Wasn’t Chekhov’s gun a phaser?
You’re thinking of Chekhov’s pun.
Okay, but if we start talking about Kirk’s dirk, I am LEAVING the conversation.
The good one or the evil one?
I think maybe I’m becoming a little obsessed… I had a dream last night in which the major newspapers were celebrating the publication of the 250th strip. Then I tried to show some friend this thread, but they kept clicking on the wrong links.
No, that would be Chekov’s gun. (TV Tropes covers everything)
Does it have a Brazilian wax, or not?
Hang on, let jayjay check.
Ewwww…even I stop short of checking out Bill Shatner’s bikini area…
Kirk has two? That would explain a lot.
I wouldn’t call it a coup, because they weren’t trying to take the guild over, just kill a significant number of its members.
…and create a power vacuum. I don’t think you have to replace the government you destroyed in order to call it a coup.
I’ve always understood a coup to be an attempt to seize power, not merely to remove a government. Could be wrong, though.
I believe the original phrase is sometimes stated as, “If you hang a gun on the wall during act one, the audience will expect it to be fired by act three.” It’s really nothing more than setting up a plot element in a very visible, undeniable way, which sets up an audience expectation.
Then again, there was also a rule in 2nd edition (option, but then most 2nd edition rules were optional) that you didn’t necessarily get XP from combat, either. Warriors got XP from killing enemies, no matter how they did it, but not from anything else; priests got XP from monsters they defeated using spells or devotion to their deity, and also for solving any other problem they solved that way; rogues got XP from monsters they defeated through Backstab or trickery, and also for wealth looted, and mages got XP from monsters defeated or problems solved through spells or cunning. But a wizard who whacked a goblin to death with his staff wouldn’t get any XP for it.
I agree. It’s something that’s going to be used in the story at some later point. An example would be the Girdle of Masculinity/Feminity way back in Strip #9. At that time it did nothing but you could guess it would later be the center of some event.
In Crystal’s killing, on the other hand, the event has happened. So the revelation were waiting for is seeing the consequence of that event not the event itself.
Speaking of call backs to old strips…
So incoming complication in 5-4-3-2…
Now that’s what I call lampshading. Burlew’s making fun of the dreadfully slow pacing, or at least the perceived slow pacing readers have been grumbling about ever since the attack on Azure City.
ETA: Ooh! Check out the cast page! 
Check out the cast page.