The Order of the Stick

Dwarves don't even do "Yes, I consent to this marry this person," so probably not.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 18th 2019 at 11:31:53 AM

Dwarves are people and last I checked, people aren't hive minds.

Do individual dwarves practice it? Who knows, if that's what they want...

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Sep 18th 2019 at 7:31:48 PM

Perhaps the question I should be asking is:

‘’Is polygamy honorable?’’

If so, then we have our answer.

I mean, why would it not be? You're not cheating on anyone, which is what Durkon had issues with when Hilgya told him she was married.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Sep 18th 2019 at 7:37:18 PM

S.W.A.T. (2017) is the only one I know of.

I can think of an example from Bojack Horseman with Holly-Hawks eight, adoptive fathers. But, yeah, pretty scarce there.

Oh, I also think there's a new Netflix show about this bisexual woman in a polyamorous relationship with a straight man and a lesbian, and how they make that work.

Edited by LSBK on Sep 18th 2019 at 12:47:48 PM

Tobias: I figured the three husbands were also married to each other, actually. LGBT inclusion and feels less fetishistic. I feel like lesbians tend to get more accepted in media because people think it's hot or something while two dudes makes them uncomfortable.

I've seen that too.

Though I've also read that, statistically, there are actually more gay men in live-action television and film than there are lesbians. So I think lesbian over-representation might just be in media aimed at younger ages, such as cartoons and video games, which is why I encounter it much more frequently than gay men.

@Drunken Nordmann Dwarves are incredibly Lawful people, so almost any individual dwarf would only practice polygamy if Dwarven society accepted it. Also, polygamy requires the consent of at least 3 people, so it's rather more difficult to practice if there are only a few who would accept it. Of course, the comic says nothing about whether polygamy is accepted or not by Dwarves, because the topic just never got raised.

Back to liking or disliking Minrah, I am completely neutral about her as a character, and that's one of the reasons I dislike her being suddenly made a main character. As for disregarding narrative conventions, Rich has already done that a lot of times, and it usually turned out well. He also abides to many other conventions, as some conventions are there because they make the story interesting and enjoyable. Real life is, for most parts, incredibly boring and anticlimatic (that's why we love fiction, because it's more interesting than our own everyday lives). Making a story boring and anticlimatic just to be more realistic is not very productive.

Edited by petersohn on Sep 18th 2019 at 7:54:54 PM

If we're going that route, it might be less overrepresentation (well, not entirely) and more just men being more likely to identify as gay compared to women.

Women, at least, are much more likely to identify as bisexual compared to men, from what I've read.

God, I had forgotten about that. Ok, I had more or less taken back everything about the preachiness but let me do it again here.

Anyway, it's not like Minrah has been promoted to main character, she's just going to stick around for the next arc. I'm not super-happy about it because every attempt at humor involving her has fallen flat for me, but I trust Rich to have interesting developments in store for her later. I don't think it's any kind of meta-commentary, it's just the author needing her for something down the line and estabilishing her reason to stay with the main characters.

[Nevermind]

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Sep 18th 2019 at 8:14:32 PM

Which, admittedly, the Lawful nature of Dwarven society might indeed have a heavy impact on that, which would also play into ideas on divorce and/or remarriage. Not an expert, so the odds are decent I'm wrong, but I've heard that one of the major oppositions to polygamy, outside of religious objections, is inheritance law. It's not as much of an issue in the present day, when most of us live to see our grandchildren, and very few of us are passing on, or dividing, ancestral land, but it used to be a big thing, and one of the arguments against polygamy was deciding whose children inherited from whom, and that's not even getting into what happens if they split and re-marry.

I'm looking forward to discovering that she's running home to tell her twin hedge-sculpting, druidic cousins that she actually has really liked their work all along, and is sorry that Aunt Patty is a witch-with-a-B for kicking them out over it when they were the equivalent of fifteen.

Also, Thor is cool with holly sculptures, and could you do some horticultural landscaping for the garden the family doesn't yet have, but still own the land we could have it on to really stick it your mum? Here's the money and where to get the planning permission... Knock yourselves out with growing spruces, oaks, maples and box — whatever takes your fancy.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 18th 2019 at 11:44:13 AM

Now, I mean, I take your point here. But, like, in fact we didn't spend any pages discussing this, because that subplot played was over by the time this thread was started.

Pages in the comic, buddy.

I am reasonably certain that "pages" was referring to actual comic pages.

Edited by Tharkun140 on Sep 18th 2019 at 12:12:31 PM

My current head canon for Minrah's secret is that she is about to introduce her parents to her dryad lover.

Okay, I get that you all like tree jokes, but didn't we just see her with Durkon assuming trees are an evil menacing Valhalla and totally not understanding they're just plants until Thor sighed and said they were Good trees who had thrown off the yoke of their evil race? She is not a secret tree lover.

Edited by Arha on Sep 18th 2019 at 6:02:37 AM

Psst! That's the joke!

I'll admit, I straight up forgot that page. I just like throwing out guesses, whether it gets answered or not.

Given that Minrah is joining the party, I fully expect that we will find out what her deal is at some point.

I agree that she's queer-coded and I appreciate that but I would still be a little disappointed if that was her secret - I think what I expect is that she has something else troubling her, and also yeah she is L/B/P/A/T/Poly but that’s not a secret it’s just never come up. I wonder if she has an oath she regrets or an authority figure she’s been afraid to speak out against, for fear Thor would consider it dishonourable?

Social justice is a tech tree, you have to research "Safe Sane and Consensual" before you can research "Queer Rights" or "Polyamory"

I do wonder if the point of her joining is to highlight that her arc isn’t over, saving the world is everyone arc, because it’s everyone’s world.

I’m looking forward to it regardless, I trust the Giant a lot at this point.

It's time for an Avengers style mass reunion

Also, if we were going to find out Minrah's thing, wouldn't now be the time to do so?

Like, she specifically going to clear that up right now. It's personal business that we have been given no reason to think will have any further plot implications.

I supposed we could take the next strip to do that, but, I doubt it. Somethings aren't meant to be answered. I mean, we already have things like that in the story regarding Belkar's past and Varsuuvius' gender, that haven't been revealed and explicitly will not be revealed.

Edited by LSBK on Sep 19th 2019 at 1:54:19 PM