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2022-06-24, 08:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
I just want to say that I'm finding the detailed analysis of the 30+ year old children's cartoon far more interesting than any conversation we've ever had about Goblins.
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2022-06-25, 03:40 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2015
Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
The Beats is, even PHYSICALLY, like Gaston but more so. Gaston takes pride in being strong, powerful, ETC. The Beast is even bigger, even stronger, and, of course, even more so then Gaston, say it with me....EVERY LAST INCH OF HIM'S COVERED IN HAIR! The Beast is much like Gaston at first, except the Beast changes and becomes better. Gaston does not. The monster becomes a man, and the man slowly reveals the monster he was all along.
Last edited by woweedd; 2022-06-25 at 03:41 AM.
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2022-06-25, 01:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
There's also some colour coding. The most evident is with Belle: she is the only person to wear blue in the whole village, with a white shirt. Gaston wears red, and the Beast wears a red mantle when first seen. After he saves Belle, the Beast wears a blue mantle and a white shirt. Then he uses a blue coat and adds blue decorations to the castle for the ball.
And this is where I think the movie really goes out with the colour and general symbolism. The preparations for the ball are long and full of little scenes. At the center are Beauty and the Beast reading Romeo and Juliet aloud. The Beast likes the book and wants Belle to read it again. Belle wants to hear him read. The Beast admits he can't read any more. Belle proposes to help, for the Beast's joy. And immediately we see the servants draw a heart with a sponge on the dirty window of the room, before cleaning it completely (love pushed the Beast to shed the dirt of meanness, admitting weakness, which allows him to be transparent). And then even the monstrous statues that populate the garden start spouting blue water.
So I think that the cleaning, full of hope of renewal, also refers to the removal of the traits that created the Beast and made him ugly inside, and of the rage, self-hate, hopelessness and mistrust against others that followed the transformation (as we saw in his first meeting with Belle's dad: "So, you’ve come to stare at the Beast, have you?"). Even a comical scene like the dog coming in with dirty paws, leaving mud on the floor, to be immediately chased outside by a flock of brooms that clean up his tracks, probably is meant to be read that way: it's a cute doggie, but it's still a dog, and the Beast wants to be a man, and must chase away everything that made him an animal.
At the ball, the Beast wears blue, Belle wears gold. The hall where they dance is made of blue windows and golden architecture. The Beast has allowed himself to be fragile and transparent like the glass to show his humanity. Belle wears gold; in spite of the relative sizes, she's the stronger one, holding up the Beast and his dream to be human again as the architecture sustains the windows. Belle's gold dress creates an exceptional, fairytale-like atmosphere, but but also shows how precious she appears to the Beast (and the Beast's refined coat also represents how she now sees him).
In the final scenes, the Beast has gone back to the red mantle, but he is still wearing the white shirt with it. Gaston instead is wearing his usual red clothes, with a blue mantle thrown on them. I think the main reason for this was to give him a jarring look as he's become completely unhinged (all three primary colours is a bit much), but it might also be symbolic: Gaston is wearing his human looks as something tacked on (the blue mantle), but his horrible nature (the red coat) is visible to all. The Beast still wears his outwardly ugliness (the red mantle), to which he has resigned after Belle left, but he has remained beautiful underneath it (the white shirt).
When the Beast transforms, he is enveloped by the red mantle in a way that reminds of a flower's petal, and, when he comes to, he stands up and the red mantle slides off him, and only the white shirt is left. A final magical blue spark circles him and Belle as they kiss, then shoots towards the sky and start the liberation of the castle.
The transformation scene itself reminded me of Michelangelo for a number of reasons. One is the emphasis on the hands and feet, the extremities with which we interact and walk upon the world (the famous hand of Adam). Another one is how the body emerges from the mantle. Michelangelo represented draping extensively in his works, but he also had the idea of freeing an already present human figure that was closed inside the rock. There are some unfinished works of his (the "slaves") that are almost legendary in how they show the human form emerging and freeing itself from the mass of unformed matter of the stone. (Visually, it also reminded me of Blake, with those strong limbs, draping, flight, and rays of light).
Also, a final consideration, although I'm more inclined to believe this to be random, or not intended to be noticed: remember that Gaston boasts of eating 60 eggs a day, and then accuses the Beast of wishing to feast on children? One of the first scenes in the movie actually shows a very evenly divided frame that could be titled "eggs and children". But messy eating is a recurrent theme with the Beast, who forces himself to try to eat with a spoon, being met halfway by Belle who drinks the soup with him directly from the bowl, until he learns with effort to use cutlery that is too small for his hands, even if he looks a bit odd while doing it.Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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2022-06-25, 01:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2007
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
Also consider that for Gaston this physical prowess is a boon, the aegis over his weak and fragile soul that helps protect him. For the Beast, his strength is even greater yet it is a curse that separates his vulnerable self from the help he desperately desires. He is trapped by his own appearance of power and agency.
Thanks to Linklele for my new avatar!
If i had superpowers. I would go to conventions dressed as myself, and see if i got complimented on my authenticity.
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2022-06-30, 02:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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2022-06-30, 02:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2015
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- Alamogordo
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
Ah yes, the d12 hd supremacy, where even by level 4 (or is it 5 now?), 1 hp is chump change. Vorpal is a, what, 4th level character with probably d8 or d6?
Characters I've enjoyed playing for more than four sessions:
Falgar the Swiftblade
Revain Sumeth, Whip Fighter Extraordinaire
Malvin Firel, Cleric of Corellon, Destroyer of Undeath
Vongur Dorent, Primeval Champion of Poverty
In defense of the Vow of Poverty
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2022-06-30, 03:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2008
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- Carlisle, Englund
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
"Three blokes walk into a pub. One of them is a little bit stupid, and the whole scene unfolds with a tedious inevitability." - Bill Bailey
Androgeus' 3 step guide to Doctor Who speculation:
Spoiler- Pick a random character
- State that person is The Rani
- goto 1
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2022-06-30, 05:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2009
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- In my library
Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
Does he even have a full hit die? Potentially he has like maybe 4hp from the class he took 1/11 of first and maybe one or two from every other class. So we're looking at maybe 15ish hp if we go by that assumption (another is that he has his Warrior d8 until he actually picks something to take a full level in, but that's even worse at ~5).
Complains meanwhile has around 38 without his CON bonus being taken into account, Big Ears 32, and Thaco 28. Of course adding in the CON bonus Complains is probably pushing 50hp, the demon transformation might have pushed him over it.
Complains also has Fast Healing IIRC. He gets that hp back in like six seconds.
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2022-06-30, 05:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2007
Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
If we go by mechanics, becoming a teller must have given Vorpal some boost. Considering that it is scalable proportionally to how many spirits you take in, the most natural mechanics would be gaining levels in some teller class. That would translate to some additional HP.
In a war it doesn't matter who's right, only who's left.
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2022-07-13, 07:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2014
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- Tron Spacetime
Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
Do you guys remember there was some sort of demonic axe? Me neither.
It's probably not important.Last edited by -D-; 2022-07-13 at 07:22 PM.
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2022-07-16, 07:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2010
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- right behind you
Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
I think they have traveled through like 5 rooms since the axe broke. Dear god the pacing on this comic is painful when you try to look at the overall storyline.
"Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
Translation: "Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe."
"If you don't get those cameras out of my face, I'm gonna go 8.6 on the Richter scale with gastric emissions that'll clear this room."
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2022-07-16, 08:14 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2014
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- Tron Spacetime
Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
When did axe broke? As in what year AD. Archives don't help.
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2022-07-16, 09:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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2022-07-16, 09:31 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
According to the URL of this page: on the 13th of April 2016.
Forum Wisdom
Mage avatar by smutmulch & linklele.
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2022-07-16, 09:46 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2022
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- Misery (h/t XTC)
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
"But it always seemed weird to me to get mad about things going wrong, as if everything turning out OK was promised to anyone, ever. There wouldn't need to be paladins if the world was, like, fair." -Lien
I get to be a favorite today!
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2022-07-16, 10:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2011
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2022-07-16, 10:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2022
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- Misery (h/t XTC)
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
I'm not sure if it's better or worse to consider Kin and Minmax, since we just (well, relatively speaking, it was more like a year ago) got their touching reunion and saw Kin again after she had clearly spent some time leveling and gaining power...
And it's still. Been. Two. Days.
For us it's been nine years, but for them it was seriously something that just happened.
Ellipsis is still an excellent artist and I really enjoy her story, but the pacing of the comic has kind of ruined some of the emotional impacts."But it always seemed weird to me to get mad about things going wrong, as if everything turning out OK was promised to anyone, ever. There wouldn't need to be paladins if the world was, like, fair." -Lien
I get to be a favorite today!
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2022-07-16, 11:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2018
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- Maupertuis
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
That might be for the better, considering the grim tone she often desires.
For me, something strange happened when Kore's gratuitous time dilation was revealed by the ghost of Chief. It looped around from being horrific to being hilarious. I've returned to its original idea of the entire thing being a campaign run by Herbert, and now I think of the goblins as an extra set of players with an adolescent grasp of storytelling, always trying to up the grimdark. (In this interpretation, Herbert is an inexperienced enough DM to think it's a good idea to run three synchronized games in the same world.)
I know that interpretation won't be supported by the ending (if there's ever an ending), but it makes me enjoy the comic more. *grins* And it's apparent that most of us in this thread have to search for a way to enjoy it.
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2022-07-17, 12:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
At this point, it's as valid an interpretation as any.
For me, it's not struggling for a way to enjoy the comic so much as frustration that the pacing is just... terrible. Obviously, being here means being no stranger to comics sometimes taking a while to come out, but... like... honestly, something broke in me in the comic before the most recent one. A full-page glamour shot of a character with no background resolving a problem that had just been introduced in a way that made no sense... and then it sort of concurrently hit that this is also the... fifth? Sixth? Some number-eth dungeon crawl in which a bunch of strange rooms come one after another without any obvious thematic rationale between them. Sure, each one is visually distinct, but... what the heck is this place supposed to be? Who built it and why? Can anyone even remember why the main characters are in this dungeon in the first place?
And then you think about the fact that there are at least two supposedly important cast members who literally have not been seen in the comic since 2012, and it's just... this comic's pacing was not great when she was following a regular update schedule. Now it's downright interminable. And we just introduced another new cast member when the comic can barely keep up with the ones it already has.
The comic itself is fine. It's fun, the characters are fun, the art is nice, and so forth. But it needs to either start picking up the pace with each page or having pages come out faster, and that doesn't seem to be happening. Yes, you don't have to read the comic if you're not enjoying it, but the reasons for that lack of enjoyment are all around the text, not because of the text itself."But it always seemed weird to me to get mad about things going wrong, as if everything turning out OK was promised to anyone, ever. There wouldn't need to be paladins if the world was, like, fair." -Lien
I get to be a favorite today!
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2022-07-17, 06:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2009
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
As an ending, I would find it extra-depressing (the Goblins were not their own characters all along, and they only realise it at the end). So it would be very fitting. However, outside the comic, there's been a series of explanations for how players don't control player characters, and are more like distant ancestors, so it probably would be less sad than I picture it, assuming it gets explained in-comic.
I also found Kore's Hyperbolic Torture Chamber hilarious. It's as if, instead of the lone tank rolling towards Tom Hanks in Private Ryan, there had been a whole column of 10,000 German soldiers, complete with stereotypical Nazi officer barking orders, following it. It's just too much.
I don't think the comic is doing particularly well on a writing perspective, though. Chief's arc was abruptly assumed to be complete and ended. The characters don't have much in the way of personal objectives. Something about their personalities also doesn't convince me: it's as if they change a lot based on the scene to be shown (see Ears going from being reasonable and explanatory to massive hammy emotional outbursts and illogical decisions).
EDIT: According to a quick count, it's been 186 pages since MM started adventuring with the Goblins. If there's not yet been any payoff for anything important that was introduced since then (except Paulusz), it wasn't for lack of pages.Last edited by Vinyadan; 2022-07-17 at 07:42 AM.
Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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2022-07-17, 09:22 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2004
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
I think the best way to look at it is that these dungeons just are. Thy weren't built. When the world was created, dungeons were part of the package.
Or maybe they spontaneously generate where there's a lot of magic. Like remember how the Maze of Many was contained inside a gigantic sword lost by a demigod or something? Think the gigantic smith put it there? No. But a place with an insanely powerful gigantic magic item, bam, spontaneous dungeon.Hark! An avatar drawn by Kate Beaton!
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2022-07-17, 01:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2004
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- The Land of Angles
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2022-07-17, 08:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2022
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- Misery (h/t XTC)
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
Right. Which... certainly works all right so long as it feels like the comic is moving at a decent pace and everything feels like it's progressing well enough. There are worse things to believe than that this world just has a bunch of generated dungeons full of traps that somehow magically reset for the next group to go through what appear to be prog rock landscapes with combat encounters.
But we have been in this dungeon for a decade now, and there's no indication we're getting close to leaving. Also, as mentioned, isn't there supposed to be some kind of demon infestation happening? And again, does anyone remember why the characters are in this dungeon in the first place? There was a clearly stated reason, yes, but it feels like even the characters have forgotten now.
There are, to be fair, worse fates for comics. But... eh, now this is just whinging instead of constructive commentary."But it always seemed weird to me to get mad about things going wrong, as if everything turning out OK was promised to anyone, ever. There wouldn't need to be paladins if the world was, like, fair." -Lien
I get to be a favorite today!
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2022-07-17, 11:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2015
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- Germany
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
I think it was a shortcut back home to their tribe.
Or wherever they were going before they broke the axe."If it lives it can be killed.
If it is dead it can be eaten."
Ronkong Coma "the way of the bookhunter" III Catacombium
(Walter Moers "Die Stadt der träumenden Bücher")
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2022-07-18, 09:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2007
Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
Yep. It was a shortcut.
An almost 13 year long shortcut.May you get EXACTLY what you wish for.
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2022-07-18, 10:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2009
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
To tell the truth, going into the Dragon's Maw was a suicidal decision. Maybe not the first time, as they knew Kore was after them, but they didn't know about the bridge. After they roped Kore's throat, however, their best bet was to drop their current path and escape through the woods. The trees would have given them cover, and they were faster than the Dwarf. Instead, they decided to go back to the completely coverless bridge, where they would have certainly died, had it not been for Forgath and MM (Forgath held off Kore, and MM was absolutely necessary to solve the puzzle by lifing the grate).
Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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2022-07-18, 11:38 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2017
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- France
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
Forum Wisdom
Mage avatar by smutmulch & linklele.
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2022-07-18, 12:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2007
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2022-07-18, 12:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2017
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- France
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Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous
Forum Wisdom
Mage avatar by smutmulch & linklele.
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2022-07-18, 05:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2009
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- In my library
Re: Goblins XVIII: Being yourself can be dangerous