OOTS #1259 - The Discussion Thread

[KorvinStarmast]

In three months, it'll be an LP.
(Explanation for Young People: Back in the day, sound recordings were... ah, never mind, get off my lawn.)

IIRC, we were an LP about a month ago, since the speed was 33 1/3, right?

PS: Nice joke, I giggled.

[Yxylu]

In all honestly, when talking about word count per page, I feel like OOTS has the highest counts of any comic I can remember reading that doesn't get into the trap of 'show, don't tell'.

Book 7 is currently running at 281.48 words per page. This puts it in third place by source, behind the Gygax Magazine comics (288.17) and Don’t Split the Party (305.52).

I don’t have numbers for any other non-OotS comics, but I’m guessing you’re right that it’s among the highest.

[tomaO2]

Okay, funny question, what's the webcomic you can remember reading with the lowest word count per page that does fall into 'show, don't tell'?

I meant in terms that I never hear 'show, don't tell' used as a criticism, despite there being a lot of talking. You do a lot of reading in OOTS, even if the most action packed sections, but I've never felt that the reading was dull, or that it would be better off to not have the text. I never feel like I'm getting a boring info dump that would have been better off doing a flashback.

I think the reason for that is because the art is very simple, so you can fit in a lot more than you would be able to otherwise. The panels per page is WAY higher than most comics can fit in, making each page much more dense and sastisfying to read than is normally the case.

[Lord Torath]

I just gotta say I love the perspective in Panel 7. Awesome job, Rich!

[Seward]

No joke, my current job is like this. You're only in a meeting if the meeting is important and your input/awareness is directly required. Meetings are efficient and we're done on time. I don't know how they're doing it - my current guess is witchcraft. It's freaking eerie.

Sign of a good manager or team leader.

Honestly managers that are actually good can make a job so much better. It just seems like they're rare, as many folks get put in that role without training and/or aptitude for the task (or their "aptitude" is to be popular with higher ranking people not to be good at managing their own people)

[bunsen_h]

IIRC, we were an LP about a month ago, since the speed was 33 1/3, right?

PS: Nice joke, I giggled.

Er, yes. My math skills are really crappy lately.

[KorvinStarmast]

Honestly managers that are actually good can make a job so much better.

FWIW: I got plenty of training, but I certainly had to develop the aptitude over time in a learn by doing deal, which of course means I made some errors. Yes, I can learn, but I wish I'd have learned more quickly.

Some people I know adapted much more quickly than I did, so the aptitude is a thing.

[Fyraltari]

Um, shouldn't they be worried about Xykon scrying for them?

Wann bet the magic stone also stops divination spells?

Ever read the book "I'm OK, You're OK" {Harris} about transactional analysis?
There was a part in that about the roles people assume in a conversation and various attempts to frame their positions as adult -> child or parent -> child ... which is what Haley is doing.
The author (Harris) does not illustrate that as healthy relationship.

Granted, Rich uses exaggeration for attempted comic effect with great frequency, and poking at tropes/patterns like that also.

While I am not sure if that book was the origin of The Parent, Adult, Child (P-A-C) model, it's the first place I remember seeing it).

Spoiler: RL example

Show

My daughter tried to pull that crap on my wife last year (P-C interaction) and caused some interpersonal trauma. They eventually sorted it out.

Your 'gut reaction' to that strikes me as rational.

Hey I did a test a few days ago to see what behaviour I had expressed the most. I had even scores of 5/6 out of ten across the board. Not sure what that says about me.

[SavageWombat]

Does the button trick really work? I wish I'd known that when my kids were little.

Come to think of it, it might have been good for me when I was little.

[Kantaki]

Does the button trick really work? I wish I'd known that when my kids were little.

Come to think of it, it might have been good for me when I was little.

Don't ask me, my grandma didn't need a jar of buttons to keep me occupied. She had books.

[Ninja Dragon]

Bard, you go use your CHA and make friends! Everyone else, we use our INT stats.

[Ionathus]

I don't see Haley as disrespectful, nor an unhealthy dynamic necessarily. Elan is childish in intellectual matters, with intelligence being his dump stat. His growth story arc focused on learning how to manage his emotions, gaining wisdom and behaving as an adult in his family and couple relationships. That's a good basis for a healthy relationship, if that means she has to handle matters that require brain power.

(side note: the "disrespectful" comment at the end was in reference to a separate topic from Korvin. I don't see Haley as being disrespectful to Elan.)

Yeah, I really appreciated Elan's character growth -- both in his Dashing Swordsman arc and then in BRitF as well. He's come a very long way and has really developed a much stronger sense of agency, which is important if you're going to A) set out to save the world and B) do a romantic relationship with someone.

Yeah, it's a fine line. I'm okay with "You can go play with Sunny"; if I were given the choice between attending a strategy meeting and having an "unstructured alliance-strengthening excercise" with a child, I'd be fine with someone who knew what my choice would be characterising it that way. "No roughhousing", however, is the point where I think "Okay, mom."

Ever read the book "I'm OK, You're OK" {Harris} about transactional analysis?
There was a part in that about the roles people assume in a conversation and various attempts to frame their positions as adult -> child or parent -> child ... which is what Haley is doing.
The author (Harris) does not illustrate that as healthy relationship.

Granted, Rich uses exaggeration for attempted comic effect with great frequency, and poking at tropes/patterns like that also.
...
Your 'gut reaction' to that strikes me as rational.

Yeah, part of it is definitely that exaggeration is a cornerstone of humor, so pushing Elan's scatterbrained outlook further for laughs is understandable. Usually it's fun (the way he and Sunny feed off of each other is a delight), but I think the dialogue between him and Haley gets dissonant sometimes with the rest of the character growth around them. Much like Belkar, it feels like Elan's had to evolve multiple times over the course of this comic strip to not get left behind by things getting more serious and complex, and mining his immaturity for humor (especially in the context of a romantic relationship) can feel hit or miss for me as a result.

Although the only part that really feels icky for me is the convention of "Mom Girlfriend" -- a girlfriend who has to act maternal because her partner is incapable of taking care of himself. It's not that it's a problem in OotS, because Haley & Elan have a complex relationship based on trust and respect and we've spent a ton of time exploring them and their relationship. They support each other and help each other and in general, I really like them as a couple -- they're high up on my list of functional fictional couples. However, if the joke gets too "parent-child", it can start to remind me of less-skilled stories that treat the girlfriend like this constantly and with no other redeeming qualities to the relationship. Kinda makes you think the authors of those other stories simply don't know how girls actually function outside of the role of "mom."

[Ruck]

I meant in terms that I never hear 'show, don't tell' used as a criticism, despite there being a lot of talking.

"Show, don't tell" is often misunderstood advice; it really has more to do with how the author portrays the characters. As a storyteller, you don't want to communicate who your characters are by your narrator's description of them or by how other characters describe them; you want to show who they are through their own words and actions. In which case, having the characters talk a lot can still be fine.

[0z79]

I haven't seen anyone mention it yet, so: Sunny is reminding me very much of an autistic kid. Speaking as someone on the spectrum, there's something about them that was slightly stronger than my sheer TERROR at the sight of a beholder; and now, I think I know what it is.

I RELATE to the big orange spaz.

[Edward15]

Oh, boy, just thought of something: Suppose that Elan inducts Sunny into the Church of Banjo?

[NobleCuriosity]

Oh, boy, just thought of something: Suppose that Elan inducts Sunny into the Church of Banjo?

First time I’ve laughed at one of these forum comments in a while!

[Peelee]

Don't ask me, my grandma didn't need a jar of buttons to keep me occupied. She had books.

[looks at location tag]

Donald Duck, I'm guessing?

[silversaraph]

Oh man, I loved this one.

[KorvinStarmast]

Although the only part that really feels icky for me is the convention of "Mom Girlfriend" -- a girlfriend who has to act maternal because her partner is incapable of taking care of himself.

It's a part of why I detested Elan, the character, from about strips 1 through 10 to the present day.
I know that Rich uses him for comic relief, and sometimes to great effect, but as a character he's not just an example of bad TV sitcom writing ... I'll stop there.

Oh, boy, just thought of something: Suppose that Elan inducts Sunny into the Church of Banjo?

This is why we can't have nice things.

[Peelee]

I'll have been married (once) for 33 1/2 years one month from today.

I said I understood the high divorce rate not the 100% divorce rate.

[F.Harr]

Nannas are gon'a nanna.

Well, you have to get the . . . juvinile crowd out of the way.

[DaOldeWolf]

After watching this, I am surprised. Do people actually do the button thing? I have never heard of such thing before. Does that actually work? Why do people do that? Is it something specific to a country?

So many questions about such an irrelevant point but I would really love to get some answers.

[The Shadow]

After watching this, I am surprised. Do people actually do the button thing? I have never heard of such thing before. Does that actually work? Why do people do that? Is it something specific to a country?

I don't know if it's specific to a country (I'm American), but I can testify that a jar of assorted buttons can keep a kid of a certain age occupied for a good long time. With me, it wasn't so much sorting them as just fascination with how many different kinds there were.

[Onyavar]

I'm calling it now:

we will follow Elan's sidequest with Sunny, and return with the whole planning plan to plan unrevealed to the audience, making Elan VERY PROUD of them.

Edit: We had TWO jars with in total roughly 2250 pennies, a quarter of these pennies minted in 1950.
I could provide many more details about them, but might bore you.

[danielxcutter]

After watching this, I am surprised. Do people actually do the button thing? I have never heard of such thing before. Does that actually work? Why do people do that? Is it something specific to a country?

So many questions about such an irrelevant point but I would really love to get some answers.

It's possible that Minrah's point was about "adult giving kids random things to do so they stay out of the way" in general.

[Yirggzmb]

It's possible that Minrah's point was about "adult giving kids random things to do so they stay out of the way" in general.

Yeah, I'd say that, in general, it's handy to have small activities around to distract kids on occasion. Something that's somewhat helpful or at least can be billed as helpful (kids like to be helpful), simple to do and maybe time consuming, but not that big a deal if they do a poor job or get distracted halfway through.

So that might be sorting buttons/coins
Or pairing very similar socks
Or any number of things

[hroþila]

Jigsaw puzzles are just a more refined application of the exact same principle after all.

[phobiandarkmoon]

I know I'm being a pedant, but for the benefit of when this eventually goes to print:
In the last panel Haley spells exercise as "excercise"

[Jacky720]

Also look at the arrangement of the cast in the first panel: grouped by size (humans, halflings, dwarves), color (green for the halflings, grey for the dwarves, and the analogy doesn't really work for Haley and Elan), and number (distinct groups of two all around). Roy also groups himself with the paladins later, making a blue group.

Least, that's what I'm seeing.

: Ha, I called you all holes.

[Beni-Kujaku]

I haven't seen anyone mention it yet, so: Sunny is reminding me very much of an autistic kid. Speaking as someone on the spectrum, there's something about them that was slightly stronger than my sheer TERROR at the sight of a beholder; and now, I think I know what it is.

I RELATE to the big orange spaz.

What makes you say that? Sunny seems to pay attention to his surroundings, to go talk to other people and express his feelings by himself, and to understand even implied meanings, like when Elan got him to close his antimagic eye, and seems to be able to adapt easily to new situations. He seems to me like he's a child, but with no evident sign of autism. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an expert in the field, but I'd like to know more.