OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

[Nith]

Wow. The bottom part is completely grey, there must be millions of worlds. This just feels massive.

But I wonder about the world within the rift, this comic doesn't explain it. There must be further mysteries, possibly some that the gods don't know about themselves.

It also makes for some interesting theories about what the Snarl has done with the other worlds. There are clearly others inside the rift. Maybe the Snarl hasn't been "eating" them so much as "collecting"?

Are there others inside the rift? I thought we only knew about there being lots of water inside. Laurin didn't sense any living beings.

[NRSASD]

Well... um... uh... dang. That's a lot of corpses. The mind boggles trying to comprehend that actually.

This doesn't bode well for our heroes. That and their trademark tactic of being "too stupid to know when to quit." Looks like the gods have that covered.

Props to Mr. Burlew for making me burst out laughing in dawning, horrified comprehension. Wow...

[Agi Hammerthief]

well I‘m lost for worlds

[Resileaf]

Oh.

Oh no.

That is not good.

it seems the rifts are just a thing that will always happen as long as the Snarl is around, and that the world will always erode, and they had to get better and better at designing the world. The Gates were something that could perhaps finally break that cycle and make sure the rifts didn't grow anymore. this also explains the debate Loki and Heimdall had and why Heimdall said it with such resignation while Loki said it as if this has happened so many times before. because it has happened, like millions of times it seems.

question is, does Redcloak know this? does HE know how many times it has happened?? does he even think its an important detail? because Redcloak is the one manipulating Xykon, so he is the bad guy who'd know the most.

either way, it seems that the Gods recreating the world-prison doesn't seem to be a permanent solution. We're just going to end up right back where we started, hopefully with a longer timeframe between rifts but.....doesn't change the fact that its going to keep happening. Hm.

Redcloak definitely doesn't know. I don,t think the Dark One does either, since he seems to barely have any information on the Snarl in the first place except what it did to the first world.

[Eldritch Queen]

I have no words left. I'll just use post icons to describe my feelings.

[Hildegard]

That was legitimately overwhelming. I had to join the forum just to be with other people who got how overwhelming that was.

[The Pilgrim]

That's far more worlds than editions of D&D.

[FrankNorman]

One thing I noticed - the monument things are not all the same size. Some are clearly larger than others, because we can see small ones in front of larger ones.
So maybe they do not all represent the same things.

[Lord Torath]

I’ll add to this and say this means the gods have never voted on the fate of the world before, since every destroyed world has been ended by the snarl and not by the gods. It’s possible that the world building process was an iterative one that the gods improved on each time and slowly increased the lifespan each time but I don’t think this is the case. I feel like most of those worlds didn’t last long at all and eventually they got lucky and created a world where the gates were created and this world has existed substantially longer than any previous one. This the decision to end the first successful world voluntarily carries the same weight we thought it did originally. No one knows how many more tries it will take to reestablish another successful world.

Do we really know that all those worlds were destroyed by the Snarl, and not by the gods before the Snarl could do so? All we know is that the first three worlds were destroyed by the Snarl, and that there have been probably millions of worlds before this one. Thor never says "These are tombstones for all the worlds destroyed by the Snarl", just that the gods haven't stopped trying to imprison it, and that they create a memorial for each world destroyed.

One thing I noticed - the monument things are not all the same size. Some are clearly larger than others, because we can see small ones in front of larger ones.
So maybe they do not all represent the same things.

Good catch!

[ruy343]

This is an amazing piece of work. I never expected the Gods to have been trying this for so long, and for them to still have hope.

What I want to know now is: Why keep making worlds? Could they not make a specific snarl prison, and then make a world somewhere else so that the Snarl doesn't know about it?

Also, is that other world inside this one actually a nested prison? One world encasing another world, encasing another world, encasing the snarl for as long as possible until it broke out of each one in sequence?

[Forikroder]

This is an amazing piece of work. I never expected the Gods to have been trying this for so long, and for them to still have hope.

What I want to know now is: Why keep making worlds? Could they not make a specific snarl prison, and then make a world somewhere else so that the Snarl doesn't know about it?

Also, is that other world inside this one actually a nested prison? One world encasing another world, encasing another world, encasing the snarl for as long as possible until it broke out of each one in sequence?

they need the threads of reality to make the prison, they dont have enough

[2D8HP]

Oh my sweet lord, so many worlds!

I really wasn't expecting that reveal!

[Fyraltari]

What I want to know now is: Why keep making worlds? Could they not make a specific snarl prison, and then make a world somewhere else so that the Snarl doesn't know about it?

I am going to guess that they can't for magicobabble reasons.

[Quinton250]

Do we really know that all those worlds were destroyed by the Snarl, and not by the gods before the Snarl could do so? All we know is that the first three worlds were destroyed by the Snarl, and that there have been probably millions of worlds before this one. Thor never says "These are tombstones for all the worlds destroyed by the Snarl", just that the gods haven't stopped trying to imprison it, and that they create a memorial for each world destroyed.

We don’t know for sure, I just feel like it would have been mentioned if that was the case. Combined with the fact that half the gods voted to keep this world alive and the vote seemed like an exceptional event, i doubt this is something that has happened thousands of times.

[The MunchKING]

That is... Pretty horrifying.

How long until they can make a world solely out of the Monuments for the previous worlds? :D

[Resileaf]

they need the threads of reality to make the prison, they dont have enough

Not to mention the Snarl is made of the threads of reality.
They're making a prison with the snarl itself.

[hroþila]

That was sobering.

I guess that puts the lore of the Sapphire Guard in context now. They believe the gods had to choose between starting anew to make a prison the Snarl couldn't escape from, or going with the Gates thing even though they knew that wouldn't fix the problem forever. Clearly, that's not the case, because any remade prison is liable to become unstable and fail after all. It's pretty obvious why the Twelve would keep that particular detail hidden from their followers, though.

At some point, maybe the gods should have given up on populating their worlds, out of a sense of moral responsibility. But I imagine they simply can't - that creative impulse must be part of their natures. And hey, maybe they figured out early on how to do a controlled demolition of the world and save everyone's souls, so that only the first few cases resulted in everybody being eaten by the Snarl, in which case maybe they could argue that it was still worth it.

I wonder why they even bothered having a speech portion during the Godsmoot? They must have had a conversation like that who knows how many times already.

In fact, that not all the gods have become blasé about the whole thing yet is a testament to how much more Good than they're usually given credit for at least some of the gods are. And similarly, it explains why many of the gods can appear to be uncaring, even those who aren't necessarily Evil.

[Lathund]

That's... just...

[TynamMerise]

I wonder why they even bothered having a speech portion during the Godsmoot? They must have had a conversation like that who knows how many times already.

Because they still don't agree. So the conversation they've had how many times already is an argument, and they all know it.

Having their arguments in the Godsmoot via proxies summoned by mortal clerics is obviously one of the rules - probably the most important precaution - that they use to avoid creating another Snarl.

[warmachine]

When you fail that many times, you have to rethink your approach.

[Aotrs Commander]

At first I was like, "well, that's not good..." from just happening to have scrolled to the point I was seeing tthe top of that last panel, where there was just four of them in sight alongside that last close-up panel.

And then I scrolled down.

And down.

And down.

I was then like "ohhhhh. Ohh hoho. That is REALLY not good."

That effect was beautifully executed.



The, er... The gods aren't very good at this, are they...?

[Fyraltari]

At some point, maybe the gods should have given up on populating their worlds, out of a sense of moral responsibility. But I imagine they simply can't - that creative impulse must be part of their natures.

That would probably be suicide. They need those souls, after all.

[masamune1]

I'm...not sure I liked this twist, if I'm being honest. It feels a bit like a "shocking swerve" (well, maybe not THAT bad) that just raises too many questions and might actually make the stakes feel a bit "lower" or make me think something else is going on.

Most of all, it makes the gods look absolutely bonkers and incompetent- obsessive and yet incapable. Mostly due to the sheer scale of the repeated failures rather than the failures themselves.

Also, the Snarl is out already, so this world just seems yet further screwed.

I wonder if the Snarl is somehow behind all of these failures though? Since it's the actions of people like Xykon and Redcloak that are bringing it about this time, does that mean that every time a new world comes about the Snarl somehow finds villains (or heroes?!?) to manipulate it into freeing it? Sort of like Ruin in the Mistborn series?

[UrielAwakened]

Avengers: Infinity War has killed the most implied fictional characters of any work of entertainment.

Rich Burlew: Hold my beer.

[King of Nowhere]

One thing I noticed - the monument things are not all the same size. Some are clearly larger than others, because we can see small ones in front of larger ones.
So maybe they do not all represent the same things.

It may just be an art error, though. I assume the page was made by rich copypasting the monument thousands of times, then changing size and repeating. Some mistakes can be made in such a process

[Arkku]

Ok, so statistically this world is almost certainly doomed.

But now the world seen in the rift becomes more interesting…

[UrielAwakened]

If all these worlds were destroyed, wouldn't the addition of the dwarves' souls to Hel from the current one be a drop in the bucket? How could they possibly be enough to make a difference? That is, I mean, if the Dwarven honor arrangement applied only to the current world.

Pretty sure the Snarl obliterates souls. Like, no after-life.

[Aquillion]

I'm surprised there weren't more gods killed during the death of some of those worlds, given how many of them they are and given that the Snarl can kill gods if it escapes.

[Coyote0715]

My God! It's full of (dead) stars!

[RMS Oceanic]

I'm surprised there weren't more gods killed during the death of some of those worlds, given how many of them they are and given that the Snarl can kill gods if it escapes.

I dunno, who says there were only four pantheons in the first world?