AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Yeah, that has been bothering me a lot. Every time I go to see an update everyone has nearly that same face on the main page. The story feels like it's been dragging along despite the fact that it updates four days a week, as well. Now that I think about it, the whole prologue could have been a lot shorter or those characters could have had their stories interspersed between main story segments, making the pacing a lot better. Post-apocalyptic horror, flashback to one of the character's parents/grandparents, and repeat. I think I'll just drop it for now and come back a few months later to see what's happened.

Order of the Stick book finale.

Just...dammit Rich...

Is that how vampires work in D&D?

They can if and evil god is just saying "fuck it" and cheating.

Well in DnD with the alignment change accompanying vampirism he would need to switch to a deity of fitting alignment to keep his cleric powers, so that plothole of sorts is filled. A cleric of a rival deity falling in your lap against his will seems like something a diety would take personal interest in, and mind control of a mid level character that is already mind controlled by one of your servants is trivial for a high-level diety.

Okay, so... why does anyone bother trying to do ANYHING in Order Of the Stick? Because no matter what you do, there's like a thousand other fucking assholes waiting to exploit any tiny progress you make, knocking you right back down to square one. Have the characters even accomplished anything so far? Xykon is still alive, he has access to more manpower than he did at the start of the story, the Snarls prison gets weaker by the day, and apparently, now a fucking evil god decides to throw her hat in

Meanwhile, Durkon is trapped within his own mind while a vampire spirit plans to do god knows what with his body, V committed genocide and lost his family, Roy died and Elan found out his father is a megalomaniac narcissist who is busy exploiting an unstable region, but cant be dealt with right now, because the entire world is at stake. It seems like the past decade of comics has just led to everything getting worse for the main characters, with no real drawbacks to the villains, unless you count Redcloak losing his eye.

Hrm, that's fairly true. However, in terms of character development I think tons of positive progress has been made.

Chracter development is well and good, necessary even, but when you have an epic plot like this I expect it to actually GO somewhere, not just tread water. I mean, it got painfully obvious really early on that the gates would all be made useless or inaccessible one way or another so everything would all come to a head at the last one, making the entire story just feel like filler. Either that, or Rick was trying to make a commentary on the abject futility of trying to positively influence anything, because the ones with power can crush you like ants and unmake all your progress like nothing

Order of the Stick has always been about how it's the choices everyone makes that determines their fate. No deus ex machina will ever save someone if they made the wrong choice, as seen when Roy fought Xykon in midair and Durkon went against Malak.

You're right in that the Order faces huge odds against them, but you keep forgetting that Rich knows how to write a satisfying story. They're not going to win the day through sheer power or magical might or any other method of overpowering their foes, that's not how they work.

They're just going to make the right choices. And it's going to be oh so satisfying to see them succeed because of it.

Well I can't wait until it gets posted a fucking month from now so I can enjoy it.

Take a look at his Twitter. He hasn't posted anything for several days, which is very much out of the ordinary. Some people on Giant in the Playground think something may have happened to him, since he mentioned going to the hospital twice for chest pains over the weekend.

I didn't even notice the tweet I posted was a week old.

Swerve! A face turn for AnvilHead!

PRAISE HELIX