The Order of the Stick

Comic.

So, Andi still thinks Bandana is still too young for the captain role because Bandana is younger than her.

Also, Kickstarter Exclusive story, Haleo and Julelan is available for purchase and Blood Runs in the Family is avalible for purchase as a PDF.

She basically said that, like one or two strips ago. Although now it's even pettier.

Why was Bandana with them when she was eight?

edited 21st Feb '17 7:59:03 AM by LSBK

By the "younger than me" logic, Bandanna will be too young to be captain even when she's 90.

The crew is basically a family I guess, and wholeheartedly agree with Bandana's last line.

edited 21st Feb '17 8:04:14 AM by Cross

Well, it's a pirate ship, so I can think of a couple reasons. Maybe she's the daughter of a crewman who isn't around anymore. Maybe they found her and didn't know what to do with her so they just kept her. Maybe she's a ransom gone sideways.

Let's not forget that they're still in an emergency situation here, yet Andi finds it more important to put a captive in her place than to see to the ship. If their situations were reversed, Bandana would just be like "stick her in the hold until we get out of this mess."

I'm pretty sure she said that her parents has served on the ship before her.

Bandana's parents were crewmen. She grew up aboard the ship.

Ah yes, that. Thank you.

Also I just noticed that her stuffed bunny has a hook for a paw. D'awwww!

Well, I suppose when you act as someone's babysitter, it's hard to see them as anything but that kid you used to babysit.

Not excusing Andi here, but still.

I was a high school varsity swimmer. One summer I volunteered to coach some little kid swimmers on the summer recreational league. Those little kid swimmers started growing up, and many of them got to be much faster than I ever was. There probably was some smidge of envy, but mostly, I was just fantastically proud of those kids working hard, taking home medals, and winning reputation for their team.

I can't understand Andi's thinking at all. I've never been consumed by the need to be top dog, though. I suppose some personalities are?

This makes it seem like Andi actually wants to be captain and more like she just doesn't want Bandana to be captain. It'll be interesting to see what the others say now that's she's conscious again.

I understand your point, but you were specifically a coach and teacher, Andi was never that to Bandana so it's not really the same situation. It's not like Andi's pissed that Bandana is a better engineer than her.

edited 21st Feb '17 10:38:27 AM by LSBK

Cool strip. I was surprised and amused by seeing young, geeky Andi. Reminds me of what we've been shown with Roy and his experiences at "Fighter College" and to a lesser extent Elan at "Band Camp". It's a clever and funny choice to have the character's learn their Class' skill sets in a way that mirror's real life education.

I say surprising in Andi's case because while I shouldn't be surprised given what we see of Roy, you don't exactly expect to see rogues/pirates studying trigonometry. And my impression of Andi was more in the way of Belkar-like roughneck.

Also, while I found the speculation stupid (and now contradicted in comic) that Bandana (should we call her Beatrix now?) was obviously incompetent and that Andi was behaving in a way endorsed by the rest of the crew, I do like this backstory giving some more context/basis to Andi's perception of Bandana as basically a nepotism hire.

Edit- Oddly enough I just googled the term roughneck and learned that it has this specific/literal meaning of a manual laborer on an oil rig. So that really is the right term for my perception of the kind of engineer I thought Andi was versus the kind of engineer she actually is.

edited 21st Feb '17 12:43:11 PM by Hodor2

Obviously the rest of the crew didn't endorse it otherwise they probably would have just talked this over now. Whether they'll accept it after this situation is resolved is another matter. She's awake now, so we'll probably be getting a glimpse of that soon. Well, assuming Bandana isn't the one to fix the situation after Andi screws it up or something, which could also easily happen. But that would kind of make this pointless.

edited 21st Feb '17 12:45:50 PM by LSBK

I'd only call her Beatrix if the name starts seeing common use within the strip itself, which I don't see happening.

Meanwhile, the presence of hostile Frost Giants is being ignored. Bandanna at least has an excuse but what about everyone else?

They pulled away from the pass the Frost Giants were guarding. There's just the two fighting Roy to worry about. Everyone else is more worried about making sure the ship doesn't crash into a mountain than them.

Except Andi, who is more concerned about bashing Bandana than about commanding the ship. So we can see that she is not just a bad captain, but an extremely bad captain. She won't last long it seems.

Also, yay, another double-meaning title!

You all really should stop jumping to conclusions about where this is going to go. Whether Andi is good or not doesn't really matter because if this just ends with "Well, Bandana is back in charge, let's keep doing what we've been doing" this entire thing was pointless.

Well, not necessarily. It could end like 'Bandana is technically back in charge, but Andi's incompetence has destroyed the Mechane and you guys are stuck in the middle of the mountains, not even on course to your destination' or something similar.

More like "Bandana is back in charge, but now they have to deal with one very pissed off high level fighter with a big magic sword".

What I wanted to imply that they will probably crash if things go this way.

I wonder if, assuming Bandanna is put back in charge, she'll just flat out kick Andi off the ship first chance she gets. She's earned rust at a minimum

They were likely to crash anyway.