El Goonish Shive

In Dungeons & Dragons, rolling a natural twenty is an automatic success. If there's something with no penalty for failure (such as picking a normal lock) you can "take twenty" to automatically succeed without a roll, but it takes twenty times as long.

Tobias is saying that Voltaire wasn't a lucky genius, he was careful and patient.

Oh hey there's hanma.

So... Voltaire wants to be a demigod. All fine and dandy. But... demigods? That's a very specific term... one that requires the existence of at least one god or higher being than the demigod. So why does he want to be a demigod, and not an actual god?

Probably due to Shive's twitchiness with God and Christianity.

He's been emphasizing that he wants immortals to be demigods "once more." Presumably that's what they used to be, and there are stronger entities that would object to them flat-out calling themselves gods. Heka, the god of magic, for example, is something entirely different than immortals. Whether all gods are like him (he mentions a "mantle," implying something that can be passed on) or it's just a label for his power level is unclear.

Right. What we're seeing here isn't the final outcome of one masterfully crafted plan brilliantly executed despite all the uncontrollable variables. Rather, Voltaire had an end goal in mind, and he just kept trying shit until something finally worked.

It's not clear to me that Voltaire has actually won yet; I'd expect some combination of Jerry, the French Immortals, Pandora, and random Immortals 7, 12, and 43 to speak out against this rule change.

Those voices might not be enough.

Neo Jerry's intensely frustrated by the obligation to fulfill his past life's oath. He's been doing it through gritted teeth since we met him. He'd probably welcome the opportunity to be free of it.

I don't know that the French twins have enough going on upstairs to really have a strong opinion one way or the other.

Pandora's taking a temporary vacation from existence so I don't think she gets a vote.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 30th 2018 at 8:07:33 AM

NP Gam-19

Gotta take care of the bush.

Fun fact, this current arc lasted a whole out of universe year.

That's pretty short. A party lasted almost 3.

The party also had schedule delays. This is Shive on a consistent schedule, and you can even see there are a LOT of chapters in this arc, comparatively.

Just wait until Dan gets the brilliant idea to do another Painted Black arc.

Well, part of the reason why there are so many chapters is that he carved the arc into more pieces than he usually does. Chapters aren't as long as they were in previous arcs.

For instance, the chapter "Traffic Freeze", which takes place over the course of only three pages.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 31st 2018 at 6:03:17 AM

Sister 3-310

And with that this Arc is done. And while we all knew Pandora would return I for one is happy we got to see it happen.

Of course, this just raises more questions because it doesn't resolve how much functions as memory and how much is "here's a book of your past".

I think Tobias is, of all things, being too generous to Voltaire here. At best, I'll give him credit for Indy Ploy, but any more than that hits Xanatos Roulette territory. He didn't "take 20" so much as he walked up to take advantage of the aftermath. He wasn't genius, or careful, or anything. He just caused chaos until a situation he could take advantage of came up.

As for the specific use of "demigods"... this might be because proclaiming oneself a god is Tempting Fate. It might be because Voltaire recognizes that immortals have limits above and beyond immortal law that prevent full-on godhood (such as a lack of omniscience - even Pandora, for all her abilities and power, clearly lacked that). Or it might be because we already know of some entities (as Diskar notes) that are explicitly more powerful. Or some combination thereof.

As for whether Voltaire can pull this off... well, yes and no. Villains in general in this comic have a habit of Didn't Think This Through, so I think that he will manage to pull off something... and then forget that other immortals won't necessarily agree with him and thus give him a beatdown (I would assume that it would come at the hands of Elliot, Ellen, and Nanase, but since when do main characters in this comic handle the big threats?). Even if we assume that he can handily take care of reborn Pandora, Zeus, Helena, and Demetrius (Pandora only freshly reborn, Zeus sitting on a few months of recharge, Helena and Demetrius on a couple years, whereas it seems safe to assume that Voltaire has at least decades of power accumulation), it wouldn't surprise me if there are other immortals ready to beef with him if he tries interfering too much.

Well, he's going for a full on rewrite of immortal law, which naturally requires consent and not starting a fight. The fact that Pandora has reset whilst retaining emotional connections or the like would actually make her—even if for practical purposes harmless—potentially a very persuasive voice in any push to undo the laws.

"We should change the laws because look at what happened!"

"But I was fine with it."

I wonder if some will catch on that it was his fault it happened in the first place. Immortals hide their activities from each other, but Voltaire revealed himself to Tedd & co., so if any other immortal was watching them at the time...

And there is a good chance that Helena and Demetrius were watching. I mean, his plan at the mall got derailed simply because they were still following Elliot around and got fed up with him bullshitting everyone.

I kinda like how the MC's aren't the main drivers of world changing plots wherein world changing plots are still happening. I have trouble articulating how or why this is.

Something to do with them still being grounded while tangentially enough related to what's happening that we can go back and forth- not seamlessly, but not too jarringly - between this sort of small-scale stakes and large-scale stakes.

It nearly ties in to my own dream comic, a slice-of-life comic taking place in a super hero universe not focusing on the superheroes, but likely with some frequent interactions that tie into world building while mostly focusing how that world affects the little people.

I can understand why it would be nice to not have a protagonist-centered story the entire time, but I think Shive takes it too far to the other side of that. Sister III was a major arc for the comic, but most of the protagonists were entirely irrelevant to it. Susan, Tedd and Ellen were arguably the only protagonists somehow connected to it, and even then they barely did anything other than be unwillingly involved in things, with only Tedd being truly relevant. Even Elliot was just sort of incidental, and barely a factor at all. Meanwhile, Grace, Sarah, Justin and Nanase were just sort of forgotten for the entirety of the arc, one whole year for us. It's a good practice to not have your main characters affect literally everything in the world, but making it so that they're mostly irrelevant to a major arc is a step too far, in my opinion.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Aug 1st 2018 at 5:44:21 AM

Yep, basically. There's the issue of "protagonists do everything" and it's valid to want to subvert that but boy does shive swing that pendulum too hard in the other direction.

We are basically following a set of characters who are pawns in the machinations of more powerful beings.

I am fine with that.

So, you like the Pinball Protagonist?