]

So, now what we've firmly established that Tarquin is a extreme control freak, I have to ask a question: What if the whole idea behind Tarquin, is that the Giant has written him to represent the stereotypically "bad" DMPC, but saved from the scrappy heap by being turned into a villain (That is to say, supposed to represent a gaming archetype/stereotype for our entertainment, not actually calling him a scrappy, as he's been pretty interesting to watch)? He meets the typical criteria for one doesn't he?

-Believes in a Single path, One way only, Railroad plot.

-Has designed himself (Read: Created by the theoretical DM in the OotS universe) to be able to counter most common Player strategies/occasionally seems to pull off feats almost on the scale of omnipotent knowledge. Every time the Order has managed to gain an advantage over Tarquin and his allies/Linear Guild, it's because they've pulled off fairly impressive combos, feats of ingenuity, cashing in on NPC favors from before, or calling in a Deus Ex Machina. And even then, it seems to only put Tarquin, and his veteran party members off balanced for a few rounds, then recover (though we're starting to finally see Tarquin and company getting worn down in basically a long series of encounters/a war of attrition)

-Seems to have at one point, acted as a leash to Linear Guild (albeit, briefly)

Factoring these points, and others as well, that perhaps maybe Tarquin is a re-purposed DMPC, I.E. a "DMPC done right"/Villain DMPC?

[masamune1]

Even if it did work like that, that would still make Tarquin at least a competent General by the standards of the OotS-verse. After all, if a group of high-level adventurers are all it takes to defeat an entire army, then he'd be foolish to not rely on that. And those Generals who did would be entirely professional military strategists by the laws of that world.

[SaintRidley]

So you're suggesting one high-level fighter, pretty much BY HIMSELF, just power-walked through an army, killed their leaders, and won pretty much instantly?

I'm pretty sure war doesn't work that way in Order Of The Stick. Tarquin would need an army that outnumbered the eleven nations he clobbered by an utterly ridiculous degree to get by without tactics, and if he didn't have any leadership chops, where the hell do the troops come from in the first place?

If he has an army of reasonable size to run interference but be otherwise not have any utility in determining the outcome of the battle? Yes. Which is what O-Chul is telling Haley there. She can take out a ridiculous amount of mooks if she has her own mooks reinforcing her position, but she (as one of the good guys) has to recognize that they are actual people with lives. He's telling her that if she decides to just steamroll through another army without recognizing that she'll need them to die so she can keep steamrolling, those people's lives are on her head, because she thought "I"m high level, let's just make this quick and simple." It's not so much that she can't (there is an upper limit to her capabilities - she isn't epic, after all), but that she shouldn't and she needs to understand why.

If you're a good guy, you don't get the luxury of making it quick and simple - those are people you're sacrificing if you try to. Tarquin? Why should he care how many have to die so he can steamroll through and get the really cool scene where he decapitates the enemy leader after wading through the opposing army (conveniently ignoring the fact that he had his own people in there too). He doesn't need a big army to start with - just enough to distract a number of people in the other army. Then he can recruit the old army and swell his numbers - he's got that bardic knack for storytelling and persuasion, and enough sense to at least make it look like what he's doing might benefit his army as well as himself. He also has money (see Gift Jeraff below).

[Gift Jeraff]

Tarquin would need an army that outnumbered the eleven nations he clobbered by an utterly ridiculous degree to get by without tactics, and if he didn't have any leadership chops, where the hell do the troops come from in the first place?

Mercenaries bought from cash made from stealing precious artifacts. (See second-to-last panel.)

[Heksefatter]

Just out of curiosity, who was it that told the story about how Tarquin was a tactical genius and the mastermind behind his party's plot? Was it…Tarquin?

If you bought into Tarquin's story that Tarquin was a competent chessmaster when all of the evidence in the comic points to him being a quasi-delusional control freak that needs to be reigned in by one of his allies half the time, that's on you. I gave you the evidence to see what he was, you just chose to believe his spin instead and then criticize me for not living up to it. The characterization is consistent all the way through—including the part where he talks himself up to be the central character in his group's history. But look at the way Laurin and Miron talk to him; does that sound like people who think he's the mastermind that got them to where they are? Or does it sound like how people talk to Elan? Why do you think that strip was even in there, except to reveal that Tarquin's version of his place in the group had been inflated by Tarquin?

I honestly have to admit that I bought into the picture of Tarquin as a very capable strategist or chessmaster for other reasons than this. Because I felt that I've seen a good deal of evidence of him being highly competent, evidence which did not only come from Tarquin.

One other example was when Ian and Geoff told the tale of how Tarquin first showed up, and how it was necessary for twenty-six neighbouring countries to band together to beat him. That does imply that he was skilled at leading armies, even if he overreached himself. But he does adapt to that situation quite skillfully.

Also, he other characters do regard him as competent. Haley expresses that she agrees with Nale for once in keeping knowledge of the gates out of the hands of the significantly-more-competent Tarquin. Another time, she mentions the possibility of "if Nale is smart or - as far more likely - Tarquin is running the show" showing respect for Tarquin's skills.

We also see the competency several times, for example in the guard protocol and we see Tarquin being more clever than Malack in that Tarquin realizes that the Order is working together far more clearly than Malack does. He seems to be in charge with Malack, and still be reasonable when Malack is angry with him.

I can see the alternative interpretations well enough: His narcissism preventing him from understanding Elan and his role in the party. His occassional goofiness (the most magnificent pair of perky round eyes, the jugglers and clowns juggling tiny clows). But some of it I took to be "the rule of funny." There are also several instances of where Roy and the Order behaves weirdly due to the same rule (their treating Shojos wizard like nothing, due to him being an NPC, for example).

Honestly, I would have preferred a more able Tarquin than a foolish egotist. He is more dangerous and frightening that way. But ah well, I can't have it all, as Tarquin may have to face.

[rbetieh]

And to cast the above point into your metaphor, is it The Box, or Tarquin's Box?

I am sure we can both agree that; to Tarquin, his box is the only box that has ever or will ever exist. From his point of view, his box is The Box. The reader gets to decide Tarquins level of delusion, of course.

[factotum]

I'm pretty sure war doesn't work that way in Order Of The Stick. Tarquin would need an army that outnumbered the eleven nations he clobbered by an utterly ridiculous degree to get by without tactics, and if he didn't have any leadership chops, where the hell do the troops come from in the first place?

Gift Jeraff has answered the question of where the troops came from, and you're over-estimating the size of the army he would need--he only needs an army big enough to overwhelm *one* of those eleven nations, because we know that working together is not something that naturally happens on the Western Continent; therefore Tarquin no doubt picked those nations off one at a time. Considering there had to be at least 37 extant countries in play on the continent at that time (the eleven Tarquin conquered, and the 26 others who combined to take him down), the armies of each nation were probably not that large.

[Sunken Valley]

I know Mr Burlew said Tarquin was the "Elan" of the Order but does anyone else also see him as the "Roy" of his team.

A leader who makes good plans and who his team respect and follow (most of the time) but at the same time will stop him if they consider his plans flawed. Roy had lots of arrogant and pompous elements to him before development. Rich described him as "a good person raised by a pompous jerk". But what if Roy wasn't Good? An Evil Roy wouldn't develop and would still be pompous and arrogant, but I think he'd still be tactically sound and have a team who'd follow him. That's sort of like Tarquin.

I have always seen Tarquin as sort of a portmanteau of Elan and Roy (similar to his son Nale), combining all their best elements into a dangerous but unstable being (which is unlike Nale who suffers from some of the worst elements of the pair). Anyone agree?

[Nerd-o-rama]

Does this mean someone who tries to kill people but never does so is a killer?

I'm very late to this, but:

"Pff. Attempted murder! Tell me, do they give Nobel Prizes for attempted chemistry?"
-Sideshow Bob

OK, this has been fun, guys, but I need to turn the internet off for a while. Because it turns out who I am under stress is someone who will sometimes spend hours engaged in a conversation about his work rather than doing his work.

But I'm trying to be better!

And we appreciate it.

[Grey Watcher]

Just out of curiosity, who was it that told the story about how Tarquin was a tactical genius and the mastermind behind his party's plot? Was it…Tarquin?

If you bought into Tarquin's story that Tarquin was a competent chessmaster when all of the evidence in the comic points to him being a quasi-delusional control freak that needs to be reigned in by one of his allies half the time, that's on you. I gave you the evidence to see what he was, you just chose to believe his spin instead and then criticize me for not living up to it. The characterization is consistent all the way through—including the part where he talks himself up to be the central character in his group's history. But look at the way Laurin and Miron talk to him; does that sound like people who think he's the mastermind that got them to where they are? Or does it sound like how people talk to Elan? Why do you think that strip was even in there, except to reveal that Tarquin's version of his place in the group had been inflated by Tarquin?

I think that came about in part because in the strip where Tarquin lays the whole thing out, we switch back and forth between Tarquin telling Elan and Ian telling Roy. This seems to confirm Tarquin's version of events, but then it must be remembered that Ian's almost as obsessed with Tarquin as Tarquin himself. And if that bit of misdirection was intended, then I tip my hat to you. Which looks silly because it's a ski cap and not a bowler or something.

Also, to be fair, I only put this together myself like yesterday, so bravo to me for falling for Tarquin's Miles Gloriosus shtick.

Tarquin provides insight into narrative roles that translates to actual concrete power in the OOTS world. You can make plans based on those things and they work. Basically, his contribution was to take five powerful evil people and keep them from making the same mistakes that clichéd villains always make. He has since revised that into believing that he is their leader and master strategist. He is, in a very real way, the Elan of his team, only his team's goal is conquer everything instead of save the world.

There's certainly been no evidence presented in the comic that Tarquin has even a passing understanding of valid military strategy, or political strategy, or personal relationships. What he understands are stories, and it just so happens that he was born into a world where that actually can help you win…for a while.

Again, kind of embarrassed that it didn't occur to me earlier than today that Tarquin's initial conquest ended not when he threatened to overwhelm everyone and they banded together in self-defense, but merely that his empire got big enough that it became a tempting target. That "alliance" of 26 other countries may have just been that all 26 happened to decide to invade at the same time, rather than any coordinated effort to combat a serious threat. Heck, how do you even border that many nations unless you do something that even I know not to do, like extrude your controlled territory out like a spaghetti strand?

OK, this has been fun, guys, but I need to turn the internet off for a while. Because it turns out who I am under stress is someone who will sometimes spend hours engaged in a conversation about his work rather than doing his work.

But I'm trying to be better!

Well, I like to think of it as being passionate about your work and assertive enough to defend it.

EDIT:

...we see Tarquin being more clever than Malack in that Tarquin realizes that the Order is working together far more clearly than Malack does.

To that point specifically, I think it's important to note that Malack's barely spoken to any of the Order other than Durkon, much less seen them interact with each other. Let's face it, they did kind of make it obvious, like Elan addressing Roy by name before being introduced. But Malack wasn't around to see any of that.

[Daimbert]

Um, no. That is far from the only way to do a serious analysis of literature, and certainly not a common one. Generally we (i.e. people who do serious analyses of literature) take the text on its own terms, maybe speculate a bit about what we lack due to things like fires, lost pages, or absent visual components alluded to in the remaining text, but we don't ever go "If it was this way, it would be better." There's nothing substantive to that, no matter how much you talk about how it would be better or how much you change.

You miss the point, or at least are taking the other person's point as being what I was saying instead of what I was saying. I'm not saying "Hey, let's invent a new story!", and wasn't, to my mind, adding anything to the story. What I was talking about was pointing to a problem or an issue in the work, and then saying "Now, if they'd done it this way, they could have avoided the issue". And, done well, the suggestion accomplishes everything that the original work intended but just avoids the problem.

Note that I'm not even saying THAT here. My comment was about Tarquin really caring about his friends and family, but caring about himself more, and choosing his own legacy over them, and then seeing him sacrificing things that he really and legitimately cared about into "sunk costs", so much so that now he has to make sure that he gets his legacy out of it or else it wouldn't have been worth the cost. All of this, I maintain, is perfectly within the bounds of the comic AND has an interesting mirroring in Redcloak. No one, as far as I know, has addressed that in any way.

EDIT: Put better, I think that in most cases in a situation like this Tarquin would stop, take a step back, reassess, and select the way to proceed that gives him the most things he wants, even if that wasn't the thing he wanted at the start of it. Here, because of what he's sunk into his new main antagonist legacy, he simply CAN'T, because he might lose what he's sunk into this. He's deep in the sunk cost fallacy, even though it's killing him. Perhaps literally.

[Lamech]

OK, this has been fun, guys, but I need to turn the internet off for a while. Because it turns out who I am under stress is someone who will sometimes spend hours engaged in a conversation about his work rather than doing his work.

But I'm trying to be better!

See stress turns wonderful people into people caught up into internet arguments! Its awful.

[Daimbert]

Looks like I missed a lot overnight,

One thing that I feel should be noted:

: Is yours like this all of the time?
: Yes. Yours?
: Sadly.

That's in one of the very first Tarquin strips. Seems a pretty big clue on the, well, Elan-like nature of Tarquin and how the rest of the team views him.

I don't think that anyone denies that Tarquin is the genre-savvy one, or that most people in the OOTSverse look at people who are genre-savvy and talk as if they are as being insane. But Tarquin always came across as smarter than Elan, and so could use that knowledge and plan it better, and so have that knowledge work in his favour more of the time. Tarquin was what you get if you took Elan's genre-savviness, Nale's ability to plan, and removed Nale's overcomplication tendencies (which the comic demonstrates he got from his mother, while still keeping Nale's desire for often petty vengeance.

[Porthos]

I don't think that anyone denies that Tarquin is the genre-savvy one, or that most people in the OOTSverse look at people who are genre-savvy and talk as if they are as being insane. But Tarquin always came across as smarter than Elan, and so could use that knowledge and plan it better, and so have that knowledge work in his favour more of the time. Tarquin was what you get if you took Elan's genre-savviness, Nale's ability to plan, and removed Nale's overcomplication tendencies (which the comic demonstrates he got from his mother, while still keeping Nale's desire for often petty vengeance.

I, nor Rich for that matter, never said Tarquin was incompetent.

What I do think is the case though, and seeing the reaction of Tarquin since Malack went bye-bye, is that the rest of the team (esp Malack) put Tarquin something on a leash that helped keep some of his more self-destructive tendencies in check.

====

To move a bit more into the general thrust of the thread:

As for 'military strategy'? Pffft. He just cribbed what happened in 1984 and applied it to OotSWorld.

What he is able to do, I think, is able to read people and manipulate them to serve his own ends. Well, when his ego doesn't get in the way, that is.

[masamune1]

^Ahem.

Tarquin provides insight into narrative roles that translates to actual concrete power in the OOTS world. You can make plans based on those things and they work. Basically, his contribution was to take five powerful evil people and keep them from making the same mistakes that clichéd villains always make. He has since revised that into believing that he is their leader and master strategist. He is, in a very real way, the Elan of his team, only his team's goal is conquer everything instead of save the world.

There's certainly been no evidence presented in the comic that Tarquin has even a passing understanding of valid military strategy, or political strategy, or personal relationships. What he understands are stories, and it just so happens that he was born into a world where that actually can help you win…for a while.

I think that suggests that Tarquin isn't very competent.

Yet I don't think he's correct about there being no evidence that he had any understanding of military or political strategy, either.

[runeghost]

Does that make Malack the Durkon, Laurin the Vaarsuvius, Miron the Belkar, SPG the Roy, and Jacinda the Haley? And if Jacinda is the Haley, does that mean she's attracted to Tarquin?

Nah. Miron, with his off-handed attitude and obsession with money is the Haley. Jacinda is likely the Belkar, given her apparent glee at murder.

[sam79]

It doesn't matter either way (and I have no intention of exploring it further). It's attempted rape regardless, and someone who repeatedly attempts rape is a rapist, even if he never succeeds.

Does this mean someone who tries to kill people but never does so is a killer?

Sure. Competence at achieving one's goals is not really relevant to the morality of those goals.

I cannot claim to have read all of the (incredably interesting) discussion on this thread, so I apologise if I'm making a point that has already been addressed. This pair of quotes from the author jumped out at me as...well, problematic; morally, juridically and grammatically. Someone who hasn't killed anyone isn't a killer, IMO. Pretty much by definition.

There is it seems to me a differnece between intending something, attempting something, and actually doing something. Both good and bad things. If I intend to give money to help people whose homes have been destroyed by a typhoon, that might make me a nice person. If I attempt to give some money, but somehow get lost on the way to the bank or something, I'm still a nice (but probably incompetent) person. But in neither case am I doing anything to help these people with no homes, and should not be able to claim any credit for doing so. Intentions are incredably important, but it is our actions which really define us.