OOTS #1139 - The Discussion Thread

[TeCoolMage]

Presumably because the strands of reality are finite, or because they can only create this kind of world on the plane the Snarl is already at.

Well consider this: there are so many gravestones of dead worlds that they likely can form a world on their own if you merged them into one mass.

Maybe there is, or maybe they don't need one at all. The Sapphire Guard believes the gods can destroy this world to create a new one, and the Godsmoot confirmed the gods believe they can do that while sending all the mortal souls to their afterlives. Whether they do that by killing all mortals with a spell or merely letting them die as their world is physically destroyed doesn't change the end result.

And yet there’s still a need for a vote, and the gods are treating it as a very real risk of the souls being lost to the snarl. That makes no sense if the process was perfectly timed. Also, killing everything with a spell is easier because it lets the snarl stay trapped a bit longer and allows more time to plan out a new world

Breaking the rules that prevent divine conflict in order to give this world out of a trillion worlds a chance to last longer might not be the best idea. Direct divine intervention would open many cans of worms

A standardised system to stop literal permanent genocide is worth whatever worms come from divine intervention, considering the fact some clerics can ask for it daily.

Divine astrophysics.

just create a world elsewhere in the astral plane

[jwhouk]

It looks from that next-to-last pane of 945 that Lauren may have poked the bear when she tried to scry into the rift. That may be Bad News.

[WindStruck]

Fair point. Strip #945.

However, I'm still not convinced: "Wait, I think..." What?! Sounds like she found something to me!

That was the snarl she detected, right before it attacked.

Seems like it had such a high amount of deific intelligence too, that it stunned Laurin.

[Ironsmith]

A standardised system to stop literal permanent genocide is worth whatever worms come from divine intervention, considering the fact some clerics can ask for it daily.

Just to be clear; you're referring to violating the rules that prevent the creation of another Snarl in order to add a few years to the current world's death clock, right?

[eilandesq]

With all of the speculation of whether this is the first cycle for ascended gods to be popping up, I haven't seen anyone ask another question: (spoilers for Start of Darkness)

Spoiler

Show

is this the world that the gods first got the bright idea of raising up whole races of sentient beings so that their clerics (and associated characters) could level up to the point where the tough monsters were beatable? If not, how many generations of humanoids were slaughtered and sent packing to the afterlife as each world was destroyed in turn? They wouldn't have been annihilated by the Snarl if adventurers got to them first, so they would have been reaching the afterlives in droves, possibly while worshiping one of the existing deities (which would be a cruel cosmic joke indeed).

[DeliaP]

I vote that we end this thread now to save the souls of the letters already posted here, and create a new thread.

Er.

Just as soon as Rich posts a new comic, that is.

Gosh, I didn't know I chose a background colour of yellow because we were all a bunch of cowards.

Look, if that flame war breaks out, there will still be like, ten or fifteen posts before the Moderators start banning us. More than enough time to pull the plug, if we all agree on that course of action today.

Sure, OK, it'd be easy for us to whip up another batch of speculations to argue about and start over. And sure, it'd be kind of fun to talk about something different. But come on! We've had some good times on this thread haven't we? Let's give these entertaining little ideas one more chance to go somewhere constructive before we all get scrubbed.

In summary, Vote DeliaP 2018.

[Fyraltari]

*Clap clap clap*

[brian 333]

I still say toss the gods into the rifts and slam the door behind them. Once The Snarl destroys them all, they stop arguing. Once they stop arguing, there is no food left for The Snarl. Once it runs out of food The Snarl dies.

Of course, mortals would simply create new gods, and it would all start oved again.

[georgie_leech]

And if the Snarl doesn't actually feed off of anything in the same way that tangled cords really don't need any extra input to stay tangled?

[Peelee]

I still say toss the gods into the rifts and slam the door behind them. Once The Snarl destroys them all, they stop arguing. Once they stop arguing, there is no food left for The Snarl. Once it runs out of food The Snarl dies.

Nearly every sentence there requires ridiculous assumptions that have zero basis on what we know. It's actually pretty impressive.

[Fyraltari]

I still say toss the gods into the rifts and slam the door behind them. Once The Snarl destroys them all, they stop arguing. Once they stop arguing, there is no food left for The Snarl. Once it runs out of food The Snarl dies.

Of course, mortals would simply create new gods, and it would all start oved again.

You know what could resolve (maybe) our problem? Murder! There are absolutely no ethical concerns with this right?

I agree! What doesn't it solve?

[Crisis21]

It does. I wonder if we saw what she found.

Considering the color(s) of her eyes in panel 12 of comic 945, I'm reasonably certain we did.

Gosh, I didn't know I chose a background colour of yellow because we were all a bunch of cowards.

Look, if that flame war breaks out, there will still be like, ten or fifteen posts before the Moderators start banning us. More than enough time to pull the plug, if we all agree on that course of action today.

Sure, OK, it'd be easy for us to whip up another batch of speculations to argue about and start over. And sure, it'd be kind of fun to talk about something different. But come on! We've had some good times on this thread haven't we? Let's give these entertaining little ideas one more chance to go somewhere constructive before we all get scrubbed.

In summary, Vote DeliaP 2018.

Have a laugh, good sir.

Nearly every sentence there requires ridiculous assumptions that have zero basis on what we know. It's actually pretty impressive.

Now, now, the second sentence doesn't contail any ridiculous assumptions. After all, if the gods are all dead they would be incapable of arguing, wouldn't they?

[Fyraltari]

Now, now, the second sentence doesn't contail any ridiculous assumptions. After all, if the gods are all dead they would be incapable of arguing, wouldn't they?

What kind of feeble god let something as minor as death get into the way of a good fight?

[Peelee]

Considering the color(s) of her eyes in panel 12 of comic 945, I'm reasonably certain we did.

You know that, and I know that. I was just womdering if MrToad knows that.

Now, now, the second sentence doesn't contail any ridiculous assumptions. After all, if the gods are all dead they would be incapable of arguing, wouldn't they?

Yeah, that's what made me toss in that "nearly" on review.

[Crisis21]

What kind of feeble god let something as minor as death get into the way of a good fight?

They wouldn't. Being dead on the other hand...

[Rogar Demonblud]

Gosh, I didn't know I chose a background colour of yellow because we were all a bunch of cowards.

Look, if that flame war breaks out, there will still be like, ten or fifteen posts before the Moderators start banning us. More than enough time to pull the plug, if we all agree on that course of action today.

Sure, OK, it'd be easy for us to whip up another batch of speculations to argue about and start over. And sure, it'd be kind of fun to talk about something different. But come on! We've had some good times on this thread haven't we? Let's give these entertaining little ideas one more chance to go somewhere constructive before we all get scrubbed.

In summary, Vote DeliaP 2018.

*golfclap*

[MrToad]

You know that, and I know that. I was just womdering if MrToad knows that.

Fair enough! You've convinced me that she ran into the snarl's extreme intelligence and nothing more. However, I remain unconvinced that the snarl is all about destruction. And I remain unconvinced that things beyond the rift are dead.

[zimmerwald1915]

You know what could resolve (maybe) our problem? Murder! There are absolutely no ethical concerns with this right?

Fatalistic quietism in the face of manifest injustice, on the other hand, is a solution to our problems we can all get behind. If we pretend hard enough that they don't exist, our problems will go away.

[Fyraltari]

They wouldn't. Being dead on the other hand...

So many real-life religions gods have "came back from death/still active after dying" it's basically part of othe job.
I am not being serious.

Fair enough! You've convinced me that she ran into the snarl's extreme intelligence and nothing more. However, I remain unconvinced that the snarl is all about destruction. And I remain unconvinced that things beyond the rift are dead.

Random Empire of Sweat Trooper #2309 (just left of Laurin and Miron in the last panel here) disagrees with you. Well, you know, would have.

Fatalistic quietism in the face of manifest injustice, on the other hand, is a solution to our problems we can all get behind. If we pretend hard enough that they don't exist, our problems will go away.

Assuming you are being sarcastic (your stances are so far removed from mine I can't always tell), no-one proposed that approach that I am aware of.

[Peelee]

Fair enough! You've convinced me that she ran into the snarl's extreme intelligence and nothing more. However, I remain unconvinced that the snarl is all about destruction. And I remain unconvinced that things beyond the rift are dead.

Understandable. Clearly something is going on there.

[jwhouk]

Given that it was several million iterations since that first world was made and the Snarl was the result, you'd have to think that somewhere along the way the Snarl gained sentience.

Maybe not INT 48+ level, but significant enough to know that it just needs to bide its time before it chooses to devour another world and attack the gods.

It may also want to eliminate the gods and do its own thing with the existing world. Which is why I'm betting that the Snarl is really TDO.

[KorvinStarmast]

Assuming you are being sarcastic (your stances are so far removed from mine I can't always tell), no-one proposed that approach that I am aware of.

I am guessing that someone had their usual bowl of Grumpy Flakes for breakfast this morning, and poured on milk that had gone bad in the fridge.

[nolongeralurker]

(I meant to finish this several days ago, but... stuff came up. Sorry about that. Anyways, here goes:)

I'm not misunderstanding anything. I replied to one person (not "everyone") about a specific portion of a quote in which they both said there's nothing "morally wrong" with people being eaten by the Snarl (which isn't actually a question of morality) and that no one should care about dying because they just go to a "perfect afterlife better than being a live". Maybe actually read what I was responding to before telling me I misunderstood it.

Okay, bear with me, I'm going to go through this discussion step-by-step, both to satisfy my own curiosity of where and why misunderstandings (including my own) arose, and, more importantly, because you raised some very legitimate criticisms against my reply to your post, which deserve a serious, well-thought-out response.

Here's the original post you were replying to. (This post also contained a third paragraph, which I'm not including as it had no bearing on our discussion.) All underlining and bolding is added by me:

I'm kind of surprised anyone would be outraged about this. I don't think dying and no longer existing is somehow worse then never existing in the first place, so there's no moral issues with the Snarl eating people. And there are certainly no issues with going to a perfect afterlife which is superior to being alive in the first place in comic.

The fact that they make mortals might be iffy if not for aforementioned after life, but I fail to see a moral issue with repeatedly making a world (which they can't stop doing anyway because it protects them from the Snarl.)

Okay, I've underlined the parts of this post that I was focusing on when I read it, and I've bolded the parts that (as far as I can tell) you were. First thing to note is that Tvtyrant says the word "this" in his first sentence, without specifying exactly what he's referring to. Since he didn't include a quote from someone else in his post, I was left to assume he was mentioning the discussion that was currently ongoing, as recently as the previous post above his. This discussion was about whether or not it was moral for the gods to create worlds that they knew would probably either be destroyed by them or the Snarl. This is still what I believe Tvtyrant was referring to. See everything I underlined. But if you didn't realize that was the context of his quote, and just focused on "there's no moral issues with the Snarl eating people", not realizing that was connected with a "so" to the first segment I underlined, then I can see why that phrase would sound bad. What he meant wasn't "carelessly letting the Snarl eat people when you could've stopped it is a perfectly moral choice ", but "creating someone who may be eaten by the Snarl isn't immoral if the alternative is to not create that person at all." And if you just looked at the bolded and nothing else, then it looks like he's also saying, "In fact, letting someone die for any reason (or just straight-up killing them) is never a problem 'cause their afterlife will be funner anyway." when he probably meant something closer to "And it's not like the people the gods have to kill to prevent them from being unmade by the Snarl are then sent to an afterlife of eternal torture, in fact their afterlife is even more fun than their normal life anyway." (I'm not sure he'd think someone would want to die young just to go to their fun afterlife sooner, though. I know I wouldn't want to.)

Here was your response to Tvtyrant:

This.... is something. By the same logic "Everyone is going to die someday anyway, so there's nothing wrong with you murdering me" is a valid logic. Yeah, if I never existed I wouldn't be able to care about dying, but I do exist and so I do care. I'd wager the vast majority of people feel the same.

And for the afterlife... people keep insisting this, and the comic (and sometimes Rich, directly) has said no, to that. Just knowing the afterlife is real doesn't somehow make dying okay.

And that's assuming that a person even goes to a good afterlife in the first place. Several of them are actively and intentionally terrible places, and others (like Limbo) are horrible just incidentally of their very nature. I'm amazed by how many people don't realize that either. By all reason, the vast majority of people in this world do not actually go to a good place after death.

When I quoted you to reply to you I left out your last paragraph, because I agreed with you (and not Tvtyrant) on that part and as such didn't feel the need to address it.

Here was my reply to you:

I think you're misunderstanding everyone. No one that I'm aware of (other than some of the gods, maybe) thinks that it's fine for everyone to die young because they were all going to die eventually anyway and because the afterlife is more fun than being alive anyway. What people are saying is that if you have two choices: a) never exist at all, and b) either live and then get unmade by the Snarl or live and then go to an afterlife (which may be fun, or not, but either way at least you're safe from the Snarl) after you die (and you might die young if the gods have to destroy your world to keep your soul safe from the Snarl), it's better to choose b). (Actually, a few people are arguing that a) would be better, but no one is arguing what you seem to think they are.)

Yeah, I should've said you were misunderstanding Tvtyrant, not "everyone," because I should've been more precise. That was careless of me, and I apologize. I said "everyone" because Tvtyrant was upholding one of two viewpoints in a conversation that was happening, so by "everyone" I meant everyone on that side of the discussion (which was the majority of those involved). I did say in my reply that all afterlives may not be fun, because I agreed with you that they may not (and others would probably agree as well). Tvtyrant was the only one with that particular view (at least that I remember). So I can see how you'd be annoyed with me for speaking of "everyone" when you were addressing something only Tvtyrant said (which you misunderstood, and didn't realize was part of a larger discussion).


I'm gonna throw this quote from Kish in because it supports that my interpretation of what Tvtyrant said was correct and yours wasn't (I have no idea if anyone else said anything else about this because I haven't been on the forum for days and never caught up on the rest of this thread, and I don't really have time to do so now):

I think the first part of what TVTyrant said was responding to a prior argument that the gods are being cruel by creating people at all when they know those people have a good chance of being eaten by the Snarl.

The second part, though, I have no explanation for.

In short, I still think you misunderstood Tvtyrant, but when I reread his post before replying to you I should've reread it with the way you had understood it in mind, like I did just now, and then I would've been able to address where you went wrong in that post instead of this one.

And for what it's worth, if what you thought Tvtyrant meant had actually been what he meant, then I agree completely with everything you said (except for maybe the part about how horrible the afterlives and Limbo can be, and how many people go there. I don't know enough about D&D to say if that's true or not. I just agree that Tvtyrant's wrong to say that all afterlives are definately happy places.)

Well it's kinda late at night right now, so I hope the part of this I just wrote now (and the whole thing overall) made sense, and that I remembered to say everything I meant to.

ETA: I forgot to mention that when you quoted Tvtyrant you didn't quote his second paragraph (and you might have forgotten about it, which might be part of why you misunderstood him, since that paragraph contains one of the underlined sections).

[Mishri]

That's an interesting observation. It looks to me like it's something he'd like to keep off the record, while everything else is something most other gods would be fine with him saying. Which implies that the other gods can hear what he says when he's glowing.

EDIT: Then again, it could just be an art error. I don't see any other cases of him losing his glow.

Thanks, yeah.. That's what I was trying to decide, was it an art error or was there something about just thinking of breaking the rules that made him lose his powers temporarily?