Thoughts on the OOTS goblin predicament

[Worldsong]

I agree, it's not a 180 from out of nowhere.
But I also agree that it's a valid criticism to say "this didn't have sufficient set-up." As long as goblin inequality was just Redcloak's motivation it was acceptable for it be an informed attribute. If resolving goblin inequality is going to become a goal of the heroes and a focus of the remaining comic then I think it's a valid criticism to say it wasn't set up properly.
It doesn't help that the primary instance of goblin oppression that was shown, the fate of Redcloak's village, isn't in the online comic. Building major plot points on material that isn't ever shown in the main story almost never works.

I'm fine with people saying "The webcomic could have put some more effort into portraying the issue" since I agree some more examples of goblinoid oppression could have made the situation a bit clearer. Especially since it's a legitimate complaint that online content shouldn't require supporting by content which is hidden behind a paywall (and apparently Rich tried to avoid that).

My issue is more people going off and saying that because they didn't get sufficient evidence (while at the same time treating any potential evidence as invalid because it wasn't unambiguous enough) this development with Roy, Durkon, and Thor acknowledging the problem is wrong and is in conflict with the rest of the story. As if there's some objective flaw which invalidates the entire thing.

Thor effectively confirmed that a goblin has it bad compared to a dwarf on an individual basic - he did not say that goblinoids have it bad compared to dwarves overall.

Yes of a goblin warrior and a dwarf warrior fight then the dwarf might likely win, but if the goblin lives in peace with the dwarf for 20 years and then they fight it could be the goblin's 5 warriors adult children vs that same 1 dwarf warrior.

Vastly different life spans and fertility rates play havok with comparisons of entire populations and make individual comparisons fairly meaningless.

And this gets back to Durkon's statement to Redcloak: Equality can mean a lot of different things.

For instance a goblin has 100lbs of steel and so does a dwarf - skip a hundred years and that dwarf still has his steel but the goblin, well he is dead and his steel has potentially been splitup between dozens of goblins - all of whom are individually worse off then the dwarf but collectively they might be better off.
So should every goblin always have the same amount of steel as every dwarf and if they don't the dwarves should share, or should goblins in total have the same amount of steel as dwarves in total in which case everything is fine etc.

I'm not really on board with the idea that it literally was just about what happens if a dwarf fights a goblin. To me, that seemed more like an example of the overarching issue that goblinoids start out with less and have less chance of being on equal footing with the PC races.

And part of the reason why I believe that is that neither Roy, nor Durkon, nor Thor has provided any counterexamples such as "Okay, but the goblins can just farm their land and use it to build up their economy" or whatever. These characters are not outsiders, they're not like us people reading the story and talking about it on the forum. That these three characters are accepting the idea that goblinoids have it rough overall is a part of the story and a message from the story, which to me is most easily interpreted as there not being some easy knockdown argument which dismisses the idea that goblinoids are not on equal footing with the PC races.

Of course, people have already made it clear that they specifically object to Roy and Durkon accepting this narrative, but that to me feels a lot like dismissing any indication of goblinoids having it rough before the last couple of pages. If you set out with the mindset that the idea is questionable then you are going to find ways to keep questioning it and find anything which supports or hints towards the idea lesser parts of the story or outright flawed. That's not an accusation, that's just how people work. Positive bias is very strong and hard to shake (and I'm not quite ready to believe someone if they respond to this by saying that they've already overcome their positive bias).

It's entirely possible that as the story continues more nuance will be added once more. In fact, I kind of expect it. The other members of the Order might already have some valuable input available. But I strongly disagree with the notion that someone like Haley has to set Roy and Durkon straight because obviously they're completely wrong about the entire thing and Rich is having his protagonists accept unacceptable ideas.

[Jason]

Yes, and...?

The villain's plan is bad, and the heroes agree on this. What's your argument?

That the people on the forum who are arguing that the goblins shouldn't be handed everything on a silver platter are arguing against something one of the villains is actually trying to achieve, not setting up strawmen.

[hamishspence]

To be fair, that does seem to be Redcloak's imagined scenario.

The primary things Redcloak asks for, aren't "more reparations" (beyond retaining possession of Azure City itself) or "a free pass on slavery",


they are for adventurer attacks on goblinoid towns to stop, and for goblins to be able to walk into "PC race towns" without being attacked on sight:

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1208.html


https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1209.html


All that, he basically summarises as "being on an equal footing to everyone else".

[Morty]

That the people on the forum who are arguing that the goblins shouldn't be handed everything on a silver platter are arguing against something one of the villains is actually trying to achieve, not setting up strawmen.

I don't see much more of a point in complaining about it than in complaining about Xykon being crowned emperor of the world after he takes control of a Gate. He wants it, but it's not going to happen.

The primary things Redcloak asks for, aren't "more reparations" (beyond retaining possession of Azure City itself) or "a free pass on slavery",


they are for adventurer attacks on goblinoid towns to stop, and for goblins to be able to walk into "PC race towns" without being attacked on sight:

https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1208.html


https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1209.html


All that, he basically summarises as "being on an equal footing to everyone else".

I get the impression Redcloak doesn't have a very clear idea of what's actually supposed to happen once the Plan succeeds. He's pretty tunnel-visioned on getting it done and justifying all he's done to achieve it.

[Worldsong]

I don't see much more of a point in complaining about it than in complaining about Xykon being crowned emperor of the world after he takes control of a Gate. He wants it, but it's not going to happen.

More importantly, it's not what the protagonists are supporting.

[danielxcutter]

Neither do I, but at the end of the day, Redcloak is responsible for his own choices.

Oh sure.

But people are confusing or deliberately portraying him as the disease rather than the symptom.

[Jason]

Oh sure.

But people are confusing or deliberately portraying him as the disease rather than the symptom.

That's an interesting choice of words. Because saying Redcloak is a "symptom" does rather make it sound like he had no choice but to be as he is.

Start of Darkness would have little point if you believe Redcloak could never have chosen differently than he did.

[Fyraltari]

I get the impression Redcloak doesn't have a very clear idea of what's actually supposed to happen once the Plan succeeds. He's pretty tunnel-visioned on getting it done and justifying all he's done to achieve it.

To be fair, step 2 of the Plan is "The Dark One takes it from there."
Also I don't think he expects to survive long past casting his ritual with Xykon.

[danielxcutter]

To be fair, step 2 of the Plan is "The Dark One takes it from there."
Also I don't think he expects to survive long past casting his ritual with Xykon.

Or he expects TDO to smite Xykon, and to be frank I don't think the other gods would care about that at that point.

Though it also seems legit for Redcloak to expect that he won't survive it, yeah.

[Ionathus]

That's an interesting choice of words. Because saying Redcloak is a "symptom" does rather make it sound like he had no choice but to be as he is.

Start of Darkness would have little point if you believe Redcloak could never have chosen differently than he did.

I mean, Rich's intro to SoD outright says "There are people who choose evil because of what their life has forced them to endure. That's not Xykon. But it might be Redcloak."

He made his own decisions. This was a path he chose. But that doesn't mean his life and the trauma he's experienced isn't a symptom of a wider problem.

[Empiar93]

He barely played a role in the conquest. RC is the Supreme Ruler. Redcloak organized the invasion. Redcloak led the army to victory.

Xykon killed a few paladins and one adventurer fairly far from where the rest of the fighting was actually taking place, and almost got killed himself in the process, leaving Miko to actually finish off that last line of defense. Which she might have even done without Xykon ever going to the throne room.

The Redcloak was again the one to lead the city and organize it. And he's the one with an agenda.

To argue that Xykon is actually the Tarquin of the goblins is kind of a stretch. He bullies them around now and then, and squats their city, but isn't really their leader, or the nation's creator, in any tangible sense. And he's being duped and played by Redcloak, and the only other human around, Tsukiko, was also being harassed on account of being a human. Various goblins, such as Redcloak, openly admit to being anti-human "speciesist" (AKA racist).

I mean, Xykon killed more than a few paladins. More like all except two that were in that room. That’s significant since the paladins were among the greatest defense the city had. But I agree Xykon is not the ruler, and initially I was going to say he doesn’t rule Gobbotopia, he just bullies it. As for Tsukiko though, I also personally think she was bullied for being an intolerable person; that she was a human just made it easier to pick on her and let Redcloak find other ways to insult her and justify her death beyond the urgent necessity of the matter.

[Severance]

Despite what RedCloak wanted to believe, I’d argue that Xykon did create and rule gobbotopia indirectly through the goblins, similar to how Tarquin rules the empire of blood indirectly through the red dragon.

Xykon has effectively given up that control at this point, but all of our comments about slavery in gobbotopia are referring to a time when a human sorcerer ran the show there.

Oh wow, am I actually reading what I think I'm reading?
Is this a super-stretched attempt to sweep the goblin's practice and enjoyment of slavery under the rug by pretending "it was just Xykon all along"?
Is that it?

My issue is more people going off and saying that because they didn't get sufficient evidence (while at the same time treating any potential evidence as invalid because it wasn't unambiguous enough) this development with Roy, Durkon, and Thor acknowledging the problem is wrong and is in conflict with the rest of the story. As if there's some objective flaw which invalidates the entire thing.

When a comic fails to present a convincing case for something but at the same time still has all characters buying into it immediately, yes, it tends to create a dissonance in logic that some people might notice and point out since it feels like a step was skipped.

We get nothing but the premise and then the conclusion to the case, with the "bringing evidence" part barely presented and skipped, and yet in-story characters react as if that was handed rock solid the very panel they're exposed to it.
And some readers rightfully go..."wait wha?".

[Rhyvurg]

I hate the “benevolent white savior” trope as much as anyone, but...

If the problem in OotS-verse is “dwarfs and humans are oppressing the goblins”, then that’s a problem with dwarfs and human behavior. Dwarfs and humans are broken, and only dwarfs and humans can fix themselves.

Oppression is by its very definition something that oppressor does to the oppressed. The only way to fix oppression is for the oppressor to stop oppressing.

They're not oppressing the goblins, they just take advantage of the things they have that the goblins do not. They do the same against each other as well, and it's hardly their fault they were given a head start. One god deciding "lol gobbos are for xp" does not make everyone who benefitted from that responsible to change it.

[Severance]

They're not oppressing the goblins, they just take advantage of the things they have that the goblins do not. They do the same against each other as well, and it's hardly their fault they were given a head start. One god deciding "lol gobbos are for xp" does not make everyone who benefitted from that responsible to change it.

Yeah making good use of what you have and whatever advantage card life dealt you is not "oppression" or something that should be fixed.

Man, oppressor-oppressed narratives are so low-key shallow.

[Mariele]

I'm just astounded at how people are having issues with two Good aligned characters seeing an unfair situation and saying "hey, that's unfair, we should do our best to help once we're done saving the world, because we're Good people."

[Worldsong]

When a comic fails to present a convincing case for something but at the same time still has all characters buying into it immediately, yes, it tends to create a dissonance in logic that some people might notice and point out since it feels like a step was skipped.

We get nothing but the premise and then the conclusion to the case, with the "bringing evidence" part barely presented and skipped, and yet in-story characters react as if that was handed rock solid the very panel they're exposed to it.
And some readers rightfully go..."wait wha?".

Given that I don't agree with your starting position, namely that the comic hasn't provided enough hints that the goblinoid situation might be real for it to be worth considering, the rest of your argument falls flat for me.

I may have admitted that the webcomic could have done more to showcase the situation, but there's a large gap between 'could have done more' and 'it's completely unsupported.'

Of course, what might be the case is that since you clearly aren't happy with the idea in and of itself you've placed pretty high requirements for what the story needs to show before you're convinced, whereas I'm fine with the idea so the story had an easier time clearing my requirements.

I'm just astounded at how people are having issues with two Good aligned characters seeing an unfair situation and saying "hey, that's unfair, we should do our best to help once we're done saving the world, because we're Good people."

In all fairness, more than one has taken the angle that the idea that the situation is unfair is in itself highly questionable, so they don't seem to be opposed to the idea of Good-aligned characters addressing unfair situations as much as that they don't feel like the situation presented in the comic is unfair in a way that would justify the goblinoids getting help from Good-aligned characters.

[Ionathus]

Oh wow, am I actually reading what I think I'm reading?
Is this a super-stretched attempt to sweep the goblin's practice and enjoyment of slavery under the rug by pretending "it was just Xykon all along"?
Is that it?

Agreed, that's a BIG stretch. The goblins are clearly the ones perpetuating slavery in Gobbotopia.

When a comic fails to present a convincing case for something but at the same time still has all characters buying into it immediately, yes, it tends to create a dissonance in logic that some people might notice and point out since it feels like a step was skipped.

We get nothing but the premise and then the conclusion to the case, with the "bringing evidence" part barely presented and skipped, and yet in-story characters react as if that was handed rock solid the very panel they're exposed to it.
And some readers rightfully go..."wait wha?".

A story's narrative can reveal sudden information that casts the status quo in a new light. That's clearly what's happening here: Durkon explains the situation and Roy pauses for a few seconds before saying "you know what, I never thought about it before, but now that you mention it..." and a large swath of readers were not surprised at all, because they'd been picking up on those hints for years: "bringing evidence" in advance, to use your own language.

You're putting very narrow constraints on how stories are allowed to be told. You might personally require Premise, Evidence, Conclusion – in that order – to believe a plot development, but numerous twist endings across fiction subvert that concept. What is a twist ending, if not a sudden revelation that throws a bunch of prior hints and background inconsistencies into sharp relief?

If the revelation wasn't to your personal tastes, that's fine. If you want to demand that your fiction have all the procedural rigor of a courtroom, that's fine. I'm sure you'll love Ace Attorney and the second season of Broadchurch. But stop pretending it's the only way a story (or in-character argument) is allowed to happen.

[Shadowknight12]

There are many forms of these points going through the forums, and everyone seems to overlook one fact: the goblins enslaved a city of innocent people!!!!

Nobody is talking about this because this isn't the point. Did you skip the entirety of Blood Runs In The Family, where we see an entire nation of oppressive, tyrannical people that enslave others, just like Gobbotopia? Nobody is arguing that because the Western continent is mostly an awful place with evil nations and slavery, that humans, lizardfolk and whatever other races live in the desert area of the Western continent should be oppressed. It is understood that the actions of some members of those races do not reflect the entire group.

Therefore, we can apply the same to Gobbotopia and say that just because a group of goblins conquered a city and enslaved part of its population, does not mean all goblins deserve oppression.

[Severance]

Exactly. The problem here is the "good" characters appear to be getting duped by the evil character narrative framing of events.

This. Nobody's against good characters fighting unfairness but first that unfairness must be proved otherwise those supposedly "good" characters just sound like guillible fools aiding villains or guillible fools fighting windmills.

Agreed, that's a BIG stretch. The goblins are clearly the ones perpetuating slavery in Gobbotopia.

A story's narrative can reveal sudden information that casts the status quo in a new light. That's clearly what's happening here: Durkon explains the situation and Roy pauses for a few seconds before saying "you know what, I never thought about it before, but now that you mention it..." and a large swath of readers were not surprised at all, because they'd been picking up on those hints for years: "bringing evidence" in advance, to use your own language.

You're putting very narrow constraints on how stories are allowed to be told. You might personally require Premise, Evidence, Conclusion – in that order – to believe a plot development, but numerous twist endings across fiction subvert that concept. What is a twist ending, if not a sudden revelation that throws a bunch of prior hints and background inconsistencies into sharp relief?

If the revelation wasn't to your personal tastes, that's fine. If you want to demand that your fiction have all the procedural rigor of a courtroom, that's fine. I'm sure you'll love Ace Attorney and the second season of Broadchurch. But stop pretending it's the only way a story (or in-character argument) is allowed to happen.

There's no revelation here. Villain says X, Hero buys it, asks god who says Y, still goes with X, another Hero is exposed and buys X and so on and so forth in a chain. It doesn't feel natural.
If you author wanna create a goal for your heroes to aim at fine but you have to present me the reader reasons why that goal is worthwile and reasonable because unlike the characters in your story who are forced to follow your commands us readers are gonna get taken out your story if it's not logical.
There's a complete lack of contradictory over the whole "goblins are oppressed/unfairly disadvantaged" in the comic.

Every character just buys into it naturally for no apparent reason other than "I say so", and I've read multiple users on the forums parrot that we should all do the same too. No we don't. I'm not used in turning off my brain when reading stories, I question and poke holes at them to see if they stand up to scrutiny, and this whole "goblin oppression unfairness" angle is full of holes.

[Shadowknight12]

I'm not used in turning off my brain when reading stories, I question and poke holes at them to see if they stand up to scrutiny, and this whole "goblin oppression unfairness" angle is full of holes.

You seem to be very selective when questioning things, since you don't question the gods, who stand to gain from convincing mortals to maintain the status quo. Questioning stories is good, but if you only question the statements of one group while taking another group's statements at face value, perhaps you aren't giving your quest for intellectual examination its due diligence.

[hroþila]

There's no revelation here. Villain says X, Hero buys it, asks god who says Y, still goes with X, another Hero is exposed and buys X

Not true. Villain says X, Hero asks god to confirm, god denies X but says Y, Hero says Y is still bad, god acknowledges this, another Hero is exposed and buys Y (not X).

[Tvtyrant]

The Doom Brigade covered a lot of the same ground 30 years earlier and was completely uncontroversial, where is the pushback coming from? Because they are saying the heroes are responsible for helping?

[Mariele]

I mean, I'm getting the feeling the "goblins are unfairly persecuted" is just a Redcloak-centric way of saying "plenty of monster races are unfairly persecuted", and that broader message is what Roy and Durkon are thinking about, even if the Goblin Problem is the specific matter at hand. Redcloak mentioned orcs in his discussion, and Serini talked about "kobolds, orcs, and trolls" not doing so well under the current setup, as well as O-Chul mentioning that her trading with the trolls is probably the nicest interaction they've had with a player class.

Maybe most of the examples of goblin unfairness were in the bonus content, but we have seen general comments about treatment of the monster races throughout the entire comic (heck, V had a whole subplot surrounding this). I think Rich's message is probably closer to "racism is bad" than "racism is bad when it's against this one particular race", and it just so happens that it's a member of that one particular race that is drawing attention to this. :P

[Mechalich]

There's no revelation here. Villain says X, Hero buys it, asks god who says Y, still goes with X, another Hero is exposed and buys X and so on and so forth in a chain. It doesn't feel natural.
If you author wanna create a goal for your heroes to aim at fine but you have to present me the reader reasons why that goal is worthwile and reasonable because unlike the characters in your story who are forced to follow your commands us readers are gonna get taken out your story if it's not logical.
There's a complete lack of contradictory over the whole "goblins are oppressed/unfairly disadvantaged" in the comic.

Every character just buys into it naturally for no apparent reason other than "I say so", and I've read multiple users on the forums parrot that we should all do the same too. No we don't. I'm not used in turning off my brain when reading stories, I question and poke holes at them to see if they stand up to scrutiny, and this whole "goblin oppression unfairness" angle is full of holes.

A generalized characterization of the overall scenario is that this whole subplot represents a Broken Aesop. The author is very clearly trying to make a point about oppression and moral responsibility and so forth. However, the conditions in the fictional world do not actually support that narrative.

Now, partly this is the nature of a D&D based world, with all the bizarre moral strictures attached to alignment, something the comic leans into by having one of the major factions being comprised of paladins, which according to standard D&D parlance are definitionally good (you can have jerkface paladins, self-righteous paladins, and absurdly uncompromising paladins, but you can't have evil or even neutral paladins, because paladins who stop being good aren't paladins anymore).

The moral system of D&D was generated expressly for the purpose of providing cover for exactly the sort of action the goblin plotline is attempting to criticize. 'Good' characters are supposed to be able to go out and murder whole villages full of 'evil' beings and still count that as doing good. That is extremely problematic in many ways but so long as the fictional world plays by those rules, there's nothing that can be done to change them. All that can really be said is that, since the rules of the world were set by the gods, the gods suck, but since the gods fall along the D&D alignment spectrum of course they do. D&D style worlds should contain horrors and races that are entirely evil and monstrous and so on because of the way D&D style theological setups function.

In fact, OOTS, with its iterative worlds scenario, actually takes things further. If, by some miraculous chain of events, good triumphed utterly over evil, the neutral and evil gods would be deprived of souls, so they would gather together and immediately vote to destroy the world and build a new one before their power collapsed (and vice versa, the same thing would happen if evil triumphed). Therefore a prolonged victory by one moral faction is impossible. There is a distinct ceiling on how much better the world can become. To paraphrase Game of Thrones, the Giant has created a world where it is impossible to 'break the wheel' because the instant the wheel is broken the gods will reboot a new one into existence.

And...****, that's actually a lot darker than I thought it would be. OOTS, grimdark stick-figure fantasy, yahoo!

[Rrmcklin]

Exactly. The problem here is the "good" characters appear to be getting duped by the evil character narrative framing of events.

Even if you choose to say things like the prequel books "don't count" for some reason, this thread is full of things from the comic which can easily be interpreted as reaffirming the villains framing.

Maybe you, personally, didn't take it like that. But the fact that other people did, and that seems to match what the author was going for, cannot be discounted just because, again, you don't personally like it.

[Severance]

You seem to be very selective when questioning things, since you don't question the gods, who stand to gain from convincing mortals to maintain the status quo. Questioning stories is good, but if you only question the statements of one group while taking another group's statements at face value, perhaps you aren't giving your quest for intellectual examination its due diligence.

Nobody ever tried convincing anyone to mantain any status quo in any strip for personal gain, you're completely making this up.
Due diligence is addressing things that are in the story, not those that aren't. There's no indication in the story that Thor was lying to Durkon there, while there are plenty that make the goblins untrustworthy on their narrative.

A generalized characterization of the overall scenario is that this whole subplot represents a Broken Aesop. The author is very clearly trying to make a point about oppression and moral responsibility and so forth. However, the conditions in the fictional world do not actually support that narrative.

Pretty much. I still have to see any evidence that the goblins are these poor unfairly oppressed victims Redcloak claims they are and that every character exposed to this story seems to be immediately swallowing without question, even Thor.
Oh they will question Redcloak's actions, or what to do from now on about it, but the basic premise is completely unchallenged and being given a free pass from scrutiny for some reason.

[Shadowknight12]

Nobody ever tried convincing anyone to mantain any status quo in any strip for personal gain, you're completely making this up.
Due diligence is addressing things that are in the story, not those that aren't. There's no indication in the story that Thor was lying to Durkon there, while there are plenty that make the goblins untrustworthy on their narrative.

This strip shows us Thor attempting to convince Durkon that the status quo is simply the way things are and have to be. This doesn't mean Thor is lying, it means Thor has a vested interest in the world continuing to operate the way it does, and you unquestioningly accepting everything Thor says as unbiased fact while actively questioning what Redcloak says and anyone that agrees with Redcloak (including the protagonists), and any third-party characters that do not specifically agree with Redcloak but provide supporting evidence (like Serini), is not questioning the entire story out of an impartial spirit of inquisitiveness.

[Severance]

This strip shows us Thor attempting to convince Durkon that the status quo is simply the way things are and have to be.

Ludicrously false. What Thor is saying there is that's the way ecosystems work, and he's right.
How do I know he's right and not trying to spin some biased wool over Durkon's eyes?
Because that's how our ecosystem works as well.

The element you're missing is that I already questioned his story and found it massively concrete and valid given how our very reality functions by those same rules, my "impartial spirit of inquisitiveness" is perfectly satisfied by his explanation, much less with Redcloak's given his lack of supportive evidence.
He's just claiming their oppressed but claiming isn't enough, and while Thor has the whole of Nature by his side, Redcloak has... Redcloak.

[Shadowknight12]

Because that's how our ecosystem works as well.

So even though you know for a fact that OOTS world does not function the way ours does, you simply accept Thor's explanation without any evidence from the text itself that what he's saying is right? Even though his own follower, and a protagonist of the story, does not agree with him that this is necessary or correct?

[Rrmcklin]

Also, even accepting the ecosystem explanation, any ecosystem built by sapient beings for the exploitation of other sapient beings is completely different (and morally abhorrent) compared to the real world.

Real world nature has no conscious design or aims behind it. There's no moral considerations to be had. That cannot be said for the Stickverse. And while I don't fault the gods for wanting to continue their existence, am not especially sympathetic to the idea that sapient beings must suffer for it.