Concerns About the Progressions of the Goblin Plot (@Rich)

[SN137]

Editing your post is apparently against the rules

[Nephrahim]

I'm confused as to how one would go about "Peacefully" requesting land, in that case? *scrubbed* You're right, *scrubbed* (In fact he was very possibly evil, though there's not a lot of evidence for that, outside his alightment post-ascension.) The point is, he didn't just invade. He appealed the human leader's sense of rightness to get a better deal for the goblins, and they quite literally stabbed him in the back, during a negotiation, again, as far as we know (From the Dark One's own words.)

*scrubbed*

[hroþila]

The context in SoD is that the Dark One united the goblinoids to address the pre-existing injustice, and that he was still magnanimous enough to give a peaceful solution one last try before he was betrayed, even though he had every right to just use force to settle the issue.

[Telenil]

I'm confused as to how one would go about "Peacefully" requesting land, in that case?

It's difficult, which is why people usually trade for goods they need instead of taking the lands that produce them.

Your best option if you want land for your nation is to find something your neighbors are willing to give you land for, such as military assistance, a truckload of money, or the ability to seal a god-killing monstrosity out of the world forever. Redcloak threw away a giant opportunity here, though it was for the somewhat understandable reason that he didn't trust Durkon.
If you want land for your people, you can try to split them in groups and send them to empty places or where other nations don't mind them. If this can't be done safely, then your objective is to build trust so it can.

Or you can raise an army and get the land by intimidation or force, but then you don't get to complain when the other nations raise their armies and fight back.

[dps]

I will grant that killing a prisoner is morally questionable, but given that he is part of an army committing acts that are generally considered far more heinous, I'm going to have to leave it at questionable.

It wasn't morally questionable, it was straight up wrong, and the elf commander knee it was wrong, or else there was no reason to tell the others to no tell the Paladin, *scrubbed*

[SN137]

Just give up

[Silly Name]

I still don't see the comic's narrative pushing the idea that what Redcloak is doing and did is right. I doubt we're going to reach an ending where the hogboblin army keeps occupying Azure City or keep slaves, and I don't think anyone will tell Redcloak "you were absolutely justified in everything you did"

I don't think the narrative is even "goblins are poor innocent victims" when, as has been rightly pointed out, they kill and invade the same way humans and elves do.

I get what you are saying, but my whole issue with the last two strips is that this is not a race. Durkon didn't say "this is unfair because one side has a Ferrari and the other not", he said "this is unfair because one side has a tank and the other not". That's not the same thing at all.

The whole exchange is bizarre. Thor reacts as if the Gods had organised a friendly tournament and goblin athletes couldn't get medals, not a brutal conflict where every kill makes you stronger. The conversation may be an attempted nod at real-world issues, but if it is, battles to the death are the wrong narrative to make that point.
If Durkon's real argument is "give the goblins a shot at peacefully having their own kingdom and only resume clubing them if they attack first", fine. But as far as I can see, that's not what he said.

I can and will concede your point about the wording used by Durkon so far, but I'd also point out that the conversation, in-universe, is ongoing. Durkon hasn't been crowned the moral victor, he's voicing an issue he just now realised exists, and is talking with Roy about it and what they can do about it. And since Roy is still a viewpoint character too, and arguably the main character of the story, I doubt we're heading towards "Roy Greenhilt, evil racist" (especially because that'd be incoherent with Roy's character so far).

Regarding Thor, I think the point was that he wanted to say that even if the goblins got shafted by their god, they could have still "made it", and Durkon rebutted that the way the system is set is why goblins have ended up as "XP fodder" even if they weren't meant to.

And, yes, a goblin army conquered Azure City. On average the goblins are still at a disadvantage, but through overwhelming numbers and a good strategy (and some luck in the form of Miko) they won over an human city. I don't think that's a common occurrence in OotS-world, we don't see goblins routinely toppling other humanoid nations and cities in a day. I'm pretty sure the hobgoblin city is the only time we saw a large goblinoid settlement, too.

[dps]

Those mean almost the same thing to me. I'm more so comparing it on the level of,
Vaarsuvius' familicide > Enslavement of occupied city > Order not killing or handing Vaarsuivius over for justice > Home invasion and murder of sentient if dangerous child Dragon > Murder of Hobgoblin too racist to Gob who helped enslave city.It's basically low on the totem poll is the point. The murder of even people whom have committed war crimes, is I believe a bad thing, especially in cases where there is some doubt as is the case with hobgoblin prisoner, but the fact that people will often just shrug,laugh or call it a happy ending, if they hear a story about them being beaten to death in a cell, leads me to conclude that there is at least debate as to its morality. Thus it would objectively be defined as only morally questionable by society at large.

You may believe as you wish, however do consider the above statement.

Well, yeah, you're not alone.

[RossN]

I still don't see the comic's narrative pushing the idea that what Redcloak is doing and did is right. I doubt we're going to reach an ending where the hogboblin army keeps occupying Azure City or keep slaves, and I don't think anyone will tell Redcloak "you were absolutely justified in everything you did"

I don't think the narrative is even "goblins are poor innocent victims" when, as has been rightly pointed out, they kill and invade the same way humans and elves do.



I can and will concede your point about the wording used by Durkon so far, but I'd also point out that the conversation, in-universe, is ongoing. Durkon hasn't been crowned the moral victor, he's voicing an issue he just now realised exists, and is talking with Roy about it and what they can do about it. And since Roy is still a viewpoint character too, and arguably the main character of the story, I doubt we're heading towards "Roy Greenhilt, evil racist" (especially because that'd be incoherent with Roy's character so far).

Regarding Thor, I think the point was that he wanted to say that even if the goblins got shafted by their god, they could have still "made it", and Durkon rebutted that the way the system is set is why goblins have ended up as "XP fodder" even if they weren't meant to.

And, yes, a goblin army conquered Azure City. On average the goblins are still at a disadvantage, but through overwhelming numbers and a good strategy (and some luck in the form of Miko) they won over an human city. I don't think that's a common occurrence in OotS-world, we don't see goblins routinely toppling other humanoid nations and cities in a day. I'm pretty sure the hobgoblin city is the only time we saw a large goblinoid settlement, too.

Aren't overwhelming numbers canonically part of their intrinsic advantages though? Which one of things that bothered me about Durkon's 'dwarf vs goblin' fight argument, since given dwarves have fewer children and take longer to grow how often is the situation going to be a lone dwarf fighting a lone goblin and how often is it going to a lone dwarf fighting three or four goblins? And those thousands upon thousands of hobgoblins had to come from somewhere so clearly there must be big (hob)goblin settles somewhere.

In fact looking at the D&D rules (and yes I know the story isn't exactly bound by those but they are still a guide) goblins are arguably physically superior to humans. They take a hit to Strength but get a bonus to Dexterity (the king of stats), darkvision and racial bonuses to riding and moving silently. They are equally resilient and intelligent. Working from those basics goblins do hit a little less hard than humans but they are harder to hit, superior archers, superior horsemen and have a serious advantage in fighting (or hunting) after dark. Those are not negligible advantages.

[Silly Name]

Aren't overwhelming numbers canonically part of their intrinsic advantages though? Which one of things that bothered me about Durkon's 'dwarf vs goblin' fight argument, since given dwarves have fewer children and take longer to grow how often is the situation going to be a lone dwarf fighting a lone goblin and how often is it going to a lone dwarf fighting three or four goblins? And those thousands upon thousands of hobgoblins had to come from somewhere so clearly there must be big (hob)goblin settles somewhere.

Keep in mind, the overwhelming numbers in the battle of Azure City were also part of Xykon and Redcloak's strategy: they sabogated the Azurite warning system, so that they wouldn't have time to rally their full army and had to rely on the forces within the city proper.

But, yes, we did see a large hobgoblin settlement in-story, but it seems to have been either the only one, or an incredibly rare occurrence. The conquest of Azure City is an oddity, something that doesn't happen on the regular.

I would also argue that, clearly, if within the narrative goblins have been stuck in bad territories with few resources for so long, it's obvious that their faster breeding doesn't actually work as an equaliser.

[SN137]

End it all

[RossN]

Keep in mind, the overwhelming numbers in the battle of Azure City were also part of Xykon and Redcloak's strategy: they sabogated the Azurite warning system, so that they wouldn't have time to rally their full army and had to rely on the forces within the city proper.

But, yes, we did see a large hobgoblin settlement in-story, but it seems to have been either the only one, or an incredibly rare occurrence. The conquest of Azure City is an oddity, something that doesn't happen on the regular.

I would also argue that, clearly, if within the narrative goblins have been stuck in bad territories with few resources for so long, it's obvious that their faster breeding doesn't actually work as an equaliser.

The problem for me is that it seems like the narrative is trying to have its cake and eat it; goblins must simultaneously be incredibly common (from their 'fast breeding' and apparently being around as XP-fodder if we are to believe the goblins) yet also can't actually succeed at anything despite this and despite being at least physically and mentally equal to humans (to maintain sympathy) and having little obvious technology gap.

It seems to me that in order for the conceit to fully work - that the goblin position is so weak they can't achieve anything - we have to retcon their success at Azure City and the enormous, well disciplined, well equipped army that conquered the humans. Because as is the conquest of Azure City is an argument that backs up Thor, not Durkon.

I think it would be reasonable to accept a position in between Thor and Durkon's views - that the goblins had a poor hand but still could and can do a lot better with what they do have - but the last few strips definitely suggest to me that we are meant to see Durkon as entirely in the right and Thor entirely in the wrong.

[Silly Name]

It seems to me that in order for the conceit to fully work - that the goblin position is so weak they can't achieve anything - we have to retcon their success at Azure City and the enormous, well disciplined, well equipped army that conquered the humans. Because as is the conquest of Azure City is an argument that backs up Thor, not Durkon.

Again, we can take the hobgoblin army as a notable exception in the course of goblinoid history. It's not impossible for goblins to succeed, but the system is stacked against them.

I think it would be reasonable to accept a position in between Thor and Durkon's views - that the goblins had a poor hand but still could and can do a lot better with what they do have - but the last few strips definitely suggest to me that we are meant to see Durkon as entirely in the right and Thor entirely in the wrong.

I feel like we're supposed to look at Thor as not having put as much thought into the situation as he and the other gods should have. Durkon is right in rising concerns about whether Redcloak has a point when he says that goblins got the short end of the stick when the world was created, and that maybe something should be changed.

But I also want to insist that we're lacking context. Next strip is most likely going to be Roy's (relatively fresh) PoV on the situation. Again, I don't think the conclusion of this conversation is going to be that Roy is an horrible person who doesn't want to change the world for the better.

[Stickfigures]

I can see the bard maybe getting on board with this stupid narrative, but the rest of the party hasn't dump-stated INT or in the cleric's case, has had friends and family murdered, enslaved and eaten by goblinoids.

The party is 4 races who have had to unite and form a civilization as the only way to protect themselves from goblinoids who were given all the advantages of strength and population who would have conquered and literally eaten them otherwise.

Even united, even having worked together to form a civilization and advancements such as mage schools, metal working, industry, economy etc. they're still weaker than the cave man goblinoids population advantage with cities being conquered, slaves taken, people used as food etc.

It's only because the goblinoids have never built a civilization and have fought each other as much as anyone else that the other races even exist still. Now they're being portrayed as the victim? Ugh, like most of the party, I haven't dump-stated INT either.

[mjasghar]

Well that’s one wrong way to interpret it....

[Yirggzmb]

I kinda feel like complaining to an author about where you think the story might go, when the odds of the author actually reading is fairly slim and the odds of the author changing anything are nil, is kinda pointless?

You're not obligated to like it, but the story has been flirting with these ideas for years. I generally trust Rich to handle it with nuance. But you have to give him time to get there. The main characters are only just beginning to contemplate the bigger picture. We probably have irl years to go before the story is over.

[Bootman]

I kinda feel like complaining to an author about where you think the story might go, when the odds of the author actually reading is fairly slim and the odds of the author changing anything are nil, is kinda pointless?

You're not obligated to like it, but the story has been flirting with these ideas for years. I generally trust Rich to handle it with nuance. But you have to give him time to get there. The main characters are only just beginning to contemplate the bigger picture. We probably have irl years to go before the story is over.

Absolutely nearly pointless. The chances of success are basically zero. But I don't like the term 'complaining' since it implies it is purely personal.

Much of the stuff I pointed out and others have as well are technical writing issues that have existed for awhile. If they aren't addressed, it doesn't matter whether or not we love it or hate it.

The Hobgoblin armies despite being supposedly disadvantaged is a gap in the plot. Virtually never showing good or even neutral goblins, having loads of pure evil ones, and then trying to be like 'no see they're just like anyone else' at the end is muddling the themes and trying to have your cake and eat it too. Treating the Goblins like have it the worst without substantiating while we know for a fact there are other peoples in comparable if not worse scenarios is a contraction and once again muddles the theme.

All of these issues are possible to fix and explain but we've officially reached the territory where we have to start initiating repairs and planning scenes to patch these holes or else they will forever be damaging to the narrative. Will I still read the story? Absolutely. Will I still like it? Most likely. But as a writer I want to minimize the number of issues in my own work as much as possible, and I assume Rich feels the same way. Regardless of if we feel these are huge issues or little issues, regardless of whether they impact literally anybody's enjoyment or literally everybody's, they're issues.

[Jason]

It shows it in a different style which implies story telling (or at least it has in earlier pages).

Really, if you're going to discuss Redcloak and his motives, you must read Start of Darkness. Trying to discuss his character without doing that is like trying to discuss the character of Hamlet without having actually read the play. You could theoretically do it, but the results are not likely to be useful.

Spoiler: Start of Darkness

Show

When Redcloak and his brother recruit the still-living Xykon to their cause Redcloak gives a long expositional speech about the history of the Dark One and the Snarl. The art style shifts to crayons, like Shinjo's long exposition to the Order about the Snarl. It is also the only part of the book that is in color.
It is very clear that the story being told is Redcloak telling the story to Xykon, meaning it is all from Redcloak's point of view. The events depicted are not necessarily how they really happened. This is true of Shinjo's long crayon exposition as well, which we later discovered was not entirely accurate (primarily on the subject of how many worlds the gods have created).
Redcloak's story there is the source of the idea that the goblins were not treated fairly by the gods. Thor has contradicted the idea that the other gods deliberately kept the goblins down, saying basically that if they were treated badly it wasn't on purpose. It seems likely that other parts of it are also not entirely accurate. Particularly suspect is the claim that the Dark One was a wise and merciful ruler of goblinkind and only wanted justice for his people. Of course that's what the Dark One's high priest would believe.

I wonder, what if in the comic somehow things were arranged for all the races to have equal proportions of good land...and then the goblins outbred everyone, conquered and enslaved them all, and eventually exterminated all the other races before devolving into endless goblin vs. goblin wars, because it turns out the "usually neutral evil" entry in the monster manual meant that goblins really do have a racial predisposition towards being neutral evil (probably put their by their creator), and giving what really was an evil race an even footing with all the other less-evil races ultimately proved to be a terrible idea for everyone, the goblins included.

It's not going to happen, because Rich has made it clear he doesn't like the idea that sentient races might really have a disposition towards a particular part of the alignment spectrum, but it might have been interesting.

I think it's a pretty silly idea that the goblins were dealt bad land to begin with and then they haven't been able to overcome that disadvantage for the thousands of years of world history that have followed. It's made particularly ridiculous when you realize we have at least two known instances where gigantic goblin hordes rose up and wrecked havoc on global scales (the crusade of the Dark One's followers and the conquest of Azure City). If their land disadvantage was really too much for them to overcome, how did they form big enough goblin hordes to threaten the world? Twice?

The Giant has surprised me before with how things have unfolded, and hasn't been afraid to show that much of what we thought we knew was wrong. I'll wait until the end credits are running before deciding if this goblin rights subplot (and despite what some readers seem to think it is a sub-plot, not the focus of the whole comic) was handled well or not.

[Emberlily]

There are plenty of explicitly non-evil goblins in the books, including two whole storylines centered around "Neutral" goblin societies. However, the main comic almost exclusively focusing on overtly evil or ambiguously ethical goblins in the earlier strips does feel like a flaw to me, especially bc the Giant wants the story to be fully comprehensible to people who don't buy the books, and recent threads have shown that there's a lot of people who didn't read the side stories before now who aren't satisfied bc of the ideas they've built about OotS goblins.

But I'm not really sure what could have been done in the strips from the past few years to remediate that without grinding the plot to a halt. The addition of Oona and the bugbears feels like setup to lead to it in the final book in a way that works organically, and especially after HtPGHS I do trust the Giant to make it land.

[Jason]

There are plenty of explicitly non-evil goblins in the books, including two whole storylines centered around "Neutral" goblin societies.

I presume you mean Righteye's village in Start of Darkness and the Hobgoblin settlement in How the Paladin Got His Scar? I agree that Righteye's village seems to have been at least neutral, but I'm not so sure about the hobgoblin settlement.

Spoiler: How The Paladin Got His Scar

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Granted, there are hobgoblins who wish to have peace with other races in the story, but their society as a whole seems to be evil-aligned to me. Everyone is essentially bullied into doing whatever the supreme leader wants. The first one is obviously evil. The new supreme leader at the end poisons the entire court (including the poor hobgoblin serving the food) in order to become supreme leader, and then scapegoats the humans. He's probably not neutral-aligned, he's just less interested in open conflict with the Azurites.

[Nephrahim]

One of the things about goblins that is touched on briefly here but more in other books is that they are very prone to following their leaders. Hobgoblins that had no desire to fight were drafted by their stronger leaders.

This means, effectively, most goblins we meet in the comic are simply extensions of redcloak and his master.

[Dion]

So, things we know:

1) Thor admitted in comic that RedCloak is right

2) The gods are shown in comic to give a *lot* more aid than just “good land at the start”

3) The author clearly believes murdering prisoners in cold blood is wrong, and has created a fictional world where it’s wrong

Why are we focusing on the questions that have already been addressed successfully in the comic?

[Jason]

1) Thor admitted in comic that RedCloak is right

No, he admitted that goblins are currently living on resource-poor lands and implied that they started out that way too, but he also said that Redcloak was wrong about the other gods doing this to the goblins on purpose.

[Dion]

he also said that Redcloak was wrong about the other gods doing this to the goblins on purpose.

I just reread the actual comic very carefully to see if your assertion is true.

It is not.

Thor never says that redcloak is wrong.

In fact, the whole point of the last two comics is Durkon’s growing horror at discovering that Thor doesn’t deny anything Redcloak said.

It’s awful to say, but I don’t think you’re arguing about things that happen in the comic.

[TRH]

Well, as it happens, Durkon didn't ask you, he asked Thor. And unlike you, Thor didn't say it was completely untrue.

But his account took us from "The gods deliberately made goblins to fail and die horribly" to "A god made goblins to win, but he unfortunately had no functional conception of what it takes for a race to succeed." If you believe those are functionally identical accounts, that's your prerogative. But for me, well, to return to my original point, if The Dark One's account of his own death is remotely as distorted as that, then that injects a lot of doubt into exactly how perfidious his demise really was.

[TRH]

I just reread the actual comic very carefully to see if your assertion is true.

It is not.

Thor never says that redcloak is wrong.

In fact, the whole point of the last two comics is Durkon’s growing horror at discovering that Thor doesn’t deny anything Redcloak said.

It’s awful to say, but I don’t think you’re arguing about things that happen in the comic.

He denies that the gods collectively made the goblins, to get hyper-pedantic for a moment.

[Vikenlugaid]

I'm a huge fan of OOTS and hold it very highly among other stories, but I have been concerned about how the Goblin plot has progressed up to this point. I felt the meeting with Redcloak was very well handled but the most recent strips relating to it have been creating issues. If I'm totally off my mark about what the story is attempting to say feel free to ignore me, but I value OOTS too highly to say nothing about it.

The tipping point for me was strip 1233 because it crosses a few important thresholds that impact the technical writing of OOTS. The first issue starts with Durkon saying that what happened to the Goblins being out of malice or neglect doesn't matter, that either way it's just as bad. The contention is that because the Goblins had worse lands they have been at a systemic disadvantage their entire history. We're ignoring them being abandoned by their God or any other racial factors and just focusing on this as the main injustice. By 'we' I mean Rich since he's been pretty clear this is the primary issue for some time now culminating in strip 1232.

So the first thing we have to ask is 'is it wrong for some races to have spawned in worse lands?'. Well from the Gods perspective, they can't survive without conflict and conflict requires disparity. If everyone is post-scarcity they will literally starve, then no existence will ever happen again. I assume by the end we'll be provided with a solution to this and if it ends up being super obvious then it becomes a plot hole that the Gods never figured out a superior method of obtaining souls.

Let's say we agree that it is wrong for races to have ANY differences in how they're spawned. Now I happen to remember the entire book regarding the Western Continent. The nature of their continent has created a history of murder, wars, betrayal etc. while the Elves chill out in lush forests above. Is that okay just because some other humans happened to be in better areas? What about the lizardfolk that seem to be native to the Western Continent and nowhere else? And the West had to have people spawned to it since the western gods need worshippers. Where's the speech about generations of people being slaughtered in the west due to their resource issues?

Is it okay because some humans have good lands? Then surely the Goblins are okay because some have good lands. Hell, they just had an army laying around capable of conquering Azure City, armed and armored. 30,000 is pretty wild my guys. Are their lands really that much worse than the western continent? What about the dwarves who literally were explicitly betrayed from their creation and live in frozen wastelands to the North? Does it not count because they made it work for them? Is the amount of resources your race has literally the only factor for measuring how good you and your race have it and whether or not you deserve it?

Keeping in mind that the Gods are locked out of wide sweeping changes because otherwise the world would constantly be in flux and cause many more issues than it fixes, there really isn’t much they could do after the spawning the world and once again if there is then that will damage the Gods as characters and feel quite cheap.

The narrow focus on the Goblins and this theme naturally raises these questions because all of them can undermine this theme and therefore what's building up to be a significant part of the final arc loses the logical throughline it needs. The framing is extremely deliberate in favor of the theme to the point of being borderline deceptive. Despite all this though, this actually isn't my biggest issue with 1233.

Roy points out that it is hard to communicate with Goblins about their motivations when they attack you, and in response Durkon references the fight against evil Durkon. Once that is mentioned Roy seemingly agrees with Durkon that he was operating with a double standard. The misconstruing of the situations here is really upsetting and has damaged Roy as a character. So let's go through step by step.

Does Roy talk a lot while he fights? Yes. Typically just with notable villains or to quip. He doesn't 'interrogate the inner motivations’' of the ice giants, the beetle raiders, any of the other vampires they fought, the evil adventurers in heaven, Taquin's soldiers, the ninjas sent after him in Azure city, etc. But he is a talkative man. There's a difference between talking and negotiating. So then why did he negotiate with Greg? Because he thought that was his literal best friend being evil and doing the worst thing ever. Not only would he think he could talk Durkon out of it, but if he could that would be the best possible solution, even putting aside the emotional investment in helping his best friend and trying to understand this betrayal. This is such a crucial piece of context left out of this example it's frankly manipulative.

But Roy agrees with Durkon about it and I'm not sure what the implication there is supposed to be about Roy's character. I'll leave that aside for now since it would be speculation on my part currently, but it doesn't look good. Roy is one of my favorite protagonists in all of fiction so I'm very concerned.

Roy regrets having never asked Goblins why they were doing what they were doing. It is viewed as a mistake and a pretty bad one. So does everybody remember all the previous encounters with Goblins?

The first encounters are in the very first dungeon. They are battling the minions of an explicitly evil lich in a dungeon full of monsters with their lives at stake, a rag tag party, a sleep deprived Roy and multiple evil goblin clerics. It's pretty reasonable not to negotiate in those circumstances. In fact, when given the option to avoid killing more goblins to enhance his level and instead go straight for Xykon, he chooses the latter. But wait, how did he get that option?

In strip 93 we are introduced to good aligned Goblin teenagers. Roy instantly treats them like he would any other children trying to help, listens when their motivations are explained to him and believes these random Goblins are good aligned based almost entirely on their word, despite the fact that they do get betrayed by one very quickly afterwards. So literally the second it was even partially reasonable to listen to them and understand them, he did. Roy's statement about never asking the Goblins why they did what they did is technically accurate in that he didn't ask, but understood, listened and showed amazing empathy and restraint. This is reinforced with his attitude towards the Orcs in the origin book, but I'll remain spoiler free and Rich has expressed many times he wants the main comic to function without the side materials.

What's the other time they fought Goblins? A literal war. I don't think I have to explain why not speaking and negotiating with individual hobgoblins in that scenario is okay. And either way Roy himself was on a dragon before he met a single one. If we want to include times Roy wasn't there, I don't think the Azure City Resistance is any more obligated to negotiate with slavers, evil clerics and undead then they were when the Goblins were marching on the city. If they had asked the Hobgoblins why they were invading or enslaving, I will direct you to panel four of strip 422. I'll also direct you to strip 511.

So there we go, all three times we've encountered Goblins in broad strokes, where Roy (and Haley) have acted with shockingly high moral character and everybody else was at least reasonable, including a functional contradiction because they did listen and understand Goblins, making Roy's statement at the end of 1233 inaccurate..

And just on a personal note, many Goblins are killed as a jokes in the early strips. Do we really want to take the stance that our heroes were comedically killing innocent people they should have communicated with? Do we really want to be pulling our collars or shedding tears when we reread those first 100 strips? If Rich wants us to react in ways like that that is 100% his call, but recontextualization can be very dangerous especially when the tone is jumping from comedy to tragedy.

The contradictions regarding the state of the Hobgoblins and similarly stationed non-Goblins, combined with contradictions involving Roy's character and extremely misleading framing is damaging the story. But it is far from broken, and in fact throwaway lines in future strips could entirely fix many of these issues. Say we had strips to show the state of Goblinoids in their crappy lands yet somehow explain their massive numbers and armies, or Roy brings up many of the things I mentioned about their previous interactions next strip. I'm bringing this up now because we are on the edge of these things breaking entire sections of the story and damaging Roy's character permanently if they aren't addressed and that would be absolutely heartbreaking for me as a fan for years.

Thank you to anybody who read this giant post this far with an open mind. I believe it is more important to be complete rather than brief and I hope you appreciate it.

EDIT: Frequent Feedback. Will add more as the thread continues if it becomes needed.

1. "The end of 1233 is a joke": Everything that exists in a story involving a character is reflective of character. If a joke isn't character accurate then it fails. For instance if you had Vee be incredibly stupid over something we know he should know about, that would be a contradiction of his character and also reflective of it despite just being a joke. If it is purely a joke and they're going to do something of a 180 in the next comic then that certainly would help fix a lot of things but it could through this joke into a bad light. Being able to tell jokes, explore character and progress the plot all at the same time is something that Rich is exceptionally good at and probably what I respect him most for as a writer since it is incredibly challenging to do that consistently.

Roy even "protected" Tarquin's soldiers when they were trying to "execute" him "Durkon, have Spiky and the dominated soldiers cover us until we are clear, then release them" i mean, would he did the same if they were Goblins? and Roy is clearly a good person, and is not like he was doing it evil... but he was doing it "not good enough", at least for him, who is always trying to improve.

[Some]

So, things we know:

1) Thor admitted in comic that RedCloak is right

Thor didn't say that. Instead, he said that the truth was complicated and that Redcloak's take was extremely biased.

Redcloak appears to argue that the gods, as the creators of the world, are responsible for everything that happens. And then Redcloak focuses on the goblins' grievances as the main thing that the gods caused.

The first problem with Redcloak's perspective is that it's absurd to claim that the gods actually had power to control everything. That's like faulting someone driving a car for not dodging a microscopic bacteria on the road when they could've turned the wheel.. while dodging may've seemed possible in principle, merely controlling the steering-wheel isn't actually sufficient to have had the power to choose otherwise.

The second problem with Redcloak's perspective is that, if Redcloak does take the absurd position that the gods are at-fault for everything by virtue of being creators, then Redcloak also has to fault the gods for everything Redcloak likes. Including the fact that the goblins exist in the first place; that Redcloak himself has become a high-level Cleric; that the Dark One ascended; that the goblins got Azure City; etc.. So if the gods created the Dark One and gave the goblins Azure City, aren't they helping the goblins?

Thor pointed out that Redcloak's arguments were extremely biased -- not that they were correct.

[Bootman]

There are plenty of explicitly non-evil goblins in the books, including two whole storylines centered around "Neutral" goblin societies. However, the main comic almost exclusively focusing on overtly evil or ambiguously ethical goblins in the earlier strips does feel like a flaw to me, especially bc the Giant wants the story to be fully comprehensible to people who don't buy the books, and recent threads have shown that there's a lot of people who didn't read the side stories before now who aren't satisfied bc of the ideas they've built about OotS goblins.

But I'm not really sure what could have been done in the strips from the past few years to remediate that without grinding the plot to a halt. The addition of Oona and the bugbears feels like setup to lead to it in the final book in a way that works organically, and especially after HtPGHS I do trust the Giant to make it land.

I agree. Recontextualizing things this late in the game with how cartoonishly evil the Goblins have been in the past is really challenging. The giant decided he wanted to do it though, and as much as I respect him as a writer (seriously dude is basically 10/10 for hundreds of strips at a time), it's a big ask. It would be hard to do it without grinding the story to a halt, but the 'hard' part is what he signed up for. It's up to him to have the skills to perform what he promised and if he makes a mistake it's fair to point out. He might be able to make it work and he's done better then I thought possible up to this point, we're just reaching risky territory.

Roy even "protected" Tarquin's soldiers when they were trying to "execute" him "Durkon, have Spiky and the dominated soldiers cover us until we are clear, then release them" i mean, would he did the same if they were Goblins? and Roy is clearly a good person, and is not like he was doing it evil... but he was doing it "not good enough", at least for him, who is always trying to improve.

This is why the recent strips are so damaging to Roy. People earlier have mocked me by saying that the comic isn't saying "ROY GREENHILT IS A RACIST", but here you are literally saying he would discriminate based on race in such a blatant way. That he literally values Goblin lives much less.

I believe he would do the same for Goblins if all the other factors were the same and if the Giant confirms the contrary then it's a pretty awful take on Roy's character that will contradict previous scenes where he's shown kindness, empathy, understanding and peaceful resolutions with 'monsters'.

[tanonx]

Roy even "protected" Tarquin's soldiers when they were trying to "execute" him "Durkon, have Spiky and the dominated soldiers cover us until we are clear, then release them" i mean, would he did the same if they were Goblins?

Given he objected to walking the dominated Linear Guild kobold up the steps to check for traps over in 840, probably. And that was a guy whose crowning achievement was trying to murder a cat because it was there.

I think the potential for discrepancies like that is what the post is concerned about, though.