The Order of the Stick

Also, even if the gods DID make another world and the Dark One has a hand in it, that world is already starting off on a bad note. If this world is destroyed by deific executive order, Hel gains enough dwarf souls to rule the Northern Pantheon. Between that and the Dark Ones pantheon of one, that's half the pantheon ruled by evil gods, which probably doesn't spell great things for the mortals of the next world. A world which may actually be the last and last forever.

NOMUUUUUUUURAAAAAAAA!!! >:(

Ok then, I still think the reader can't start book 6 thinking "well, on a cosmic-level the conflict is already solved, let's see whether the heroes can save this world or it will all be solved with the next one". I mean, the end of the penultimate book is not where you lower the stakes (since before this dialogue, we didn't even know a permanent solution was possible).

I mean, since this is a story, I feel like the first thing to go to that there will be a permanent solution, because that's how stories like this go 99% of the time.

I have not gone into this thinking that the Order would just patch up the rifts/gates and the status quo would be maintained.

The stakes aren't low, because we aren't invested in the next world, but this one.

Edited by LSBK on Sep 22nd 2018 at 1:22:35 PM

Oh, I'm not saying the stakes would become low if the Dark One and the gods could fix things with the next world, but still a bit lower than before the whole revelation. Don't know, it still feels a better solution to me - narratively speaking - if the whole "permanent solution" thing depends on this world being saved.

But I guess we'll know in a few days (I hope!).

There's also still the matter of the world within the rift. That will probably throw a big wrench into whatever plan Thor is going to propose here.

@Khfan that's a very good point. The Snarl and Hel stories had been feeling quite disconnected (they technically weren't, but the connection was a little abstract), which I think contributed to a lot of people considering this book to be an irrelevant "sidequest", but this is all tying it back together in a much more concrete way than it had been previously.

• If the gods unmake the world, Hel gets to be Queen of the Northern Pantheon (although to be honest, it's not clear what the consequences of that would be; it's not like Odin seems to have any particular authority over the rest of his pantheon or the world at large due to being patriarch.) It's possible the Dark One would also get to have a hand in the new world, although that's far from clear at this stage.
• If Redcloak captures the last Gate, The Dark One has a gun to hold to the gods' heads to get what he wants, and Hel will be as vulnerable as any of them.
• If the Snarl escapes on its own, everyone is back to square one and this world is destroyed. Again, it's not entirely clear if that means the Dark One gets a say in the new world, although he seems to think as much.
• The only outcome that stops both Hel and the Dark One from getting what they want is the one Roy has been aiming for all along: good old-fashioned Saving the World. Preserving this world, with the gates reinforced and the Crimson Mantle destroyed.

But of course, that all assumes you accept the gods' assumptions that the Snarl is a mindless living weapon that can only ever be contained, which ignores multiple hints that the situation is more complicated than that...

(Hey, remember when Xykon was the villain of this comic?)

Well, he said awhile ago the events of this book would have crucial importance to the next and final one, so none of that's really surprising.

I know it's literally a joke, but there's a potential for Banjo and his related puppet gods to provide a fifth color, right? (Something zany like hot pink.) Presumably that requires that pantheon to get some followers and to reject being absorbed into other pantheons, but both of those things have already happened in the strip.

(This assumes that five colors are better than four for purposes of dealing with the Snarl.)

I doubt the Dark One got to choose his quiddity being different from the others any more than the Davlin and presumably the Elven Gods got to choice theirs being the same as the Northern and Western Gods, respectively.

If all it was take was refusing to be a part of an existing pantheon, they probably would have already fixed this.

Edited by LSBK on Sep 22nd 2018 at 5:24:31 AM

My pet theory is that the world in the rift is the Snarl's natural state. It is the first world, after all. The gods' arguments in world-making created the Snarl. It was created to be a world, so it probably coalesces back into a world-state when dormant. Albeit one bereft of life.

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

I think that could go either way. On the one hand, Banjo was initially created by a Northerner and almost joined the Northern pantheon. On the other hand, the majority of his power (and all of his brother's) comes from orcs.

So it depends on when and how exactly color is determined.

There seems to be a petitioning process to join the pantheon and become a god. Banjo very nearly ascended to the Northern Pantheon this way. This may be how the Elven gods and Dvalin ascended; they were accepted by their respective pantheons and subsequently ascended to those pantheons. "Start of Darkness" states that the elder gods welcomed the elven deities with open arms.

The Dark One, however, was not raised to godhood by gods accepting and embracing him into their fold. It was purely the will of mortals that caused him to ascend. After his death, a year of brutal violence in his name resulting in over a million dead and the fervent belief and faith in him that brought it about uplifted him as a god.

That's probably the reason for him having his own color. He was never welcomed into godhood by a pantheon. It wasn't favor from the Northern, Western, or Southern gods that brought him into their ranks. The pantheons didn't want him there.

In fact, Thor himself tried to kill the Dark One immediately after his ascension. It was only because Loki and Tiamat insisted on giving him a shot that the Dark One was permitted to exist.

Indeed, it may be because he ascended from a species none of the pantheons cared about and wanted that he became purple. His was a "junk" race ever-present in all the world but loved by no pantheon. There were no goblin clerics, because there were no gods who looked over them. They have no connection to any pantheon, and so neither did he when he ascended by forces entirely outside the gods' control.

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

The gods and their clerics really need to work on their communication skills.

Trump delenda est

For what it's worth, I didn't mean to imply that the Dark One consciously chose his quiddity. In fact, I expect that because of the God Needs Prayer Badly nature of the Oo TS gods, that the Dark Ones quiddity was determined accidentally by the nature of the prayer he received in order to ascend. But the same argument would suggest that Banjo might also have a different quiddity (which is likely to also be distinct from the Dark One's quiddity.)

That would just require it to be a rare occurrence for P Cs or NP Cs to start worshipping a god in a way that would make them unaligned with the standard three Pantheons; it seems like even considering that possibility is incredibly uncommon.

Edited by thok on Sep 22nd 2018 at 8:02:29 AM

The Snarl is made of the Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green Colors. The Dark One is an entirely different color. Could this mean that he is immune to the God-killing effects of the Snarl? This would strengthen his hand, particularly in the scenario where all the gates are destroyed.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

It shouldn't because he's still only one color, and thus less real.

And I doubt he'd be willing to test out if that wasn't the case.

Something I really like: Thor says of the Eastern gods that "their light went out of the world", which is usually just a poetic euphemism — but he's literally talking about the consequences of the particular wavelength of "light" they provided no longer existing.

Edited by johnnye on Sep 22nd 2018 at 2:30:46 PM

So the Snarl would be like Ego the Living Planet?

It might even have a similar motive to MCU Ego.

Disgusted, but not surprised

never mind

Edited by shigmiya64 on Sep 22nd 2018 at 11:32:21 AM

I restate what I said some pages ago about the plot. This is some impressive stuff. I never thought a silly stick figure gag comic would be so complex and engrossing when I started reading OOTS all those years ago.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

If you were looking for a reason for Thor to want to preserve this world instead of just making a new four-color one—there it is. Quite aside from his altruism and Goodness, most of the dwarves worship him. He'd stand to lose the most if Hel got her way.

---

Edit: On a completely different note, I strongly disbelieve the idea that Banjo will ever amount to more than a joke. I think half the point of this strip is to make that clear. Clap Your Hands If You Believe may mean that the puppet can create some static with one worshipper, but it took, as pointed out upthread, a million deaths to raise a new deity in a completely separate pantheon with actual godly abilities. Banjo's not getting close to that with Elan and one tribe of orcs on an island; not in the timeframe of the comic, anyway. Give him a few centuries of worship, and who knows?

Edited by HeraldAlberich on Sep 22nd 2018 at 11:59:46 AM

Or, more importantly, those dwarves would lose the most.

Avatar Source

Right, but it seemed like we were looking for a reason besides "Thor's a good guy who cares about his mortals."

I mean, it seems Hel kind of blindsided everyone with that plan, so while in hindsight we can say that's a reason not to destroy the world, Thor probably hasn't been planning around it.

"Canada Day is over, and now begins the endless dark of the Canada Night."

Thinking about it, Thor may actually have been doing so. There are two reasons he might have known what Hel was planning in advance.

1. One of his strongest clerics got killed and sealed away from the afterlife, a circumstance unusual enough to catch his attention. Even though he couldn’t help Durkon’s soul when it was trapped in the vampire, he should at least have been keeping tabs on where it was going. Once it was obvious that Greg was headed to the Godsmoot, the rest fell into place. When the Mechane crossed into Northern Lands, Thor sent a storm to delay it, don’t forget.
2. As we’ve theorized, Odin’s prophecy may have been tailor-made to get Durkon into position to talk to Thor. If Odin shared his plan with Thor instead of just relying on his son to talk to Durkon on his own, the beans are spilled.

Why, then, didn’t Thor tell the other gods about Hel’s plan in advance so they could vote it down? Maybe insist on delivering the negative argument in Loki’s place? Because if Greg never gets a chance to vote, Roy doesn’t realize that the vampire is evil and try to kill him. Durkon needs to be free in the afterlife to make this whole thing work.

After the rest of the votes were cast, Thor tried to talk Dvalin into foiling Hel’s plan, because by then Roy was committed to killing Greg. Thor couldn’t act before then.

Edited by HeraldAlberich on Sep 22nd 2018 at 1:25:45 PM