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OP edited to make this header - Fighteer
edited 18th Sep '17 1:08:08 PM by Fighteer
She didn't do that (not kill her family) for any moral considerations though.
Her changing her opinion on Ivan is the best that can be said of her moral character. And even then, her not realizing he was personally no danger to her took way longer than it should have.
Again, though, none of that should matter. Hilgya can both be awful, while still having been victimized in a way that no one should be.
Edited by LSBK on Dec 18th 2018 at 2:46:00 PM
Leader of the Holey Brotherhood
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Well, I was thinking more at first. But yeah, her flipping on him (by realizing he didn't really need to be killed) was a small improvement on her part. I am curious to hear what she says after she revives Durkon. To be fair, there are a lot of reasons why she would still flame-strike the hell out of him. Some are good reasons, some are somewhat more bad.
Hilgya is a very complicated character. moreso now than ever.
One Strip! One Strip!
We'll see, but so far this comic has repeatedly shown us that an Evil character is still evil even it they have some redeeming qualities. Each time such redeeming qualities are shown, the forums start sprouting the "not really evil" theories, and they are consistently proven wrong. While there is no definite proof that Hilgya has Evil alignment, her acts, even if they have justification, are still bad and make her a bad person.
Right now, the only reason Hilgya agreed to rez Durkon is because of an Enemy Mine situation: neither Thor nor Loki want the world to end, so they commanded their respective clerics (directly or indirectly) to help each other in saving the world. I don't expect Hilgya to accept Durkon's proposal, and neither do I expect a sudden Heel Realization from her. But if she ever gets a real Character Development, that won't happen now, as that would require much more time and more, genuine, reasons for her to rethink why her actions are bad. It may be a cliché, but Rich is a better writer than that. (Bad guy comes: "you have wronged me, now I'll kill you", good guy apologizes, bad guy turns good: "no harm done then, let's be friends"; s'hreally?)
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.
I expect Hilgya will reject the proposal for now but say she'll think about their future together after the whole Snarl thing is dealt with. We'll then have a Time Skip during the comic's epilogue showing them together. The precise relationship status will be left ambiguous.
Queen of Good Things, Honest
This conversation is reminding me of an anecdote I heard a long time ago. Probably not true, but....
Dude goes into a gas station and puts a $20 bill on the counter. Written on the bill is print saying, "I have a gun. Give me the contents of the cash register."
The clerk empties the register and the guy takes off, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. Total contents of the register: $10.23.
If someone points a gun at you and gives you money, has a crime been committed?
Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 18th 2018 at 4:32:45 AM
My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.
Yes.
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.
Guy threatened an employee and stole property, of course it's a crime!
That's Dr. Title, thank you!
It's a clear case of threatened assault, which may be prosecutable depending on the jurisdiction. (This is the reason why assault and battery are separate legal concepts.)
"In distress", my ass.
Brandishing a firearm is usually a crime as well, depending on the jurisdiction.
Doesn't make it any less funny if it's true, though. 
A procrastination in of itself
I think defacing currancy by writing on it might be a crime.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Surely he also took an item from the store, right? Because otherwise why on earth would you pass over a 20, if not to disguise the hold-up as a regular transaction? Or are we meant to believe that that just the only piece of paper he could find?
If he did take an item, the question becomes 'was the item he took worth more or less than $9.78?'
Edited by Gilphon on Dec 18th 2018 at 11:25:19 AM
At a gas station you can pay money inside for gas you pumped/will pump outside. So you can hand over money and get nothing visible in exchange.
... It's possible I'm over-thinking this.
Something that fascinates me about Hilgya is that she's *extreemly* paranoid. She seems to instantly and always assume the worst of everyone's motives. How she treats Ivan is an interesting data point because it's an example of her realising her first impression was wrong and then flipping her treatment of someone.
If she was right in her assumptions about people she would be heroic, but she's not, she's wildly off base most of the time. In short, she's chaotic stupid.
Of course, big question is if incompetency is a kind of evil. Thog toyed with this for a while, presenting himself as too nieve to be evil/good aligned, but that was revealed to be unimportant because he *is* capable of caring, he just doesn't.
I'm not sure if Hilgya's evil/neutal/good alignment is really all that important at the moment. The strip seems a lot more interested in her chaotic nature.
She still wouldn't be heroic even if she was totally right. She might be neutral.
...really? Okay, I can get the complaining over the porportion of her actions to the slights she's suffered. And I can tolerate the general attitude of "she's a bad person who needs to be punished and there's no room for ambiguity about it" even if I don't agree.
But you're telling me that if her husband was actively abusive, if Durkon had been deliberately callous, if her family...was exactly the same but meaner I guess..if every person she thought was evil was in fact actually, actively evil, nothing she's done would've been justified? I don't see how that tracks.
Edited by Wackd on Dec 18th 2018 at 1:10:43 PM
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.
I assume because going after bad people specifically because they hurt you isn't heroic. There's more to heroism than that.
It would certainly make Hilgya less ambiguous on whether she's actually supposed to be evil or not, but it wouldn't take her to good because she'd still be acting wholly for herself (and Kudzu).
Edited by LSBK on Dec 18th 2018 at 12:23:08 PM
Ah, okay. That's fair enough, I suppose, and certainly in keeping with the themes of the comic (Roy going after Xykon because of Eugene's oath vs doing so because Xykon is a genuine danger to the world at large.)
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.
So then, what next? Will we have the mushy-comedy reunion, or when Durkon comes back they save it for later move right back to business? Which is more likely, you think?
I suspect when Durkon comes back we're gonna get a strip that's mostly Hilgya talking, for symmetry purposes.
Presumably without her dying at the end, though.
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.
Yes, really. Being a good person is about helping other people, not getting revenge. I mean, right now I consider her unambiguously Evil. If she was right about everyone around her being terrible terrible people but still behaved exactly the same then I might be willing to believe she's Neutral.
But LSBK beat me to it.
Roy's case is really complicated. Eugene was LG to begin with, and swearing the Blood Oath made him neither more nor less Good. Abandoning the Oath shifted him towards Chaotic though, but apparently not enough to actually change alignment. He was also a jerk, but it's been shown that in this universe, someone can have LG alignment and still be a jerk. When Roy started going after Xykon because of the Blood Oath, then it was a Lawful act more than a Good one. When he shifted his motive to go after Xykon because he is a danger for everyone, that was both Lawful and Good. Even though I think that it was just a small part of his Character Development. The real thing why he became better is that he started to respect his teammates as people and friends instead of just employees or tools to achieve his goal. But, as I said previously, being a jerk makes you only slightly less Good.
TL;DR: The DND alignment system sucks.
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.
As somebody once told me: The difference between a good DM and a bad DM is how anal they are about the alignment system.
Durkon was killed by a cleric of Loki with a magical attack. If suicide by tree counts I think this death should definitely merit entry into Valhalla.