More than that success (which I’m pretty much numb to at this point), I’m dumbfounded at the level of media attention the whole thing has gotten – catching the attention of freaking Boing Boing, for Pete’s sake! Of course, beyond the added fuel it’s presumably giving the drive itself, it has the added effect of introducing people to the fascinating world of The Order of the Stick; I hope Rich can reward them by producing material on par with that that attracted me to the comic, and the start of the Kickstarter does seem to have coincided with events picking up considerably.

There is one interesting side effect, however. Last year, Rich decided to release a book reprinting the material he created for Dragon magazine back in the day, plus a few bonus side-stories. He announced that it would be a limited print run and would only be available through his online store. Which made sense, since after all, a lot of his longer-standing fans had already read the Dragon strips when they originally came out, and it wasn’t like any of it was canon anyway. Fast forward to now: Some people are clamoring for Rich to commit to reprinting this special book as well, but Rich has shut the door on that, since he did say this was going to be a one-time limited-edition printing, and he’s not going to go back on that promise because of a site that’s all about promises (you don’t want your pledges to be going towards, say, goofing off and working on a blog while blowing off actual schoolwork).

Just one problem: Most of the people who pledge towards the drive will be receiving a follow-up story to one of the new stories in that special book. Along with about five other new stories that will be canon. So, if you’re interested in collecting all of the canonical material, you’re also going to get a story you’d probably like the original context for, which would require picking up this special book.

Not that it’s a big deal, since apparently Rich feels confident there are enough copies to survive this drive and for some time thereafter (which proves the original reasoning right up to this point, though the special book seems to have gotten the short end of the stick in terms of its availability with other books among the pledge rewards), but it’s certainly food for thought.

As with Homestuck, it takes a lot of doing for me to post on the same comic twice, and the previous strip certainly ranks high on the list of OOTS strips that would qualify if any did. In this case, after giving myself a day to think about it, I decided that after how SoD-heavy my last post was, I should write a post oriented more towards readers of the online comic. I also think I may have been too gobsmacked by the comic itself to think clearly about it.

For readers of the online comic, the main development from the previous strip, aside from the end of Tsukiko and the revelation of what the ritual actually does, is the more general revelation of Redcloak as the man behind the man. Honestly, though, even before SoD was published there’s been hints of this in the online comic, from Redcloak convincing Xykon to attack Azure City to his level of involvement in the battle planning there to convincing Xykon to stay in Azure City. In the previous book Redcloak even made clear that he and Xykon were not on the same side and that Xykon was little more than a “valuable ally”, which also backs up my contention in the previous post that Redcloak is more committed to the Plan than to Xykon himself. The previous post also explains why this isn’t quite the revelation it looks like it is (and I’ve had people try to tell me it’s even less of one than that).

Probably more stunning, and coming across as a revelation on the order of the “planet-within-the-planet“, is the revelation that the ritual doesn’t do anything near what Xykon thinks it does, that Redcloak has manipulated things down to the level of Xykon’s motivations and goals. By itself this revelation changes little, since Xykon doesn’t know about it, until the final battle (although one may be excused for wondering if it’s related to the “planet-within-the-planet”), but it does say a lot about Xykon, Redcloak, and the relationship between them, much of which is made apparent either in the strip or my previous post. It recontextualizes every strip with Xykon and Redcloak to know that even success for Xykon would accomplish what Redcloak wants, but not what Xykon wants.

Considering that the ritual in actuality neither destroys the world nor conquers it, it also defangs Team Evil a little as villains, even if their success would still cause some nasty consequences. In fact, this is a theory I’ve had in my head since having SoD spoilered for me, but knowing what the ritual actually does could actually open the door for Xykon and Redcloak to succeed at the final battle. Although Redcloak may not be mired in complete subservience to Xykon, he’s still tightly connected to him, and much of the comic and SoD has raised the possibility of a full split between the two being a fairly major event. Xykon discovering the ritual doesn’t do what he thinks it does, as has already been made clear, would certainly fit the bill, and he inevitably would find out if he were to be “successful”. One wonders if it constantly nags at the back of Redcloak’s mind what reaction Xykon would have to “success” at this point. (One problem with this theory: it turns the main villain from Xykon to the Dark One, however briefly, who I don’t think was even mentioned in the online comic until the third book… but what he doesn’t know about the “Snarl” could hurt him.)

It’s also worth noting the number of characters whose information about the Gates, past and future, comes primarily from Xykon and Redcloak. Nale picked up a lot of information about the Gates from Shojo, but makes clear that he intends to get the ritual out of Xykon or Redcloak somehow. They aren’t going to be any more successful, at least at this gate, but it’ll be interesting to see what the reaction will be out of either one of them if they even get close. Would Redcloak, for example, be more willing to divulge the arcane half of the ritual than we may once have thought he would, in hopes of grooming Nale to potentially replace Xykon?

Meanwhile, we now have some sense of what Redcloak’s plan for the phylactery is: to replace it with a fake. In some sense this actually helps Xykon, and certainly doesn’t help the OOTS, who could conceivably destroy the “phylactery” without actually destroying it. But the fact that Redcloak evidently wants to hide this plan from Xykon suggests he still has some ulterior motives…

This comic would have warranted a post even considering all the knowledge already out there. For someone who hadn’t read the Start of Darkness prequel or any synopses of its events (a group that apparently includes Gary “Fleen” Tyrell)? I’d have to imagine they’d be in a stupor for days.

(There will be more minor SoD spoilers in this post, but I’m dispensing with the jump break because a good number of them are unspoilered in this comic, allowing me to talk around any details that are too spoilery.)

Let’s start with the fact that those who did read SoD might be confused at Redcloak’s effective claim to have always had a spine, which would render my last OOTS post moot. At the end of the previous comic, Tsukiko calls Redcloak “Wrong-Eye”, which is Xykon’s way of reminding him of his great failure at the end of that book that, he believes, effectively keeps him in line and subservient to him in perpetuity, and it seemed to work quite well earlier in this book. But here, Redcloak claims that he only ever allowed Tsukiko to get her way to avoid “upsetting the delicate balance between myself and Xykon”, implying that he has always been in complete control of the situation throughout the online comic. Which raises the question: do we need to reinterpret what happens at the end of SoD?

On one level, Redcloak doesn’t admit to any specific manipulation of Xykon here that wasn’t already covered in SoD, and which dates to the very beginning of their relationship. Not informing Xykon of the ritual’s true purpose has been a sort of passive manipulation; Redcloak could be a complete patsy of Xykon in the here and now, and Xykon’s actions would still be manipulated by Redcloak’s misinformation in the past. The “delicate puppet strings on which ‘Lord Xykon’ unknowingly dances” may well be as simple as Xykon continuing to go after the gates, convinced they will allow him to take over the world, in the first place.

On the other hand, Redcloak implies that it was never the “Wrong-Eye” comment that caused him to acquiesce to Tsukiko’s wishes, but merely maintaining his control over Xykon, letting Tsukiko control him rather than gain too much influence over Xykon. Although he may just be showing some bravado for Tsukiko’s benefit, it still suggests he’s not as broken up over the end of SoD as that ending makes us think.

The thing is, though, while the tragedy presented to us in Start of Darkness may not be the whole story, Redcloak may well still be mired deep within a tragedy of a different sort, one he may never escape from, one of loyalty not to Xykon, but to the Dark One. The Dark One has his plan to better the lives of goblinkind, divulged to non-SoD readers in this comic, but Redcloak has come up with an alternative, one that doesn’t involve the risk of the entire world being destroyed, and one that SoD readers may recognize as an improved version of what the Dark One himself engaged in in his former life, one of goblins seizing a piece of the world for themselves.

Tsukiko essentially warns Redcloak that killing her would lead Xykon to completely obliterate the fruits of that plan (and Redcloak’s life), and Redcloak seems resigned to that eventuality, noting that Xykon’s reaction would likely be the same to Tsukiko tattling on him. At least theoretically, there is an alternative, albeit a difficult one, one of all-out resistance to any attempt of Xykon to commit genocide on Gobbotopia, admittedly difficult considering Xykon’s epic-level status. On one level, that’s not going to happen because it would end the comic or at least Xykon’s (and Redcloak’s) status as its main villain. But on another level, for all that Redcloak may have doubts about the Dark One’s plan, he’s still willing to sacrifice everything for it. It’s especially tragic considering that the forums have speculated in the past that the Dark One hasn’t been completely honest even to his own high priest about the true goal of the Plan.

Perhaps it’s here that Redcloak is still affected by the end of SoD, rendering him unwilling to abandon the Plan under any circumstances lest his guilt for that ending overwhelm him, but unbeknownst to Xykon, still seeing him merely as a means to that end, one that can be replaced if he can find a powerful enough arcane spellcaster that he can control easier. Without getting too spoilery, there’s a bit towards the end of SoD where Redcloak’s brother voices his own concerns over the Dark One’s motives, and whether he really has the best interests of goblinkind at heart. Gobbotopia suggests those words have been nagging at Redcloak; his willingness to throw it away suggests they haven’t been enough to dissuade him.

On the other hand, perhaps it’s here that Redcloak’s recovery of the phylactery really comes into play. If Redcloak can save his life and that of the people of Gobbotopia with the threat of destroying or re-losing the phylactery, he might just be able to continue to have his cake and eat it too. Certainly if Redcloak still sees Xykon as a means to an end, he can at least bluff Xykon into staying in line as a last resort, and certainly it seems unlikely that Xykon would follow through with such a threat, if only because of how integral Redcloak himself is to the strip, although it would make it far easier for Hinjo and company to retake the city. One wonders if it was the recovery of the phylactery, as much as Tsukiko’s threat to unravel (no pun intended) the Plan, that allowed Redcloak to finally take matters into his own hands regarding Tsukiko (sort of).

I’d be remiss if I didn’t cover the end of Tsukiko’s story, as relatively bare-bones as that story was. For someone so delusional about the undead, it’s somewhat fitting for her to meet her end at the hands of the creatures she so adored. I might have preferred for her to become an undead herself, to find out how the other half lives, but Redcloak clearly couldn’t take that risk, as evident in his order for Tsukiko’s former “children” to devour each other. And while Rich presents us with four panels of Redcloak’s expressionless stare while Tsukiko gets slowly drained away, her vain, delusional attempts to appeal to those “children” as her worldview crumbles along with her are far more chilling than any actual depiction of her draining and dismemberment would be. (Although one wonders if having the wights kill her entirely, as opposed to, say, throwing her into the rift, may come back to bite Redcloak in the end if her spirit is still around to blab to any other interested parties…)

I had heard of SOPA before today’s protests thereof, but I generally don’t like jumping to conclusions and following whatever people tell me I should think. Nonetheless, in light of current events, next week will see a special four-part series on the future of content. Some of this will likely be things that would have made my book on the Internet had I ever written it, and not all of it will be related to SOPA; there will also be things specific to this site’s main two topics, sports and webcomics.

Also, MorganWick.com will go down today sometime between 9 AM and noon PT, but not because of SOPA. I’m finally upgrading to WordPress 3.x series; seems someone finally got around to taking over the plugin that powers the Sports and Webcomics subsites.

Also, as I write this, it is 1:35 AM on the West Coast, and many webcomics have not updated yet, and I still feel confident saying that no other webcomic will protest SOPA as well as Homestuck, even if no one will get it later. (Although now that I’ve seen xkcd, I like its alt text too.)

Warning: This post will contain spoilers for the Order of the Stick prequel Start of Darkness. As such, we’re hiding it behind a jump break. This means the comic image will overflow past the post itself on the main blog page; I can only hope that the miscellaneous stuff at the bottom will keep it from screwing up the page layout too much (although I admit I forgot how huge the comic image can be compared to the text).

I wanted to hold off on saying anything about this sequence until I had some sense of whether Rich would even acknowledge the direction I thought he might be going with it, but I eventually decided to stop waiting. Because it looks for all the world like Redcloak might be finally growing a spine.

I mentioned once that Redcloak’s tragedy “reaches its nadir at the end of [SoD] but isn’t over yet.” Over the course of the events in the online comic, Redcloak has risen from being Xykon’s complete patsy to a hero and leader of goblinkind unseen since the Dark One walked the earth. But he still suffers under Xykon’s thumb, and his rebirth won’t be complete until he works to change that. And we may be seeing the groundwork being laid for just that, because Redcloak may be the only one alive (aside from Niu) who even knows that the phylactery has been recovered.

Let’s step back for a moment, and consider how Redcloak utterly used the Resistance to get to this point. The Resistance learns of the phylactery’s recovery from a spy they have polymorphed into a hobgoblin, and promptly slaughter everyone guarding the phylactery and the goblin who recovered it. They promptly take the phylactery back to their base… where they find Redcloak waiting for them with various assorted nasties, and learn that he had a polymorphed spy of his own in their midst. The Resistance is wiped out, and Redcloak destroys their base and makes off with the phylactery.

So, if we take the implication by Redcloak’s spy that he floated the idea of polymorphing someone into a hobgoblin at face value, that means that Redcloak arranged it so that the Resistance would intercept the phylactery from whoever recovered it so that he could intercept it from them. That’s a level of devious cunning we haven’t seen much of from Redcloak in the online comic, and a sign that he’s coming into his own as a villain in his own right, especially for people who haven’t read SoD. He must have had a reason for arranging such a scheme, and it wasn’t simply to recover the phylactery, because he could have done that by letting things play out as they would (although the phylactery might have wound up on Xykon’s person as a result). No, it seems far more likely that he’s intent on recovering the original purpose of making the phylactery his holy symbol in the first place.

To convince his brother to go along with the plan to turn Xykon into a lich in SoD, Redcloak suggests that if they make his phylactery something they’ll always have access to and Xykon won’t, it’ll give them some measure of control over him. It doesn’t exactly work that way – Xykon is completely nonplussed when Redcloak threatens to destroy the phylactery, only threatening to destroy him in response – but it may be on the cusp of doing so. Xykon has shown every sign that he considers the phylactery to be more precious now than he did in SoD, and more importantly, Redcloak now knows the phylactery’s location, and Xykon doesn’t. And it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he was determined to keep it that way.

What gives me pause is that Redcloak doesn’t have many options for keeping it that way. The most logical course of action is to keep from Xykon that the phylactery has been found, but Redcloak has already arranged his affairs for his departure, going so far as to officially transfer power over to Jirix. Redcloak seems to be okay with leaving, and he’d probably much rather his people continue building their new nation than keep looking for a MacGuffin. Redcloak could inform Xykon that he alone knows of the phylactery’s whereabouts, but the problem with any of these is that Xykon is not likely to take kindly to Redcloak standing up to him – he already has a standing threat to kill him and replace him with Jirix if he gets too uppity. Considering that freaking Tsukiko was putting Redcloak to shame earlier in the book, I don’t think he’s that much over his brother’s death yet.

But Redcloak spinning the hiding of the phylactery as a positive in the short term… that may be an intriguing proposal, considering Xykon may be at the point where he’d stow away the phylactery in a safe place himself before doing anything risky. That might also open the door for the OOTS to actually defeat Xykon in similar fashion to what happened at the Dungeon of Dorukan, though that would defang Xykon considerably as a threat and render the final battle rather anticlimactic when the only real problem facing the OOTS is finding a MacGuffin that’s not a Gate.

The destruction of the Resistance, meanwhile, puts Hinjo in a bad position. The good news is that, as far as he knows, Xykon and Redcloak will be leaving soon, taking out at least the two most powerful foes he’d have to face upon trying to retake the city. The bad news is that there won’t be a Resistance waiting for him when he gets there (or, possibly, any elven allies either), and even if Niu were to try to rebuild it it probably would never reach anywhere near the level the previous one did. Combine that with how much Redcloak has been able to build on the ashes of Azure City, and it’s clear that retaking it will hardly be a trivial proposition, or even as popular among the other nations of the world as might otherwise be thought. Redcloak will be leaving Jirix a nation without as much in the way of threats as one might think.

Just like that, we’re back to not knowing who’s really behind the assassination attempts – although it wouldn’t surprise me if Lalonde somehow had something to do with all of them. Nonetheless, you can ignore everything I said in my previous post, except the title and last line.

I could probably go into a detailed examination of Lalonde’s psyche and relationship with Jane, but instead I’ll just note that one could draw some parallels between Jane/Lalonde and Karkat/Sollux. The latter member of each pair warned the former member not to open their own file that they coded themselves, but the former member decided to run it anyway. If one were to take that precedent in mind, everyone involved is going to deeply regret Jane’s decision to run the file (although who knows if it’s an inevitable part of a scratched session).

Meanwhile, we now have an explanation, weird and incomplete as it may be, for why Lalonde and Strider know so much about the game. One may surmise that one reason for Strider’s weird state of awakeness may have something to do with this session eventually being joined by these kids’ own pre-Scratch counterparts; Jade already counts as the session’s pre-woken member, and this entire universe owes its existence to events within that session in the Medium.

Lalonde’s “wriggling day” reference remains unexplained, however, and her Sollux-like ~ATH coding skills could be seen as adding more fuel to that fire.

After seeing the logo on Jane’s hacked file, I think we’ve pretty much established who’s behind the assassination attempts. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that we’ve already seen Jane and Jake’s dreamselves (as well as UU’s assurances), I’d be back to thinking that this universe is a red herring and none of these players will actually play the game – that the notion of the game is solely a ruse for Crockercorp to rub out Jane. Certainly I’m having a hard time seeing what other sources there are for the game.

Looking back at this pesterlog, we now see that Crockercorp never wanted Jane to play the game at all, but may have felt that it was inevitable. Instead, they brought the game within their own banner and made sure that the players’ every attempt to play it only resulted in their deaths. Presumably, Crockercorp knows of the game’s true nature, and how it will ruin all their plans if played. Or rather, the plans of some higher power, which the use of ~ATH in this attempt only seems to confirm… at this point, the theory – treated as almost a fact by someone at TV Tropes – that the “new boss” of the Dark Kingdom is in fact Crocker (which Lalonde seems to subscribe to) only adds fuel to the fire. The enemy is going all-out to ensure the players don’t discover and defeat it using whatever means it can.

Also, is it just me, or is Jane kind of an idiot?

While researching the xkcd post from earlier today, imagine my surprise upon discovering that while I had stopped reading it, David Morgan-Mar had brought Irregular Webcomic! to a rather abrupt halt.

What’s even more freaky is that my very last IWC post predicted that the plan of the Steve and Terry and Scientific Revolution crew to turn Morgan-Mar’s pseudo-author avatar into Hitler (yes, that actually happened, and I never accused IWC of PVP/Goats Syndrome) could have wide-ranging effects on the timeline and universe of IWC.

(Not that IWC didn’t try to contract PVP/Goats Syndrome at the end, or entirely restore the history we’re familiar with, as it’s heavily implied that Death of Choking on a Giant Frog is actually Hitler, in Me’s body, after being assassinated by Haken in that fashion. Also, to clean up some loose ends from my other IWC posts, Shakespeare does in fact turn out to not only be from the 16th century, but to know it, but this leads to nothing but an incredibly cheezy and deus-ex-machina (even knowingly so) ending to the theme.)

Anyway, while Me’s death didn’t quite destabilize the timeline, that was only because the Head Death decided to send him back to 2002, because he was “the pivot point of this entire multiverse“, whose death wound up destabalizing it. So IWC wound up ending in a fashion quite similar to how I once predicted it might: Me discovering this newfangled “comics on the internet” thing.

Don’t worry, I didn’t give him the idea. In fact, he’d apparently had it in mind for years… but only came to the decision to end the comic less than a year before doing so, which makes me wonder exactly how planned the Irregular Crisis really was. (Although I call bullcrap on that claim, considering he ended the comic shortly after hitting Calvin and Hobbes’ comic-count, as he’d claimed his goal was.)

However, perhaps the real shocker of the Irregular Crisis and Morgan-Mar ending the comic? IWC was actually putting demands on his time! Who would’ve thunk it was even possible, with how many nonprofit projects he had?

I wanted to take a moment to honor the occasion of xkcd joining the 1000-Update Webcomic Club. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily difficult to crank out 1000 comics, considering how many comics have done so (after all, it’s hardly 2000), but it still requires a minimum of three years of cranking out a comic on a regular basis (more than I showed with my own abortive webcomic attempt that still lasted over a year). That takes commitment and people who are willing to support you in a thankless project with no monetary guarantees (not that xkcd is lacking in money).

Of course, this milestone does come with a dirty little secret, but MS Paint Adventures didn’t let its own dirty little secrets keep it from honoring when its URLs hit 6,000… (Yeah, xkcd, you’ve got a while to go to match that!)

I have to admit, after some early bad signs, I have to begrudgingly praise Scott Kurtz for how he’s handled this storyline.

Not being familiar with the exact reasons why the treatment of Lilah’s miscarriage in Ctrl+Alt+Del pissed so many people off so much (and not necessarily sharing that reaction), I’m not sure whether I should praise or blame Kurtz for the continued use of humor to lighten the situation. But no matter what, there is one area in which Kurtz is far outdoing Tim Buckley, and that is in Brent’s character development.

Now, I haven’t read PVP on a regular basis, for various reasons, but when I reviewed it three years ago, one aspect of the strip that stood out was Brent’s inability to grow up. As with Ctrl+Alt+Del and Ethan, it seemed intentional and the character and strip had every intention not to let him (or the rest of the cast) grow up, but PVP seemed a little more self-conscious about it, to the extent that during his wedding, several supernatural entities told him it was time for him to grow up and let Skull (arguably a symbol of Brent’s, and PVP‘s, continued childhood) go, resulting in the incident that continues to define “PVP/Goats Syndrome” for me: Brent knocking the head off a living statue with a golf club in the middle of his own wedding. Yes, that actually happened, and it wasn’t intended to be a joke.

Well, now Brent is faced with his father in a vulnerable position, and is completely overwhelmed by the gravity of the situation. He’s being expected to take charge of the situation, and he can’t handle the responsibility. He’s being asked to be strong, and all he’s known is leaning on his father for strength, and now his father has none. More than ever happened to Ethan, and more than losing Skull did, Brent is being forced to grow up, very fast.

I’m not sure if Kurtz is going to allow this to lead to any major changes in Brent’s character or general outlook on life. But it’s still telling that this story arc opens the door for more character development for Brent, while Lilah’s miscarriage closed it for Ethan.