My objection was that he had undercut the main characters with their inaction. The overall plot is well-established: get to the next gate and stop Xykon. Instead, for the past hundred strips, Elan and V and Durkon have been puttering around uselessly obeying the orders of a minor character who wants to go backward and retake Azure City. Haley and Belkar have been puttering around uselessly organizing a rebellion and Celia … Celia? … has to get things back on track.
It would be like finding the Fellowship of the Ring having a drink in Edoras, shagging the local girls of the Rohirrim, when Farmer Maggot shows up and takes command of the Armies of the West. It’s a great big what-the-fuck? Why have the characters lost sight of the plot and why should that be interesting?
The more they twiddle around and twist in the wind, the less urgent the Snarl looks. What’s one city compared to destroying the universe? Oh no no, we must rescue the city. Yawn. I find it to puncture the dramatic tension, personally.
That said, I’m glad things appear to be moving in a direction again. Good grief, was the long interval really necessary?
That’s the change. Before, he was a homocidal psychopath- killing things, blatantly criminal, totally immoral and perfectly OK with that and unconcerned with interpersonal relationships. Now, he’s a homocidal sociopath- he loves killing things, criminal behavior, and using interpersonal relationships cynically to get what he wants and to cover up his evil nature.
Inaction? They’ve been fighting orcs, goblins, ninjas, vampires, giant demons, thieves, golems, and sea trolls. There’s been constant action.
As for the plot, there are people who’ve made the joke about how Gandalf could have just had one of the giant eagles fly him to Mordor and dropped the ring into the volcano. The whole story could have been wrapped up in about five pages. So the other 1100 pages of the trilogy was just an unnecessary waste of time.
It’s a story. The entertainment is in enjoying the trip while it lasts not in getting to the end as quickly as possible.
The action has been — except for the giant demon — an anticlimax. When your objective is to stop an epic sorcerer from destroying the world, it’s a little bit of a letdown to worry about protecting the throne of Who-Cares-Where from being usurped by Who-Cares-Who and his minions So-What and Big-Deal. There are bigger fish to fry, and Rich (and all his characters save V) seems to have forgotten about it.
Also, the protagonists were no longer driving the plot. It’s a failure of basic dramatic structure.
I prefer to view the interval since the fall of Azure City as a kind of entr’acte…at the end of the last Act, the Order got separated by circumstances beyond their control. The entire storyline since then has been the travails of the different groups that the Order were split into. The beginning of the next Act will come when Roy gets rezzed and the Order comes back together. But the entr’acte served a necessary purpose…almost every member of the Order has grown in the intervening time. Roy is going to be leader of an OOTS that doesn’t really resemble the Order that existed before the Battle of Azure City that much.
How do you know that? You’re just assuming the main point of the story is Xykon’s defeat. Maybe it’s a red herring and Xykon is going to die next month when he trips down a flight of stairs. Maybe the only purpose he served in the story was to act as a motive to bring the group to Azure City so they could be split up and now that he’s served his purpose Burlew plans on eliminating him. So he can devote his attention to the real story which is about how Therkla’s father and the Oracle will be banding together to seek revenge and whether the ghost of Eric Greenhilt will be able to help O-Chul defeat the archmage Tsukiko. Maybe the last hundred strips, which you say is a distraction from the real story, is actually the real story finally beginning.
To echo what Little Nemo is saying, you can’t say that the dramatic structure has failed when you haven’t seen the entire structure. Calling the current status of the strip an “anti-climax” is absurd, as we’re currently post-climax: the fall of Azure City. What’s currently happening is the build up to the next climax, which to my eye is proceeding nicely. You can’t proceed directly from climax to climax, because then the whole concept of “climax” loses all significance. You need periods of retrenchment, where the tempo slows, so that you have something to build up again.
As for the protagonists not driving the plot, I simply don’t see it. Aside from Roy’s celestial time out, the original core group of characters has been central to all the action that’s occured since the fall of the city. So far, they’ve spent more time reacting than acting, but that’s not a function of dramatic structure, just an effect of the needs of the story at this point.
I never said that Burlew can do no wrong. If he stops entertaining me, I’ll stop reading him. But I’m not holding him to some arbitrary standard I made up myself.
You however have repeatedly said that the strip is wandering off its main plot. Which would indicate you feel you have some special knowledge of what the plot is. Maybe you do. Maybe “Rich” has shared some special insights with you.
Assuming, however, that you don’t have any more knowledge of what the overall plot is than any of the rest of us, I’d say it’s presumptious of you to decide what parts of an ongoing story are vital to the plot and what parts are not. You’ve decided that defeating Xykon is the main story and most strips since 484 are a waste of time. Maybe other readers might feel that defeating the Linear Guild is the main story and think that the Azure City storyline was a distraction from the real story. Maybe other readers feel that Miyo was the main antagonist and are wondering why the strip is still going on now that the story’s ended.
I’m with you on the story being interesting, but I also think you’re reaching here. Unless Burlew is doing some crazy pomo desconstructivist storytelling, the defeat of Xykon will occur during the final climactic scene of the comic. The main hero’s main quest is to defeat him, and he’s been the main opponent since the strip’s inception.
I have no problem with side quests and subplots as long as they stay interesting, but Burlew so far appears to be following a pretty conventional story structure, and there’s no reason to be snarky at someone who draws conclusions based on that structure.
Well, that’s not so obvious. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Big Bad in the finale was Snarl, Red Cloak or even transmogrified V. We’ve seen plots like that before, even without deconstruction of storytelling.
You have been reading Order of the Stick, right? Not League of the Stick or Order of the Rod? Deconstructionist storytelling defines the strip to the point that it’s predictable in its deconstructions.
Defeating Xykon will definitely not be the climax; it’s going to be a false climax that will be quickly deflated and subverted.
I agree that it’s most likely that the Order of the Stick’s efforts to defeat Xykon and Recloak is the most likely main storyline of the series. I’ll even agree that I don’t see how the current plotlines are directly advancing that plotline. But I’m not claiming I’m a better expert on the story than Rich Burlew is. In the past, he’s shown he knows what he’s doing, so I’m going to assume it’s likely he knows what he’s doing now. If he thinks the current plot is worth including in the overall story, he probably knows more than I do on the subject.
And there was the comment one of the demon roaches made once about there being at least nine different factions in the series, some of which hadn’t been revealed yet. So I think there’s still some major revelations left.
Just for a start, I disagree that the “sorcerer destroying the world” is the main plot. It is, and always has been, one of several threads. There are various characters with different agendas. The purposes overlap to a certain extent so they can be allies, but they are pursuing different goals. Shojo wanted to protect all the gates from all threats, which includes Sabine. Hinjo only wanted to protect one gate, and the city, and ignored the other gates. Roy had a blood oath to destroy Xykon, and didn’t even know about the gates. Haley wants to gain enough treasure to pay her father’s ransom. V is on a quest for arcane knowledge. For both Haley and V, joining Roy’s fight is only a means to an end. They are fighting togrther, but not for the same goals.
We’ve seen advancement in several ongoing stories. The story of V’s quest for power has sent him off the rails. There’s plot advancemnt for you. There’s the story of Belkar’s reform and growth into a more heroic character. Definite plot advancement on that strand. There’s the Elan/ Haley love story. The lovers separated is an old story, but it’s developing nicely. We’re heading for a resolution on that strand, I think. Then there’s Haley’s quest to free her father. We’ve just had some information there, I think she’ll be persuing that in the next chapter.
If the story had been about defeating Xykon, then it would have been a lot shorter, and boring.
