Order of the Stick 597 is up!

[That One Guy]

Wow. What a strip! It makes me sad to see V headed this way, but I suppose that the seeking of ultimate power does come with a price. Compare this strip with this earlier one if you have any doubt that V has completely changed character.

Yes, Elan seems to have been saved by innocence.

--Steve

That's kinda' sad in retrospect. In the current scene I expected V to charm Elan/zap his mind... even though he probably would not have prepared those spells...

Hmmm, it seems readers are buying what Elan is selling. Me, I suspect him of deliberately playing dumb because it was the safest way out of the conversation. He knows that V will buy it, and this way he doesn't have to either back down or force a confrontation.

Agreed. Elan is getting smarter every hundred or so strips (w/ only occasional regressions). I'd be pretty miffed at V if I was him, actually.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

So is anyone else thinking we are giving the comic too much credit on regards to Alignment?

Yes.

 

[Nyeshet]

This probably has nothing to do with the situation, but ...

If V is becoming evil, perhaps the fact might have been influenced by the ring s/he wears.

Ever since #130 s/he has been wearing a "Ring of Wizardry pried off of Xykon's charred finger bone."

Again, even if V is going evil (I tend to think s/he has become CN, as selfish desire for power seems to have eclipsed any other feelings or morales s/he had.), I doubt this is the reason, but it is interesting to speculate!

 

[Orius]

I think V's just cranky from a loss of sleep/trance.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Hmmm, it seems readers are buying what Elan is selling. Me, I suspect him of deliberately playing dumb because it was the safest way out of the conversation. He knows that V will buy it, and this way he doesn't have to either back down or force a confrontation.

I don't think Elan could understand the concept of playing dumb, much less manage to do it in a convincing way!

 

[roguerouge]

The idea that Roy has information and that's why they must find him is too obvious a self-justification. The very fact that V was never so obsessed when they were actually helping save the world indicates that it's not the fate of the world that has turned him like this -- it's the loss of his only real friend (Haley) and the only teammate he respected (Roy).

V is putting a huge output of effort for a *small* gain (getting Haley and Roy back), and a small output of effort to the larger gain of securing the fleet, which you know, contains the only people in the world that are even more dedicated to defeating Xykon than the Order of the Stick is.

If V really gave a damn about the world (for anything other than a self-excuse) he'd be helping Hinjo.

Actually, I think the real reason is that he has found a magical task that he can't accomplish. And it's driving him crazy. He's defined his identity based on magic and for it to fail is causing a psychological crisis.

 

[roguerouge]

"Because Good is Dumb" is a pop culture reference (to Mel Brooks' Spaceballs, specifically). I don't think it is a statement of the author's personal morality.

Given that he devoted Celia's incredibly long speech at the end of the trial to how Lawful Good should work realistically, no, I don't think analyzing the strip in alignment terms is giving the comic too much credit. It's obviously something Rich thinks about when writing the strip.

Yep. And don't forgetFinal Review too.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I don't see V going evil, but one day waking up realizing what he is becoming. My bet is one day soon Elan learns how to put V to sleep. V will do the rest from there.

Well, from how I interpret the oracle, V will attain ultimate magical power - which likely means he is turning into a lich or some other powerful magical being. After all, he has already said "the four right words for all the wrong reasons".

Ultimate magical power is now his fate - with all the consequences this entails.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

After all, he has already said "the four right words for all the wrong reasons".

No. I don't think he has.

The four right words will be some form of "I have found Haley."

 

[Storm Raven]

It's not nearly as clear-cut as that. Those rules-and-traditions are what prevented e.g. O'chul and the other paladins from knowing about the other gates, which means it's also the same thing that prevented Xykon from knowing all about them via torture/psionics/etc already.

It also prevented them from being able to actually check on those gates and forced Shojo to go behind their backs in order to check on them - which resulted in Miko jumping to the conclusion he was a traitor and killing him just before their city was attacked, weakening the defenses right when Xykon showed up.

So that's one thing atleast that the paladin oath accomplished. On the other hand I'm not sure I can think of *anything* that Shojo actually accomplished with all his machinations, other than getting himself killed.

He got the OotS involved, and managed to get the secret history of the Sapphire Guild (which included the truth about the gates and the Snarl) made available to them. He got the OotS to agree to check on the other gates, and pushed them towards saving the world. None of which would have happened without Shojo's manipulations.