The Order of the Stick

Belkar does not like the idea that someone can get a free magical alignment change and be part of the group like always, when he had to scrape and fight for every bit of respect as the Token Evil Teammate.

One imagines that he might also be carrying a tiny bit of Survivor Guilt over the death of the original Durkon.

edited 7th Apr '14 6:33:04 PM by Fighteer

Thing is, even if Durkon's mental landscape operates on a vastly accelerated and he cannot hope to successfully stall for so long that the spirit cannot answer a question, said spirit also operates on that timescale and the memory seems to play out in real time. All he has to do is stall with pointless, vaguely tangentially related memories until the spirit gets irritated at the waste of time. That, or show him misleading memories. He's already done the first and may have done the second.

I'm inclined to say that the Survivor Guilt is the larger part of his motivations. Well, that, and that fact that he witnessed Durkon's death- as well as the contrast between Durkon saving him and Durkla drinking his blood- makes him more inclined to think of them as separate beings.

Come to think of it, I wonder whether Durkon can edit his memories? Perhaps his motivation for the long memory-sequences is in part to mask his slipping in of small "revisions".

V will notice that Durkula's using different expletives than he usually does. Pretty sure Thor's Nuts and ~ Rain are both new ones.

EDIT: That's why Durkon is showing the spirit memories of other dwarves swearing; he's hoping V or someone will pick up on it. Also, the swears a given dwarf does and doesn't use are somehow unique to either each individual or each clan or other subgroup.

edited 7th Apr '14 7:24:05 PM by Knowlessman

I've posted that thought before, which comes with the added twist that it essentially forces Durkon to start lying.

My apologies—I presumably missed your previous post (I was away from the thread for a while).

You do make an interesting point regarding lying, however—perhaps this is an avenue that might allow for some character-development, the loss of which was, as I recall, one reason that the "possessing spirit" twist was disliked.

Anyone else like the double meaning of "Thor's Nuts!"

Because yes, yes he is.

As a couple of people have pointed out, while the spirit may technically have nigh-infinite time to question Durkon, he clearly doesn't have anywhere near infinite patience. Maybe Durkon needs to pull a Scherezade Gambit - "and then I remember telling him a story. It went "There was a fluffy bunny who lived in a hole..." "what was the fluffy bunny's name, Durkon?" he asked. "well," I said..."

I know I did.

Durkon would be better off going with nonsequitors than long-winded memories.

Fun fact: Gambit of the X-Men has a memory of the Blob, having had his clothes blasted off him in the fight. Unconscious, naked Blob lying facedown in a crater. He committed the image to memory so that he can bring it to the forefront of his mind any time he thinks a telepath is reading him.

Durkon needs to find something like that. Answering with Naked Blob any time he's asked a question would ensure that the spirit doesn't get its answer and has to make something up, jeopardizing its masquerade.

edited 8th Apr '14 8:55:30 AM by TobiasDrake

Elan's ran past him naked more than once hasn't he?

I wonder if "Thor's nuts" really is more significant than it looks, though. Is it possible Thor's already noticed what Hel is up to, and they've got themselves a Jonah on board?

Even if that's not what's going on, I wonder if someone else on board will come to that conclusion. Sky Pirates are a suspicious lot.

...I imagine.

Seems to me his acting as a more stereotypical version of Durkon is on purpose, to try and tip off the rest of the order. None seem to be picking up on it though..except maybe belkar

So, I was thinking about the thing where Durkon apparently tried to fight him on Roy's name, so I went back and checked. The first time Durkula calls Roy by name is here, and by that point, his name had been said several times during the battle.

So I'm wondering if his control is really as complete as he's saying it is.

Twas na myself.

Who says the first time he tried to find out Roy's name was the first time he needed to use it? That would be rather poor preparation. First thing you'd expect him to do is find out "OK, so who are all these people and how do you usually act towards them?"

I wonder if that's why he paused for a second before attacking Nale and Z. Durkula might have been trying to figure out as much as he could about Durkon so he could do a decent impersonation of him.

That's how I've been interpreting it. When I look at that strip now, I hear the Windows startup noise when he snaps out of it.

Like this.

edited 8th Apr '14 12:43:51 PM by johnnye

You know, it's not like they don't know he's sort of EVUL now. So a bit of a downturn in behavior is a bit expected, though Durkula is running off wistful memories now.

You know if it didn't ruin the twist I'd probably want to see the book include a few bonus strips that show what's going on inside Durkon's head right after Malack is killed. Seeing his first interactions with Durkula would be interesting.

Since people like to bring up the art style differences, I am just making the announcement that Belkar still has triangle feet. The Boots in Oo Ts now have more articulation than Belkar's feet.

I've said it before, and I hate to sound like a broken record, but I'm really pleased with the possession twist. Evil Durkon wouldn't be Character Development, it would be entirely replacing one character with a new one (with an extra dose of Fridge Horror for permanently deleting a soul ).

With regard to whether or not the host and the possessing spirit generally merge - I'd say that Malack's speech doesn't really support that. Emphasis mine: "I was the ignorant shaman... Raising me is just a complex way of destroying the person I am today." Those aren't the words of a spirit that will be jolly annoyed, but still there, if you raise it.

No, it wouldn't be character development, any more than "having your soul trapped while a spirit possesses your body" is character development. Both of them allow for character development in different ways.

People who were worried about the possession angle didn't know at the time that we'd be getting internal Fighting from the Inside scenes with the separate character of Real!Durkon. That's how we're going to see Durkon develop.

If Durkon had simply been forcibly alignment-switched, we'd have got to explore Durkon's motivations and drives through the way they were twisted from Good into Evil. It wouldn't be a completely different character, it would be a warped reflection of the one we know, which could tell us plenty about the original. Would have been just as interesting, IMO, but I'm interested to see this story too.

"Hey Roy, why are your boots that weird round shape? Don't you get blisters on your foot-corners?"

edited 9th Apr '14 4:15:09 AM by johnnye

I wonder how much Durkon is able to mess around when answering a question from the spirit. The strip before the hiatus implied that Durkon was somehow bound to provide the memories, but it's not clear how precisely he needs to comply.

From the way Durkula is talking, I kind of imagine it as the two of them each having a hand on the steering wheel — the spirit can't go exactly where he wants, and if Durkon manages to drive them into a ditch it's going to make it that much harder to get back on the road.

And of course, Durkon knows the street layout better. He can act like a crooked cab driver, promising the destination is right round the next bend and oh, bugger, they're taking this street up, OK well there's a shortcut this way..."