OotS 534 up

[Mr. Wilson]

Awww, I liked the Insanity ball of death and thought it a clever use of game mechanics.

Sometimes it's too early to judge strips. I think today is one of those days. The next few will tell us whether it was filler or plot setup.

 

[Quartz]

The past couple of strips have been off for me. There's too much plot and things are dragging on too long. Roy's death? Good for a couple of strips then bring him back. I'm sure Celia knows someone who can cast Resurrection.

 

[Herobizkit]

She's Azure City's "number one" psychic.

I didn't get it. :\

 

[stonegod]

She's Azure City's "number one" psychic.

I didn't get it. :\

Think bodily functions (one is considered "number one", the more involved one "number two").

 

[SPoD]

I can't help feeling that without the attempted haunting, we could've got excatly where we are now in about half the strips.

What would the benefit of that have been, exactly? Is there a deadline that the story needs to be completed by?

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Well that was a whole lot of nothing. Usually I get at least a chuckle out of an OotS strip, and this... for the first time since ever, I found the ErfWorld strip more entertaining, and I'm generally pretty "blah" about ErfWorld.

 

[MarkB]

What would the benefit of that have been, exactly? Is there a deadline that the story needs to be completed by?

Plot advancement is part of the reward for following a story. Therefore, any storyline that turns out not to lead to any plot advancement is, by its very nature, unrewarding.

 

[SPoD]

Plot advancement is part of the reward for following a story. Therefore, any storyline that turns out not to lead to any plot advancement is, by its very nature, unrewarding.

Except we don't know that this storyline did not lead to plot advancement, only that it did not lead to plot advancement YET.

If, 30 strips from now, the fact that Roy couldn't figure out how to be seen leads into a fantastic moment when he suddenly figures out how to affect the material world JUST in time to save Celia's life, then this subplot will be anything but pointless. It will be part of the necessary set-up for dramatic tension later. Which is exactly what Rich did with the New Year's Eve story: the stuff that Haley and Elan said then directly lead to the way she got her voice back 90 strips later. Take away the dinner scene, and Rich would have had to dump all of the exposition into the climax of the storyline.

If OOTS ends without this ghost thing mattering, I will concede that it was pointless. Until then, it seems premature to declare it so.