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...got to say, Buffy's noblewoman persona is a lot less funny now that a) I'm not ten and b) I've actually studied up on early modern era noblewomen and their range of responsibilities, education, interests and so on and so forth.

Also- wow, Angel, pulling the 'you're not like the other girls' card. Just- ugh.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of fun in this episode - nice to see Spike again, Ethan Rayne is one of my favourite recurring antagonists...but this part of it is increasingly annoying.

One day, I'm going to do an episode rewrite in which Buffy is an actual eighteenth-century noblewoman circa 1775, not just a somewhat-shallow parody of one. Which may lead to a rather different attitude towards Angel's flippant dismissal of them.

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hello OOTS fandom on tumblr (all three of you)

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Another Lady Fuchsia

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i can kinda see where xykon is coming from sometimes because redcloak is a bit of a debbie downer

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Yes, yes absolutely.

It is definitely something I really appreciate about Xykon, and especially the contrast between Xykon and Redcloak, how Xykon has always been this insanely privileged, selfish little shit with no tragic backstory whatsoever. His innate powers have made it so that he's nearly always able to get his own way, so he rarely has to negotiate, or compromise, or seriously consider other people's point of view.

Basically his privilege has made it so that empathy and consideration for others are skills he has never had to develop, and his naturally selfish inclinations have been left completely unchecked - in fact if anything he's deliberately cultivated them to the point where his stated end goal is to be so powerful that "no one in existence… can ever tell me what to do, ever again" because he "shouldn't have to do anything, for anyone, ever, for any reason." [Oots: 1266]

In some ways Xykon is a disturbingly accurate allegory for how power and privilege can stifle our sense of empathy or shared humanity and lead to some world-shatteringly bad end results. Which isn't to say all privileged people end up as horrible as Xykon, but power certainly can and does disincentivize us from curtailing our more selfish urges or reaching out to others, particularly for an individual such as Xykon who is naturally that way inclined.

I still love how a shittier storyteller could have fallen into the trap of accidentally making Xykon's story about "the sorcerer lashing out at a world that doesn't take sorcerers seriously" but instead it's just another problem in life Xykon responds to with an inappropriate level of violence

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Obviously, Haley and Vaarsuvius have a pretty close friendship: early on, they only room with each other in taverns; manifestation of Haley's intellect has distinctly V's features; Vaarsuvius had their whole meltdown over contacting Haley in DStP; they freed some slaves together in BRitF, etc.

But, like... How did they even meet? On the Origin of the PCs starts with them already being friends. (They are literally the only characters that don't have their first meeting covered in that book, and this frustrates me a little.) Their backgrounds have no obvious interconnections, and we know they weren't adventuring together because V never considered adventuring seriously before Haley proposed it. What could have brought them together in the first place? Did they travel together? Did they just meet at that bar from OtOoP?

I know that not every blank spot could (or should) be filled by the narrative, but I'm just really curious about this.

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2023.12.02

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I was never crazy about Haley and Elan together. Like, they're cute and the character development is great, but they never clicked with me. Well, that is until I've read Haleo and Julelan.

This exact moment made me see the vision so clearly

This is truly Elan at peak performance

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brat summer? no, Gormenghast summer. participate in rituals so ancient and arcane that no one can remember their meaning anymore. scheme and manipulate and murder your way up the social ladder. spend 3 pages describing every room you enter in the most dense and beautiful prose imaginable. become the death owl.

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Thoughts on the Neil Gaiman Allegations

I followed Neil Gaiman on tumblr not because I'm a massive fan of his work (I've read two of his books, and one of those he co-wrote with someone else) but because it was interesting to get behind-the-scenes info about Good Omens.

Because he seemed, for the most part, to be a pretty affable and interesting person.

Because it was nice to see someone so prominent be willing to assert the rights and dignity of lgbt people, and most especially trans people in this era where they are being consistently vilified and used as a political punching bag in my own country and elsewhere.

Because his writing advice was decent, and he seemed to value and support artistic endeavour in all its forms.

Because the stories from readers talking about what his work had meant to them were a consistent reminder of the power of art to connect us all and transform our lives.

Because he consistently advocated kindness.

(I know some people have been saying he couldn't handle criticism and he bad-mouthed other public figures, but I think I must have missed those incidents - my impression was that he was very often complimenting and defending people).

It was a horrible shock to learn that (yet again) a creator I respected fell so far short of embodying the values he spoke up for. When things like that happen it can make you question human decency itself, especially when it just seems to keep happening again and again; public figures who seem so progressive turn out to be abusers. Is human goodness just a story we tell ourselves? Is genuine progress even possible, when those who speak up for it prove themselves to be so incapable of living by those ideals?

I don't know how much of Gaiman's public persona was genuine and how much was just a front for some consciously manipulative and predatory behaviour. To be honest, I'm not sure I care if we ever find out how much of what we saw was real. He's lost our respect - most likely forever, and he shouldn't be put in a position where he can abuse people's trust again.

I'm sorry for the people he hurt, and I hope they get time to heal.

And I think those values that I saw in him are all still true, even if he is false.

Kindness and decency is still something to live by, even and especially in times of darkness.

Art still has the power to move, connect and transform us, whether you want to keep reading Gaiman's works or not (and if you're finding it tough because you've lost that enjoyment and connection to stories that meant a lot to you, know that there WILL be other works out there that can make you feel it again).

Creative endeavour IS still inherently valuable.

Transgender lives and identities still matter. Transgender people are still deserving of dignity and respect. There may be plenty of transphobic people out there who feel emboldened by this, and I'm not gonna pretend to understand exactly how scary and horrible that must feel. All I can say is that there are other people out there who still believe in you, and still want to support you.

Human decency is not a lie. I guess we need to be wary of public figures who come across as too good to be true and remember that everyone has capacity for both good and bad, but not everyone fails as badly as him. Not everyone succumbs to their worst instincts. Not everyone is an abuser. Human goodness is still alive, and something to strive toward and take comfort in.

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May I suggest Redcloak? 👀 (Love your oots art btw)

i support goblins rights to be wrong <3

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Vaarsuvius is word-of-author genderqueer, and yes I think you are correct that the way they are written actually demonstrates this to the point where it makes more sense than anything else (though it's debatable how important/beneficial it would be to explicitly acknowledge it in canon).

The no one is sexy comment is pretty interesting to me as I was thinking about this a couple of months ago (and failing to find time to write about it, much like everything else on my list of things I want to write about). But there are a couple of OotS characters who I consider attractive (Sabine and Redcloak), and it is interesting to think about why considering how the art style... really does not lend itself to that kind of appreciation (plus Redcloak is Redcloak, lol). So much goes by how well you can imagine what the story implies, and also the characterization.

In terms of shipping I'm still pretty intrigued by Belkar's attraction towards V and I think that could make for some really fascinating fanfic. (Though I think you are onto something in that Vaarsuvius is more likely to be interested in Haley.)

Generally though I don't personally get a whole lot from shipping wrt OotS, and now you've gone and made me stop and think more deeply about why that is (I hope you don't mind me rambling).

I've just admitted to finding Redcloak hot but I'm actually adamant that I don't want to see him with a love interest. It would just feel out of place to me - the tension in his story lies between his devotion to his people vs his drive to be Right and hide from his guilt. Throwing a love interest in just needlessly messes with that.

There are some pairings that it would be interesting to explore and I'd happily read other people's thoughts on the topic, and the canon ships do add an important dimension to the story (Vaarsuvius' relationship with Inkyrius has a really big impact despite the fact that Inkyrius is barely featured, & Elan and Haley's relationship has been a vehicle for personal growth for both of them). Generally though I feel like the story is just really rich and satisfying as it is? Rich Burlew devotes so much attention to character growth and moral/social themes and explores them in a lot of different ways. In some stories a romantic relationship would be a crucial vehicle for those ideas, but in the case of OotS it's just one tool in the box and it isn't needed for all the characters.

(It can still be fun though)

I mean, it feels weird recommending OOTS on this site because it's not that queer, but on the other hand a lot of the fandoms on here don't have canon queer characters and OOTS actually does -- Vaarsuvius makes more sense as non-binary than anything else, Haley's canon bi, Elan's trans-questioning -- it just takes a while for it to be taken seriously.

Well, the first two. The third kinda got dropped. But there's still plenty of room to read him as some kind of queer.

I'm inclined to say that it's not got much potential for shipping just because no one's sexy, but people manage with Senshi and Chilchuck, so. What do I know about shipping?

Maybe we can get some sort of Elan-Haley-Vaarsuvius (vee-type) 0T3 going on? Elan and Haley are canon, and Haley/V isn't even a big stretch.

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I'm on the first reread of Order of the Stick in a couple years. And tracking how close I am to the current strip by how many years ago it was written.

Dude really slowed down the production speed at some point. But that's OK. The quality is phenomenal.

He didn't have to go so hard. He could have done a joke of the day comic for a year or so and people would have loved it. It was a relatively early webcomic and it had a clean, professional art style, if not a highly detailed or realistic one. (It still takes skill to make that simplified style of art look good.) It's been over two decades and everyone in the main cast has had family stuff and backstory stuff and character development. (And the writer's grown too. It wasn't bad at the start, but over time it's settled into having way more secondary and scenery female characters and the existence of queer people is a mundane background part of the world, rather than something occasionally pulled out for a joke.) We've had high drama, we've had subversion of expectations, we've got the sort of massively high stakes that you can only get in a fantasy setting. And it's been going on for over two decades. I can't even.

And it's so much better on the rereads. Dude will make callbacks to some tiny detail from five years ago real time. The overall plot is solid enough that it's actually enjoyable to condense two decades of strips into a week or two of reading. It holds up. I don't know how he does that. It shouldn't be possible to write something that works as a thing you read one page of a couple times a week and something that works as an archive binge like that, I don't know how it's possible to pace a story to work that way. (Well. Lots of bad puns seems to be a key feature.) QC doesn't work like that, I mean QC is fine but you go back to the very beginning and it's painful how much worse the art and the storytelling was, and it works best if you just understand it as a bunch of loosely connected storylines. OOTS is one story and you can tell where you are in it and how far out the big climax is likely to be. Dunno how he does that. It's been over twenty years. I'm pretty sure I'd be stabbing my eyeballs out if I worked on the same story for over twenty years. That's life's work stuff there.

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"she who hangs out a lot in cemeteries"

ive been experimenting with black shadows, so this one was fun to make

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something else underrated about good omens I think is that it’s never been about how immortality drains the joy out of everything . it’s been 6000 years and these fools are still drinking and dining and seeing the world and listening to the nightingales and learning to dance and there’s always newness and challenge and joy and idk maybe it’s the mental illness or the crushing weight of the world talking but that’s just really precious to me

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more stick figures