OOTS #1232 - The Discussion Thread

[Verappo]

Oh wow, when I first started reading this comic I so didn't expect "Durkon learns about systemic inequality and exploitation" to be a plot point , but then again I personally didn't know about any of it back then either. Always nice to see something I grew up with develop and examine itself as I do it too.

[Dion]

I can't imagine the revelation of their failed supremacy would be very comforting, though.

No, but you see, now Durkon just has to explain “Oh, no, it was an accident. The gods that created you got bored and left you to fend for yourself. Yeah... uh... the other gods did know it would happen. No, they did nothing to stop it. No, they did nothing after to fix it.”

“No, no. It’s an ACCIDENT! It’s like when you drive your car through a playground while wearing a blindfold. It’s not your fault if someone dies because you can’t see them, and more important, it’s not your fault because you don’t care.”

“Well yes, of course all the gods knew it would happen. They’re not stupid. It’s happened lots of times before. But I do t see how that makes them responsible?”

[faustin]

No joke, I've seen a similar thought in plenty of settings and even some written fantasy series. Humans are quite often the rats of fantasy humanoids: not the strongest, not the smartest, not the longest-lived, but still insanely adaptable and frickin' everywhere. Living in all the nooks and crannies of the world. We're goshdarned survivors, baby.

I was thinking in terms of making alliances and having family everywhere.
Any experienced enough adventurer can enter the lair of Dragon Lord Enixtryx to steal his treasure. Only a human adventure will ever say "Hey uncle En, mind if I borrow a bit for my birthday?"

[Psyren]

You might not think it's fair but it's eminently reasonable in the context we have and the only workable plan left, because the gods tier their own hands for very good very Snarl looking reasons, and also because frankly just doing nothing and hoping the gods can just fix all your problems is kind of silly. Yes, I consider spending all your time trying to work out the best way to extort the gods into what you want when you could put that same effort into actually fixing things sitting around doing nothing. Charitably I might add, considering pursuing those plans tanked a legitimately successful example of goblinoid/humanoid relations in a violent and tragic way.

The goblins are not "doing nothing and hoping the gods fix all their problems", quite the opposite actually.

[Shale]

No, they didn't start at a disadvantage. They were created by Fenris to actually prevail. But the scheme failed.

The fact that Fenrirsirisir is a poor tactician who's not interested in learning from his mistakes doesn't undo the goblins' geopolitical and economic disadvantages. It's not even their own scheme -- if they'd squandered a perfectly good starting position that'd be something, but this is more like a very bad pet owner who gives his dog an entire field of grass to eat and then wonders why it's so sickly compared to his friends' pets. Maybe the guy really thought dogs could thrive on an all-grass diet, but it doesn't improve his dog's health any.

[Lord Raziere]

Well.

This will be an important comic for my analysis. it certainly clarifies a few things that I think we all wanted for a while and what it reveals isn't that surprising to me. I already had suspicions that the whole setup was more systemic than intentional anyways, given that the gods don't intentionally command anyone to kill this or that race in their scriptures. its just a lot of tensions rising naturally and Fenrir being neglectful....which isn't surprising. he doesn't seem like the brightest guy in the world and seems like someone trying to play aggro in a card game or rush strategy in an RTS: defeated by anyone who builds to shut it down and win in the long game.

[CountDVB]

The goblins are not "doing nothing and hoping the gods fix all their problems", quite the opposite actually.

Redcloak is basically helping the Dark One out for his scheme and basically ignored any others, such as his brother's idea or Durkon's proposal.

[BaronOfHell]

It really reminds me of a simulation. You set the environment and the starting perimeters, then you observe, but you don't interfere.
Or if you want to save various species of non-human animals, you may find a huge plot of land where they can roam free from human interaction, and then you mainly observe and only intervene if something on a very high impact level is about to hit.
Groups of non-human animals hunting down other groups? No interference, I believe. Not even if they don't do it for eating.

In a way it reminds me of Malack's plans of slaughtering thousands in the name of Nergal, which could be described as cows being brought to the butcher / slaughterhouse, and to me it seems obvious while Malack only cared for his gods approval of his plan and cared nothing of the cattle, the gods themselves seem to try to interfere as little as possible and do care about their followers, and this is how they show it. I wouldn't be surprised if by interfering it would only make things worse, at least in the long run, even if the gods themselves weren't predominately evil.

[Yirggzmb]

Maybe it's a comforting thought, if you're creating alien/fantasy races, to imagine an idealistic world where humans handle diversity well.

For believability, sometimes it's an end result: "here in the 51st century, we've finally learned the lessons of the past and are so anti-racist that we're even the best anti-racists in a galaxy of alien races."

On the other hand, on the small scale humans are good at bonding with just about anything. Small animals, plants, rocks, cars, small toys that beep at you because they're "hungry". So yeah, as a large group we've done pretty badly with the diversity thing. But it's not terribly far fetched from the small scale pov to extrapolate from individuals being good at bonding with anyone and anything.

[Fyraltari]

Won't it? Thor wouldn't even be considering goblin welfare right now if it weren't for the Plan. None of them would.

Yay they would. Thor's plan is not a response to The Dark One's. If anything the Plan just hastened the possible destruction of the world and lowered the Dark One's odds of survival.

of all the people who interact with it, Samwise who might not be saying that as an excuse. But this is still an interesting list of descriptions.

Meh. Samwise was tempted to. Sure he's mostly honest about why he wants it but he's no Manwë, the Ring is acting on his mind same as everyone else.

In Babylon 5, it was proposed that humans are uniquely good at forging communities from disparate groups of people. In the real world, of course... we aren't all that great about it, in many cases.

They say that but they don't really show it in the show. The humans are the only one divided by religion for example, and a significant chunk of the plot is dealing with xenophobic humans.

But really, as far as we can tell, humans are the best at forging communities in the real world. Chimpanzee tribes number in the dozens of members. Ours number in millions.

[The Pilgrim]

According to today's comic, second page, panels 2-3:

Durkon: "But tha goblins start'd out wit less, so tha's na usu'lly wha happens. Wha happens, tha dwarf wins cuz 'e's gotta better axe an' better armor an's been eatin' better food 'is whole life!...it's na 'xactly fair fer tha goblin.

Thor: "I mean...yes, that's true. We didn't really plan it that way on purpose...but I guess we didn't really prevent it, either.

Which means they are at a disadvantage now. Not at creation.

The goblins are at a disadvantage now because of how the world developed, not as an intended feature by design.

The Dark One's goblin victimization narrative loses a lot of punch when it doesn't begins with "goblins are at a disadvantage because they were created to lose by design", but rather with "goblins are at a disadvantage because they were created to achieve an early win, but failed".

Now the question is whether TDO has been feed false information or, on the other hand, TDO has always been aware of the truth, and has been feeding his followers with a big load of horse hockey on purpose.

[Patterned_Pike]

Something I'm really surprised about in these 2 pages is the fact that Durkon knows what Redcloak wants specifically and didn't bring it up. The last thing that was mentioned by Redcloak before Durkon's failed last appeal is deific recognition of goblinoids having the same innate rights as others. Redcloak specifically mentioned that this was the problem far more than lack of access to arable land and mountains with good ore (which the goblins have already accomplished on their own via conquest). So why isn't the beginning of Durkon's report about the negotiations the fact that the biggest thing Redcloak wants is for the gods to just collectively tell their followers "Hey everyone killing goblinoids for fun/profit/convenience is just as wrong as killing elves, humans, or lizard folk for those same reasons." Even just getting all the *good* gods to say this would be a great head start on the problem. Why isn't Durkon asking Thor to start gathering god signatures on the matter right now?

[JSSheridan]

Thanks Giant!

[CountDVB]

Something I'm really surprised about in these 2 pages is the fact that Durkon knows what Redcloak wants specifically and didn't bring it up. The last thing that was mentioned by Redcloak before Durkon's failed last appeal is deific recognition of goblinoids having the same innate rights as others. Redcloak specifically mentioned that this was the problem far more than lack of access to arable land and mountains with good ore (which the goblins have already accomplished on their own via conquest). So why isn't the beginning of Durkon's report about the negotiations the fact that the biggest thing Redcloak wants is for the gods to just collectively tell their followers "Hey everyone killing goblinoids for fun/profit/convenience is just as wrong as killing elves, humans, or lizard folk for those same reasons." Even just getting all the *good* gods to say this would be a great head start on the problem. Why isn't Durkon asking Thor to start gathering god signatures on the matter right now?

Durkon focused more on appealing with Redcloak on wh tthe goblins want before it turned to violence. I suspect he thinks that Redcloak won't listen unless he's in a position of disadvantage. The problem is that I don't know if anything will ne ebough for Redcloak. His righteous outrage is becoming more and more mixed with just a desire to burn things down out of spite and vengeance. He is between a well-intentioned extremist and just a spite-filled force of destruction not unlike Xykon.

[Fyraltari]

the gods don't intentionally command anyone to kill this or that race in their scriptures.

I recall only to bit of quoted scripture in the comic actually:

Loki: Lo the undead are such gross, icky things.

And

Thor: You should totally smash the followers of Loki.

[masamune1]

Something I'm really surprised about in these 2 pages is the fact that Durkon knows what Redcloak wants specifically and didn't bring it up. The last thing that was mentioned by Redcloak before Durkon's failed last appeal is deific recognition of goblinoids having the same innate rights as others. Redcloak specifically mentioned that this was the problem far more than lack of access to arable land and mountains with good ore (which the goblins have already accomplished on their own via conquest). So why isn't the beginning of Durkon's report about the negotiations the fact that the biggest thing Redcloak wants is for the gods to just collectively tell their followers "Hey everyone killing goblinoids for fun/profit/convenience is just as wrong as killing elves, humans, or lizard folk for those same reasons." Even just getting all the *good* gods to say this would be a great head start on the problem. Why isn't Durkon asking Thor to start gathering god signatures on the matter right now?

It's easy for us to think that since we've been with Redcloak for meta-years now, but for Durkon this is all new information and he isn't really a professional diplomat. He's a very devout Cleric who has had a very rough few days starting with being possessed by an evil vampire spirit, learning he has a son, dying heroically, meeting his god, finding out the terrible truth about the nature of the cosmos, getting resurrected, being murdered by his ex and resurrected again, and is now tasked with negotiating with the genocidal religious fanatic he'd spent the last several weeks trying to kill, only to learn that the guy has some legitimate beefs but is also probably just too stubborn to see the big picture. Oh, and in the middle of all of this he discovered the cause of the exile that has been haunting him for years.

Basically, Durkons' heart is in the right place, but he isn't the best guy for the job, and he's got a LOT going on right now.

[Shale]

The Dark One's goblin victimization narrative loses a lot of punch when it doesn't begins with "goblins are at a disadvantage because they were created to lose by design", but rather with "goblins are at a disadvantage because they were created to achieve an early win, but failed".

Again, if the disadvantage comes from how a god chose to make them rather than anything they or their ancestors did, I don't see what difference it makes. You think if Redcloak were watching this conversation, he'd say "Oh, I've been wrong all along! The gods didn't want us to be XP fodder, it was just one idiot who thought he was making a cool toy and didn't care about what happened to us after he lost interest! That's so much better!"

[The Pilgrim]

Again, if the disadvantage comes from how a god chose to make them rather than anything they or their ancestors did, I don't see what difference it makes. You think if Redcloak were watching this conversation, he'd say "Oh, I've been wrong all along! The gods didn't want us to be XP fodder, it was just one idiot who thought he was making a cool toy and didn't care about what happened to us after he lost interest! That's so much better!"

Actually yes, it's better. And you should be able to see why.

It's better to know that there is no Greater Divine Boot oppressing your people's heads, and therefore in order to improve the living conditions of your species you don't need to scheme against the Greater Order of Things.

[Fyraltari]

Actually, yes, it's better. And you should be able to see why.

"I don't see why my client should be charged with assault, you honor, he did not kick the victim, he merely punched him."

[Sebastian]

So Fenris made the goblins, but they don't worship him any longer? Does Fenris have any opinions on this? Does it make him weaker?

Also, why do the goblins live outside the Northern Pantheon's demesne if a NP god created them?

My guess would be they stopped worshiping him when he stopped answering their calls. (He got bored and moved to more 'fun' monsters)

[Ionathus]

Actually yes, it's better. And you should be able to see why.

It's better to know that there is no Greater Divine Boot oppressing your people's heads, and therefore in order to improve the living conditions of your species you don't need to scheme against the Greater Order of Things.

I don't mean to sound accusatory, but that's a very privileged perspective on the situation.

For lots of oppressed people, injustice born from apathy can feel worse than injustice born from malice. If the only problem is just the Sapphire Guard hunting down goblins and killing them, hey, that's an easy fix: destroy the Sapphire Guard. Clear target, clear end-goal.

But if the problem is thinly spread across the way the entire world was unintentionally structured -- if your axe is weaker, your armor thinner, and your food less nourishing -- then everywhere you turn, there's something to fix. Who is "responsible?"

You can't fight everyone who's better off than you. You don't have the energy or the resources. And that's because everywhere you turn, the terrain was designed with someone else's advantage in mind. Everyone else has more than you, and even if it's nobody's singular "fault," nobody wants to give anything up to help you up to the same level. It is what people call systemic injustice. And a system is far, far harder to fix than a single bad actor or group.

[The Pilgrim]

I don't mean to sound accusatory, but that's a very privileged perspective on the situation.

For lots of oppressed people, injustice born from apathy can feel worse than injustice born from malice. If the only problem is just the Sapphire Guard hunting down goblins and killing them, hey, that's an easy fix: destroy the Sapphire Guard. Clear target, clear end-goal.

But if the problem is thinly spread across the way the entire world was unintentionally structured -- if your axe is weaker, your armor thinner, and your food less nourishing -- then everywhere you turn, there's something to fix. Everywhere you turn, the terrain was designed with someone else's advantage in mind. It is what people call systemic injustice. And a system is far, far harder to fix than a single bad actor or group.

You mean it's harder for the Goblins to improve their living conditions if they just need to fight against other species, rather than having to fight against other species and also against the Gods?

You can't fight everyone who's better off than you.

You can't and you shouldn't. You should work with them. Like Right-Eye did. Like the former hobgoblin leader did.

[Oddstar]

I don't think Thor being truthful about the gods' motives/methods makes Redcloak wrong in any way that really matters. Whether or not they specifically created goblinoids as fodder races, the pantheons still made a universe whose fundamental laws provide material incentives for sapient beings to kill each other, and didn't see structural inequities as a problem worth balancing for. Somebody was almost assuredly going to get the short end of that stick, and whoever it was would have a valid grievance against the gods who set it up so that would happen, even if they left the exact outcome up to chance.

You say that they did not balance for structural inequities, but, to the extent that that is true, that is not necessarily an argument in Redcloak's favor. The goblins may have been dealt a bad hand (or perhaps they simply played a good hand badly--we don't know for a fact that Durkon's interpretation of history is right), but their creator was sincerely attempting to deal them a winning hand. Consider how Thor described Fenris' actions: "He has this dumb idea that if he makes people that age fast and breed a lot, they're going to outcompete all the other groups." (Emphasis added.) Leaving aside that Thor thinks that Fenris' theory is foolish, it is clear that Fenris created goblins to be a if not the dominant race by giving them what Fenris thought were critical advantages. Perhaps Fenris was foolish to think that those were advantages; perhaps Thor is wrong and they are advantages, but the goblins simply failed to exploit them. One of them is wrong, but we cannot know which. The critical thing, though, is that, according to Thor's account, the goblins were created to rule, not to be fodder for the other races.

To put it another way, the way the gods here seem to have balanced for inequities is not by coming to a consensus on what a balanced, equitable world would look like (about which, of course, they could be wrong, since we know that they can be wrong, since either Thor is wrong or Fenris is wrong), but rather by each putting his own individual theories of what would make a particular group successful into practice with the groups they create and letting those groups compete. You might say that it is a free-market theory of equity rather than a hierarchical theory of equity.

[Shale]

Also, I don't think Redcloak ever gave the indication that he thought the gods were actively enforcing the pecking order, as opposed to allowing the system to continue as it was designed. If that were the case, surely he'd have expected some kind of divine intervention to prevent the takeover of Azure City, or to push the goblins out of their new territory. And the ultimatum he planned to deliver was "the world you designed sucks for us, fix it or I'll have the Snarl kill you," rather than "stop repressing us or I'll have the Snarl kill you."

[arimareiji]

I think it's less "the Goblins' grievances are wrong" and more "Hanlon's razor applies to the goblins' grievances." It wasn't malice, it was neglect, and Thor acknowledges that.

Bingo. And while I'm a big believer in Hanlon's Razor, the blade has two edges:

The reason Hanlon's Razor is needed is that sufficiently-advanced incompetence/ignorance/neglect/stupidity is really hard to distinguish from malicious intent. Almost impossible, if all you have to judge by are the results.

And it’s nice to see they are absolutely 100% screwed over, and TDO is 100% absolutely positively correct even if wasn’t technically “deliberate”.

So now we’re done with the debate forever and ever. The goblins were intentionally designed as XP fodder. They got the worse lands because literally none of the gods cared about them. The gods gave them a short brutal life intentionally. Word of god. Done.

Ha ha ha ha. No, just kidding. We should argue.

I think we might agree on this, but regardless I hereby nominate "now we're done with the debate forever and ever" (and all related assertions) as the OotS's version of "No offense". (^_~)

A statement which may be sincere in intent, but generally exists only to contradict itself.

[mjasghar]

The gods as an institution still have culpability here. As Durkon rightly pointed out, the general inequity of their origins and living situations is fostering and exacerbating that very conflict, so expecting mortals to do all the work needed to remediate it is neither fair nor reasonable. And not only do some races (e.g. Dwarves) have better land, food, equipment etc, they even have their own gods specifically to look out for their interests. Until The Dark One, the goblins didn't.

Are you expecting 2/3 of the gods who aren’t Good to behave Good?

[Ruck]

At this point, we could make an entire Chain of Corrections about Fentanyl's name.

Dang, I was hoping to be the first one to get to Fentanyl.

Well, anyway, this made me think of one of the crayon panels in Start of Darkness, where The Dark One is actually physically shepherding goblins and encouraging them to go forth, which stands in marked contrast to Feng Shui's treatment of them.

I'm also in hindsight a little more surprised I (or anyone as far as I know) didn't figure out the specifics of how Redcloak's account of the goblins' creation was wrong, given that we've had the story for a long time about how the gods take turns creating elements for their new world.

[faustin]

Isn´t anybody going to comment the part where Thor tells Durkon there is an incoming Implosion (I guess courtesy of RC) addressed to Minrah?

Hope the team have still some diamonds around.

[Skull the Troll]

Which means they are at a disadvantage now. Not at creation.

The goblins are at a disadvantage now because of how the world developed, not as an intended feature by design.

The Dark One's goblin victimization narrative loses a lot of punch when it doesn't begins with "goblins are at a disadvantage because they were created to lose by design", but rather with "goblins are at a disadvantage because they were created to achieve an early win, but failed".

Now the question is whether TDO has been feed false information or, on the other hand, TDO has always been aware of the truth, and has been feeding his followers with a big load of horse hockey on purpose.

Just their short lives has a lot to do with it. The first and last 15 years of a humans life are not as productive as the rest and they tend to live about 75 years. If you extrapolated that out to goblins then they only have a couple decades in which to amass knowledge and wealth and pass it down to their children. They also start out at the disadvantage of a race that is usually evil. Presumably they cooperate less and are less concerned with the society as a whole. Yes I know Redcloak cares but he's not goblin society as a whole. Those two things are going to give them a bad start and it isn't their fault, it's completely Fenrir's. That said Fenrir is "those other gods" as far as Redcloak and any goblin that thinks about it is concerned. The goblinoids don't answer to Fenrir anymore hes exactly who they are talking about when they say the gods screwed us.

Isn´t anybody going to comment the part where Thor tells Durkon there is an incoming Implosion (I guess courtesy of RC) addressed to Minrah?

Hope the team have still some diamonds around.

Thor isnt talking about one arriving this very second, hes saying that if Redcloak did it before he may do it again when Durkon sees him next.

[Lemarc]

So Thor says that the goblinoids weren't intentionally created to lose/as xp-fodder... But some god clearly had it out for them when they created the world.

Whoever created the dwarfs and the gnomes gave them an attack bonus vs. goblinoids. Knowing you have a bonus when fighting specific races is an incentive to fight these races rather than other races as you'll have an extra edge if you fight goblinoids rather than f.ex. humans or elves.

So it would seem that some god desired conflict between the gnomes/dwarves and the goblinoids and wanted to gnomes/dwarves to be more likely to win such conflicts.

Fenris apparently did. A charitable read would be that the god or gods who added those bonuses did so to prevent their chosen people from being overwhelmed in the initial rush, before they can get properly settled and before Fenris gets bored, and didn't give much thought to afterwards.