Goblins XVII: The shocking end of the story arc

[John Cribati]

so you get to pick and choose which mentions of a "Player" are canon or not but i don't? That doesn't seem fair.

So do you believe that Miko came back from the dead and/or traveled back in time to give us the foreword for Start of Darkness, then? Because Redcloak giving us a foreword for that book holds about the same level of canonically for me as that.

[Draconi Redfir]

you yourself said "The characters in OotS are all aware that this is a story in some form. "

the forward in Stard of Darkness was just a version of Miko who had read or been told about that particular book and asked to give a word about it before her death, or while being the version of Miko that lives in the giant's head rather then on the page.

They literally stole a diamond from the character introduction page to resurrect Roy. this was a major plot event. you can't act like OOTS characters don't go outside the bounds of the comic itself.

[Daywalker1983]

you yourself said "The characters in OotS are all aware that this is a story in some form. "

the forward in Stard of Darkness was just a version of Miko who had read or been told about that particular book and asked to give a word about it before her death, or while being the version of Miko that lives in the giant's head rather then on the page.

They literally stole a diamond from the character introduction page to resurrect Roy. this was a major plot event. you can't act like OOTS characters don't go outside the bounds of the comic itself.

I think it's still different. OOTS breaks the fourth wall in all sorts of ways while goblins is very in your face about it's characters being PCs. Maybe it's the fact that the OOTS jokes are just so much more sophisticated than goblins.

But I also think the whole argument is a strawman. It's tempting to compare goblins to OOTS, as they obviously have a lot of things in common. At the same time they simply are very different. Everything subtle about OOTS is dialed up to eleven in goblins and that's why they are hard to compare. We could discuss the canonical status of forewords vs. statements from the comic and I think we could considerably muddle the issue doing that.

But the point was that goblins having a group of players makes the story and its contrivances that much more palpable, and I think that is 100% on point. To me, OOTS doesn't factor into that on any level since we are talking about goblins. OOTS works as a narrative without a player doing random things like it's his first time on a gaming table. Goblins doesn't.

[DataNinja]

They literally stole a diamond from the character introduction page to resurrect Roy. this was a major plot event. you can't act like OOTS characters don't go outside the bounds of the comic itself.

To be fair, that really was just a joke, as they had only just discovered that the diamonds they did have were missing literally 4 panels earlier. It had no importance to the story whatsoever.

[tomaO2]

On fourth wall stuff elli made a recent tweet.


Ellipsis
@EllipsisGoblins
Goblins actually never breaks the 4th wall. Mentioning character sheets, stats, dice rolls, etc is simply them talking about how the physics of their own world works. In order to break the 4th wall, they'd have to refer to themselves being in a comic or being read by you.


She also talked about how Minmax and Forgath are... not PCs anymore, or never were? She was taking back the idea of what a fourth wall even means. I remember being upset about this because it was extremely clear that the adventurer party were unquestionably PCs, and she never bothered saying any different. Suddenly, years later, it's "no we never break fourth wall," and expanded the definition of this to be strictly about the fact that the story is a comic, rather than it's a game world that is being written up by Herbert.

Honestly, you can do stuff with this that are beyond a simple, "this world is Herbert's invention". You could have it be that the world is real and there is some sort of mystical crossover that allows Herbert and the players to send some sort of essense over to the other side. Maybe even have the player cross over completely into their avatars. Guardians of the Flame, anyone?

[Draconi Redfir]

To be fair, that really was just a joke, as they had only just discovered that the diamonds they did have were missing literally 4 panels earlier. It had no importance to the story whatsoever.

i'm pretty sure the "You're player is a girl" thing was just a joke too. If it can apply to one, then it can apply to the other. we don't need to take things so seriously.

[Yuki Akuma]

i'm pretty sure the "You're player is a girl" thing was just a joke too. If it can apply to one, then it can apply to the other. we don't need to take things so seriously.

Then why are you taking this so seriously? You try to debunk "some of the characters in Goblins have actual players" thing every time it comes up. If it's no unimportant why don't you just let it go?

[DataNinja]

i'm pretty sure the "You're player is a girl" thing was just a joke too. If it can apply to one, then it can apply to the other. we don't need to take things so seriously.

I personally don't really care one way or the other about the reality of the Goblins world. It doesn't really feel to have much plot importance, regardless of how it is. I was just pointing out that the breaking of the 4th wall there really doesn't tend to be plot important. It's just jokes like the diamond, or the Oracle reading the translations of Haley's speech. It's not something like The Lego Movie, where the solution can only be through 4th wall interaction.

[Draconi Redfir]

Then why are you taking this so seriously? You try to debunk "some of the characters in Goblins have actual players" thing every time it comes up. If it's no unimportant why don't you just let it go?

man i was just saying that talking about character sheets and and stats and stuff shouldn't be considered "Metagamaing" even without players sitting at a table, because in either case it's just a world that runs with game rules like OOTS and you can't really metagame with physics.

you're the one who said "Goblins explicitly says the characters have players."

[Vinyadan]

On fourth wall stuff elli made a recent tweet.

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Ellipsis
@EllipsisGoblins
Goblins actually never breaks the 4th wall. Mentioning character sheets, stats, dice rolls, etc is simply them talking about how the physics of their own world works. In order to break the 4th wall, they'd have to refer to themselves being in a comic or being read by you.


She also talked about how Minmax and Forgath are... not PCs anymore, or never were? She was taking back the idea of what a fourth wall even means. I remember being upset about this because it was extremely clear that the adventurer party were unquestionably PCs, and she never bothered saying any different. Suddenly, years later, it's "no we never break fourth wall," and expanded the definition of this to be strictly about the fact that the story is a comic, rather than it's a game world that is being written up by Herbert.

Honestly, you can do stuff with this that are beyond a simple, "this world is Herbert's invention". You could have it be that the world is real and there is some sort of mystical crossover that allows Herbert and the players to send some sort of essense over to the other side. Maybe even have the player cross over completely into their avatars. Guardians of the Flame, anyone?

This is how I see it:

_________________
| ______________ |
| |            | |
| |  PCs       | |
| |            | |
| |            | |
| |____________| |
|                |
|    Players     |
|________________|


    Us readers

The inner box represents the realm. The characters in the realm break the fourth wall, because they reference the players, who live outside the realm.


The larger box represents the comic. The characters in the comic do not acknowledge the readers, thus they do not break the fourth wall.

So there is some fourth-wall breaking within the subnarrative of the campaign world, but not in the wider comic narrative. I personally cannot reframe this subnarrative wall-breaking as how this world works instead of fourth-wall breaking, unless it's accepted that players and DM only exist within the realm, as forces of nature or gods or whatever, which seems to be what that tweet meant.

Tempts himself is canon, but most of his adventures might not be, or at least don't take place in the same reality.

I honestly wasn't expecting that.

[Draconi Redfir]

I honestly wasn't expecting that.

yeah kind of re-thinking that myself after thinking about it. The only thing that i think really supports it is some bonus comics where you see the goblins as kids, and Tempts is there with them. So as a character, Tempts exists alongside the other characters. His actual tempts fate adventures.... who knows. That's kind of why i figure most if not all of them take place in one or more worlds separate from the main goblin world. like he left the Goblinverse and has been dimention-hopping for his adventures or something.

that was the logic at least. less sure now.

[tomaO2]

Correct, it was a 3 page bonus comic, about the goblins cast as younglings. They did a dexterity test by running while trying to avoid being hit by painted apples. Afterwards, Temps goaded Complains and then the instructor went out to take a break, the end.

It was included in the Goblins book 2 pdf, which I have. This should be the only instance of Temps in the comic, and I believe Elli has stated that Temps would never become a part of the main storyline. I couldn't bring a citation on that if asked, though.

I would say he's canon, and, at some point, separated from his tribe to go off and have his own solo adventures, which may or may not be canon as well. I don't think it's a big deal either way.

This is how I see it:

Yea, that's more or less how I see it as well. I just still figured any references to the world of the players counted as fourth wall breaking, and I don't agree that the world of the players is not also a real thing. I feel the narrative has strongly shown, especially in book 1, that there are players, and there is a DM. Saying otherwise is a needless retcon.

This does not mean that the entire world was created by the DM, however, it just means there is some sort of crossover.

[Gez]

"Breaking the fourth wall" is an idiom from theater that refers to when a character talks directly to the audience. As you know, in theater, the characters are on the stage with four "walls": the backdrop, the left and right exits, and the invisible, imaginary wall between the stage and the audience. The actors know that the audience is there, of course, but the characters they play normally do not.

This is different from "metafiction", which is fiction about fiction, usually by having the characters be aware that they're in a fiction. Metafiction can involve breaking the fourth wall (characters from a book talking to the reader), but not necessarily so. It can also be metafiction in other ways, such as characters referencing the author ("she can't be dead, the writer wouldn't do this!") or the genre ("okay so at this point we're supposed to split up so that the monster can eat most of the extras") or the medium ("I knew what you were going to do because we're on a left page, I can see what happens in the right page!") or even in other ways -- I remember a comic I read where, for example, a few pages had a hole cut in, so when you read it you'd see a panel from a previous page, but with a different context changing how you read it. So metafiction can be meta without needing to have genre-savvy characters complaining to the audience about the writer; but it's a bit harder to pull off.

Also, by convention, a non-diegetic narrator talking to the reader is not breaking the fourth wall either. (A narrator is non-diegetic if they aren't a character in the story at all, or if they are a "future" version of a character in the story, retelling their past -- like Watson recounting Sherlock Holmes' investigations, for example. The Watson character-in-the-story is distinct from the Watson narrator: the character version doesn't know everything the narrator version does.)

[Anteros]

"Breaking the fourth wall" is an idiom from theater that refers to when a character talks directly to the audience. As you know, in theater, the characters are on the stage with four "walls": the backdrop, the left and right exits, and the invisible, imaginary wall between the stage and the audience. The actors know that the audience is there, of course, but the characters they play normally do not.

This is different from "metafiction", which is fiction about fiction, usually by having the characters be aware that they're in a fiction. Metafiction can involve breaking the fourth wall (characters from a book talking to the reader), but not necessarily so. It can also be metafiction in other ways, such as characters referencing the author ("she can't be dead, the writer wouldn't do this!") or the genre ("okay so at this point we're supposed to split up so that the monster can eat most of the extras") or the medium ("I knew what you were going to do because we're on a left page, I can see what happens in the right page!") or even in other ways -- I remember a comic I read where, for example, a few pages had a hole cut in, so when you read it you'd see a panel from a previous page, but with a different context changing how you read it. So metafiction can be meta without needing to have genre-savvy characters complaining to the audience about the writer; but it's a bit harder to pull off.

Also, by convention, a non-diegetic narrator talking to the reader is not breaking the fourth wall either. (A narrator is non-diegetic if they aren't a character in the story at all, or if they are a "future" version of a character in the story, retelling their past -- like Watson recounting Sherlock Holmes' investigations, for example. The Watson character-in-the-story is distinct from the Watson narrator: the character version doesn't know everything the narrator version does.)

Terms like this evolve over time, because that's how language works. Just like how "deus ex machina" no longer has to mean the gods literally descend to save the day, "breaking the 4th wall" no longer has to mean characters talking to the audience, but has expanded to encompass any sort of meta reference to things outside of the normal story structure.

Just because a term was used a certain way in the early 1800s when it was coined does not mean it has to retain the exact same meaning hundreds of years later when it's obviously widely used in a different context.

[Keltest]

Terms like this evolve over time, because that's how language works. Just like how "deus ex machina" no longer has to mean the gods literally descend to save the day, "breaking the 4th wall" no longer has to mean characters talking to the audience, but has expanded to encompass any sort of meta reference to things outside of the normal story structure.

Just because a term was used a certain way in the early 1800s when it was coined does not mean it has to retain the exact same meaning hundreds of years later when it's obviously widely used in a different context.

On the other hand, people using a term incorrectly does not make it less incorrect if its a common mistake.

[Kish]

Especially in those two cases, I really don't think the shifted meaning of "there is something in this work I do not like and wish to invalidate" is superior to the original one.

[John Cribati]

I've never heard of anyone using "breaking the fourth wall" in a derogatory way. You might be thinking of "Mary Sue."

The change in meaning from "characters in the story directly address the audience" to "characters in the story acknowledge the story's status as fiction" is a logical one that more or less encompasses the original meaning anyway.

[Keltest]

I've never heard of anyone using "breaking the fourth wall" in a derogatory way. You might be thinking of "Mary Sue."

The change in meaning from "characters in the story directly address the audience" to "characters in the story acknowledge the story's status as fiction" is a logical one that more or less encompasses the original meaning anyway.

Theres already a term for that though: Medium Awareness (as in, awareness of the medium they are in, not a level of awareness between high and low)

[John Cribati]

Awareness of story conventions is not the same thing as acknowledgement that they are in a story.

If someone in a horror movie says "oh no we're, not splitting up- that's how people die" that's Genre Savvy.

If they say "no, we're not splitting up- that's how people die in horror movies" that's both medium awareness and Genre Savvy

If they say "no, we're not splitting up- this is a horror movie and you're setting us up to die" that is Medium Awareness, Genre Savvy, and Breaking the Fourth Wall.

Back on track, Goblins has a nested 4th wall situation, where some characters are of the mind that they are in a story (that is, a D&D game, with a DM and Players, however that's interpreted after the fact). Forgath, Minmax, and the Three Unlucky Ones break this nested 4th wall constantly. Almost everyone in the universe is Medium Aware- as in, they understand that there are stats and checks rolls and proficiencies and to-hit bonuses and so on. But none of them break the 4th wall of the comic itself.

[Dragonus45]

Terms like this evolve over time, because that's how language works. Just like how "deus ex machina" no longer has to mean the gods literally descend to save the day, "breaking the 4th wall" no longer has to mean characters talking to the audience, but has expanded to encompass any sort of meta reference to things outside of the normal story structure.

Just because a term was used a certain way in the early 1800s when it was coined does not mean it has to retain the exact same meaning hundreds of years later when it's obviously widely used in a different context.

The context may change but the meaning has remained largely the same, and when in the case of the 4th wall and metafiction in general it hasn't even shifted all that much.

[Kish]

I've never heard of anyone using "breaking the fourth wall" in a derogatory way. You might be thinking of "Mary Sue."

I might have meant "Mary Sue," if I had said "Mary Sue."

[Anteros]

The context may change but the meaning has remained largely the same, and when in the case of the 4th wall and metafiction in general it hasn't even shifted all that much.

This is obviously untrue considering that people in this very thread are using it to have another meaning.

On the other hand, people using a term incorrectly does not make it less incorrect if its a common mistake.

Actually that's exactly what it means. This is how language evolves. That's why we're all speaking the language we are now instead of Latin, or Old English, or grunting. Words exist to convey meaning. They literally serve no other purpose. If a word or term is widely used to successfully convey a specific meaning then that is now the correct way to use the word, even if it takes Marriam-Webster a few years to catch up. That's why they're always adding things and changing definitions.

Telling someone they're using a term wrong despite it being perfectly suitable to convey their meaning isn't just pedantic and conversation derailing, it's incorrect.

[Dragonus45]

This is obviously untrue considering that people in this very thread are using it to have another meaning.

People being wrong isn't really my problem.

[Fyraltari]

I would say that the concept of the story being a game played by the unseen characters of Herbert and so on, is closer to the concept of mise en abyme than that of breaking the fourth wall.

[Vinyadan]

Especially in those two cases, I really don't think the shifted meaning of "there is something in this work I do not like and wish to invalidate" is superior to the original one.

What cases?

[Anteros]

People being wrong isn't really my problem.

Sure, except the person in question is you.

[Typewriter]

A whole lot of people falling over themselves to call other people wrong and argue the semantics of language when it doesn't really matter because we all understand what we're all saying - despite having different ways of saying it. The comic has meta elements but we don't know how far it goes, what it means to the characters, or what sort of impact it's going to have on the narrative. I will say that I agree with the box(es) that Vinyadan made.

Also - I wonder if it's possible that Fumbles was named that because the namer fumbled a roll when naming him.

[Draconi Redfir]

New comic is out

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He got Cheif's handprint as a Tattoo! Yesss!

[Doran]

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So these watches allow you to edit your own character sheet?

[Vinyadan]

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It sounds like he was raging as he got back.