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OP edited to make this header - Fighteer
edited 18th Sep '17 1:08:08 PM by Fighteer
I would be less amused by Thog's antics if he had any power to affect anything outside a stick figure webcomic. He's significantly less dangerous than a house cat, so the readers are free to find him lovable and feel sad when he dies.
That said, I don't think Thog is going to get sacrificed, at least not anytime soon. It would be a significant waste of effort and resources from an in-universe perspective and a very strange move narrative wise, since Nale is consistently characterized as comically evil and/or pitiable rather than genuinely hateable. Killing Thog at this point would provide nothing but shock value, and perhaps a small bit of Black Comedy.
Hey! Who are you calling a demon!
Edited by Tharkun140 on Jun 5th 2025 at 5:23:21 PM
Apathy is Death. Worse than Death, because at least a rotting corpse feeds beasts and insects.Maybe it's a Curse of the Black Pearl situation, and they only need a token sacrifice of a few drops of blood, despite appearances—from a mortal. So they resurrected the one mortal guaranteed to be happy to provide such to his buddy Nale.
Edit: Besides, if Nale is about to kill Thog, he wouldn't care about conjuring clothes to prevent frostbite.
Edited by HeraldAlberich on Jun 5th 2025 at 11:48:21 AM
I would be less amused by Thog's antics if he had any power to affect anything outside a stick figure webcomic. He's significantly less dangerous than a house cat, so the readers are free to find him lovable and feel sad when he dies.
I feel like I shouldn't be baited into this, but by that standard, since none of what happens in the comic is real, we shouldn't care about any of it. Nale also has no power to affect anything outside of a stick figure webcomic. The worst any of them can do to us is give us eyestrain (or paper cuts if we bought the books).
Fairly sure he needs UMD to use a cleric scroll.
Edited by Fighteer on Jun 5th 2025 at 11:53:59 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Come to think of it: killing Thog to establish a link to the fountain wluld mean making him the fountain's first fuel source and melt him down for energy right?
meaning A Fate Worse Than Death -no afterlife and no meeting the puppy again for poor Thog
Edited by dcutter2 on Jun 5th 2025 at 12:29:46 PM
x5
The comic which has Nale die makes it explicit that he's a horrible person who deserved what happened to him...but Tarquin's still a piece of shit for doing it. And he didn't deserve it because he provoked Tarquin, but because he's done so many horrible things.
Thog's also a horrible person who's killed tons of people. And despite his goofy behavior and mindset, he absolutely deserves to die and burn in the Big Fire Below. The only unfortunate thing is that he's too stupid to recognize such an afterlife as a punishment.
Edited by M84 on Jun 5th 2025 at 9:42:51 PM
Disgusted, but not surprisedNale is definitely going to sacrifice Thog at some point, but I guess it's not going to happen right now. Otherwise, he wouldn't have bothered conjuring clothes for him, nor he would have said "last chance for alone time" to Sabine.
That said, I think it might happen sooner rather than later. A way to subvert the expectations of "another funny and relatively light-hearted Linear Guild storyline", and to Shoo Out the Clowns from the final arc.
Count me as a vote for “Nale is going to sacrifice Thog”. Nale and Sabine talk about establishing a connection to the fountain full of blood, Sabine shows she has Tarquin’s poison ring, and then they summon Thog. That suggests Thog is going to have a role in establishing that connection; and killing someone who trusts you would be a suitably Infernal requirement for establishing the connection.
Sabine may have anticipated this and planned ahead, in case her bosses were expecting Nale would sacrifice her.
Edited by Galadriel on Jun 6th 2025 at 5:33:47 AM
I had an interesting thought:
I wonder if this entire set up is just that, a Set-up?
It would be completely in character for IFCC the lead Nale around with carefully worded statements and let his ego fill in the blanks.
I know they explicitly stated "We promote you to devilhood and enhance you with the fountain, in return for which you will destroy the Gate and release the Snarl".
But!
How funny would it be if the Dagger doesn't just trigger the power transfer of the Fountain, but also determined the target? Imagine if Nale and Sabine stab Thog, and simply become the first energy snacks of Thog's ascension to fiend-hood? Bonus poetic points if Thog becomes a daemon, completing the theme of Demon-Devil-Daemon power coming together.
I don't think it will go this route, but it was a fun little tangent to explore.
I was a little late commenting on this, but hey!
Thog is back!
You know, I deeply appreciate that, even if Thog is kinda goofy, he's still evil and the author understands that.
One Strip! One Strip!

To be clear, I'm not saying the act itself would not be horrific, although as noted it's hard for Nale to become any less sympathetic. I'm saying that Thog, of all people, is not a cute little puppy, the kicking of which should trigger feelings of betrayed horror.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"