The Order of the Stick thread 2.0 [now with spoilers]
 

Right, new thread for this, pieced together from the old one. New spoiler policy, too:

This thread contains spoilers if you haven't read the most recent episode go do it right now.

All posts regarding the current-when-making-the-thread episode (595) have been moved here from the last thread, all spoiler tags have been removed, no infraction or warning takebacks for anything anyone did under the old spoiler policy.

Hahahaha, Vaasarvius is a jerk. What a surprise, and a hilarious punchline.

No, really, what the hell was that? A real villain, one who had a bit more depth than "I'm evil, I do evil things, I get away with it because I'm evil." And then they just Disintegrate him. That was stupid. At the VERY least, this action should be a point of extreme tension against the elf. Not that it will matter, because h'she has been being an obnoxious character anyway, and thusly a perfectly good villain has gone to waste.

I never liked Vaarsuvius, especially with this whole obsessed sleepless asshole thing. Always been a smartass better than you jerk, and the whole gender ambiguity thing is stupid, always seemed to obviously be a girl to me.

actually I couldn't help but get a Paranoia vibe from it. In paranoia a good player knows how to refute any alligations against him, but an experienced players knows that you have to be alive to argue against them
"Ha you can arrest me but you will never convict me in the end it will only... help... why are you pulling out your gun?"

The whole thing goes with the usual downside to lawful good, the downside to our justice system really. In court it doesn't matter whats true, what matters is what people believe. The entire time I was screaming in my head JUST KILL HIM THEN. If the guy was really smart he would have pretended to be worried so no one would suspect he could get out of it. Instead of making the cliche mistake of announcing his plans.

I think V did a good job of saying what we were all thinking. Its time to wrap up this sub-plot and move on.

Wow.

I...don't know what to think about this episode.
On one hand, I can totally agree with Varsuvius, this is taking entirely too long and I'm getting tired of Kobuta constantly dodging legal ramifications in his own evil, manipulative, pointlessly disruptive way. He may be a cunning bastard, but he's - literally! - trying to bring the entire city under his control by manipulating the leaders who lost the city friggen a hundred strips ago.

On the other hand, he was a damn good villain and I was starting to like how he wasn't even that powerful, just really really smart.

I...I don't know. I'm still kind of in shock.

It's a guy and he's the only character carrying that strip.

Hinjo is good too. Miko was better but now she's dead.

I'm a huge Durkon fan for one reason or another, myself.

As for V: I keeping getting the distinct impression that she/he's being set up to become increasingly "evil."
I mean I thought "Damn, Kubota's dead and I liked him" for a few seconds before realizing "Hot crap, at this rate V's going to become more evil then Miko ever was if he/she keeps going down this path.
So I fully approve of this "plot twist" because it's fleshing out V's potential, and entirely well done, fall from grace.

Well that was unexpected and exactly what I wanted to happen last strip, but Elan's just to good at heart to just kill a villain and dump his body in the sea. Not that this isn't a better way to get rid of evidence anyway.

I dunno man. Isn't that what it boils down to every time? Some authors just dress it up better by giving their villains elaborate contingency plans. Kubota, in fact, had probably the most ridiculously elaborate contingency plan ever. I like to see those shot down every once in a while.

Roy and Elan are my favorite characters. Roy has this strange badass aura around him, despite being just a full-fledged fighter with a magic greatsword he has this strange "Get Shit Done" sort of attitude about him.

And Elan went from silly absurd comedic relief into like, one of the most combat-talented and heroic characters in the strip. The fact that this was implemented with, of all things, a third party prestige class was just great.

Shooting down is one thing, flat out annihilating him was another.

I dunno, like, I know Burlew wouldn't have done it for a reason, but it seems like he threw away a perfectly good Lex Luthor character, one who isn't combat capable, has no armies, nothing. Just is really, really smart.

More and more it's starting to grow on me that Varsuvius was just like, "Okay, fuck this, we seriously have more important things to do than play political chess with this asshole," but it's a long and drawn-out process of me picking which I like more - Having Kobuta's contingency plans mean nothing in the face of a Fortitude save and Varsuvius being the first voice of logic in the entire arc, or having a villain who doesn't face every problem with "Fight the Order of the Stick."

Give me a day to think about it and I'll get back to you.

EDIT: I am going to enjoy the no-doubt moral checkmate that Elan is going to be in, especially since him and Varsuvius, last I checked, are friends.

I don't know, I really feel that Redcloak kind of is doing the whole Lex Luthor evil scheming thing but better, and Kubota didn't really fit the main plot. I expected a huge moral battle within Elan, and was actually shocked when he got disintegrated. I don't get shocked by webcomics.