Is this a long line of “miss the joke and then make almost the same joke except more and more contrived”, or am I missing some reference or layer of meta-humor?
“They are the ENEMY. They are not just wrong; they are EVIL and must be UTTERLY DEFEATED. Better for us all to die at the hands of some terroristic monster – and no longer exist – than to be found consorting and compromising with … THEM (ugh!).”
Am I reading GA, or listening to the current campaign rhetoric of Dems and Repubs?
Harky didn’t say they should never cooperate against a mutual enemy. He’s just disappointed that they didn’t kill them when the monster was vanquished.
And if you have reason to expect that you would be turned on the second a common foe is defeated, why would you ever cooperate as opposed to just saying “Good luck with that!” and walking away.
Common enemies should be a sign of common ground, a way to find an end to the war that doesn’t involve unending slaughter.
or just…pretty much any war. during the US war for independance…Christmas comes around and the British and Rebels hold a ceasefire…middle of the night comes and Washington storms in and kills everyone. Best time to kill the enemy is when they think you are going to honor your word to not kill them.
And I hadn’t thought about that… I figure Harky just sees Gastonia as an existential threat. Which there is justification for. I wouldn’t even assume he wants to exterminate humanity, necessarily, just make the world safe for trolls (and other non-humans (particularly avians)).
Though yeah he’ll probably keep going, such is life.
Given what we’ve seen it does seem like Gastonia certainly needs to be destroyed, either literally or philosophically through massive political change. Unfortunately an army of dispossessed nomads is really only good at one of those things.
I don’t think he’s explicitly saying he’s going to kill or subdue all non-troll races though. I mean Gondolessa is RIGHT THERE and that’s the sort of thing that leads to awkward, unwanted conversations at night.
I was initially disgusted, but then I thought about it; honourless as turning on them may be, the Adventurers were still their enemy. Sparing them then could cost their soldiers’ lives later.
If ethics were applicable to this war, there wouldn’t be a war.
But in that example, both sides had things in common, a shared religion. There were no jousting competitions between Christians and Muslims during the Crusades.
And as evidenced by the fraternization directly after, such as with Sundar bonding with the trolls, or Gravedust and Magda talking, they have more in common than either side previously thought.
Maybe not during the first crusade, but during the third there definitely were such levels of fraternisation. Although it did make Saladin famous for his chivalry so I guess it was unexpected.
The fourth crusade in turn caused most of its damage to Christians..
(Also take a look at the crusader kingdoms created after the first crusade, and who the subjects were)
The ironic thing is that they also burned down Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, which was filled with (Orthodox) Christians, which they were supposed to be aiding.
Don’t we all love the Crusades and the huge (and in the end pointless) slaughters that occurred.
The uh, Christmas Truce was kinda immediately followed by them shooting the hell out of each other again, just pointing that out there. Also, the years afterwards, both sides were explicitly ordered not to do it again.
All of that making it an incredible parallel to the situation above, actually.
The Christmas Truce was mostly a demonstration of how pointless World War I was. It didn’t take long for the war to stop being about Serbia and Austria and geopolitics and start being about just winning the war. After all, if you lose, all of those young men died for nothing. If you win, they still died for nothing, but you can pretend there was an actual point. When people absolutely despise each other they don’t sit around and play football with each other once the holidays roll around. Didn’t exactly happen with the Soviets and Nazis, did it?
They’re as applicable to this war as they are to any other, or to anything in general. I would say that the value of acting honorably towards your opponents probably correlates closely with how comfortable you are committing genocide. In this particular scene I suspect that there’s some variance in that comfort level.
Actually I’m pretty sure a human group would have attacked the trolls once they were done with the Beast. The Peacekeepers are more open minded and racially diverse. The humans tends to be just as bad as the trolls about the war…
If not worse. Harky would have simply ordered that the humans were their enemies, and the fighting would have resumed after their mutual truce. I imagine the human council in the same situation, and can’t help but think they’d almost certainly PRETEND there was a truce still on, while plotting to eliminate their enemies with no resistance.
Human leadership would probably have commanded their soldiers to see to saving human lives, but let the “savage” enemy die at the, er, tendrils, of the beast.
It’s not like none of the Peacekeepers pushed to “let the beast eat them,” calling Frigg of all people a “savage-lover” for seeing a problem with this.
Allowing the Peacekeepers to leave in peace after the battle would certainly have been a reasonable and humane thing to do, but honestly I was surprised that Penk invited them to eat and party with the Savage Races. That may have been a bridge too far.
Kind of off-topic, but when will the archive page update? The last few chapters have been great, but it’s getting difficult to go back on an archive binge.
And then Harky gave Penk ‘How to Cook Humans’ for Traal.
I believe that book is actually called “To Serve Man”.
The book you saw must have been covered in Space Dust. The full title is “How To Cook For Forty Humans”
no, no you mis-read that. it’s how to cook forty humans.
Hang on, I’ve discovered more dust on the book! It’s actually “How To Cook For Forty Humans And Then Eat Them”.
Is this a long line of “miss the joke and then make almost the same joke except more and more contrived”, or am I missing some reference or layer of meta-humor?
Simpsons did it.
They kinda did it…rough. I don’t remember it like that, but hey, I’m too lazy to google and see if they did it right or not.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxI7B758XBQ[/video]
This is what they are referencing.
if you post the link without the http:// then it auto links the address. keeping the http:// imbeds the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxI7B758XBQ
The thing about that skit that bothered me was the complete disregard the aliens had for sanitation. That was a LOT of dust on that cookbook…
;)
“They are the ENEMY. They are not just wrong; they are EVIL and must be UTTERLY DEFEATED. Better for us all to die at the hands of some terroristic monster – and no longer exist – than to be found consorting and compromising with … THEM (ugh!).”
Am I reading GA, or listening to the current campaign rhetoric of Dems and Repubs?
I thought I was reading a treatise on politicians, actually.
Harky didn’t say they should never cooperate against a mutual enemy. He’s just disappointed that they didn’t kill them when the monster was vanquished.
And if you have reason to expect that you would be turned on the second a common foe is defeated, why would you ever cooperate as opposed to just saying “Good luck with that!” and walking away.
Common enemies should be a sign of common ground, a way to find an end to the war that doesn’t involve unending slaughter.
I thought it was more like “It was ok in this case, but we’ll have deserters if anyone thinks I support working with humans”
Yeah. In short, Harky was teaching Penk some POLITICS.
http://www.dramabutton.com/
Fiction often makes commentary on the real world, and they GA is apparently drawing parallels between their war and The War on Brown People.
or just…pretty much any war. during the US war for independance…Christmas comes around and the British and Rebels hold a ceasefire…middle of the night comes and Washington storms in and kills everyone. Best time to kill the enemy is when they think you are going to honor your word to not kill them.
The trouble with that kind of thing is that it only works once.
And if it doesn’t work thoroughly enough, it seriously ups the ante for acceptable behaviour.
It’s an Ideology war than a war on brown people.
“So…would it be okay if I made them only mostly dead?”
You know, so they can come back? Like they did when you killed them?
Oooooooooh. Slick.
Ha! I bet even Harky can’t regenerate that kind of burn.
Burn!
Anybody else curious about what Harky intends for the non-Trolls of the World’s Rebellion, should they prove victorious?
That’s a war to be planned for another day.
These avatars, I swear.
And I hadn’t thought about that… I figure Harky just sees Gastonia as an existential threat. Which there is justification for. I wouldn’t even assume he wants to exterminate humanity, necessarily, just make the world safe for trolls (and other non-humans (particularly avians)).
Though yeah he’ll probably keep going, such is life.
Given what we’ve seen it does seem like Gastonia certainly needs to be destroyed, either literally or philosophically through massive political change. Unfortunately an army of dispossessed nomads is really only good at one of those things.
I don’t think he’s explicitly saying he’s going to kill or subdue all non-troll races though. I mean Gondolessa is RIGHT THERE and that’s the sort of thing that leads to awkward, unwanted conversations at night.
Gravatar + comment = perfect combo
Sure. Gondolessa and Iver are plenty curious about it, for starters.
I was initially disgusted, but then I thought about it; honourless as turning on them may be, the Adventurers were still their enemy. Sparing them then could cost their soldiers’ lives later.
If ethics were applicable to this war, there wouldn’t be a war.
People are still people. Go look up stuff such as the Christmas Truce.
But in that example, both sides had things in common, a shared religion. There were no jousting competitions between Christians and Muslims during the Crusades.
And as evidenced by the fraternization directly after, such as with Sundar bonding with the trolls, or Gravedust and Magda talking, they have more in common than either side previously thought.
Maybe not during the first crusade, but during the third there definitely were such levels of fraternisation. Although it did make Saladin famous for his chivalry so I guess it was unexpected.
The fourth crusade in turn caused most of its damage to Christians..
(Also take a look at the crusader kingdoms created after the first crusade, and who the subjects were)
Thanks for pointing this out!
The argument that Christians and Muslims have nothing in common is quite ridiculous.
The ironic thing is that they also burned down Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, which was filled with (Orthodox) Christians, which they were supposed to be aiding.
Don’t we all love the Crusades and the huge (and in the end pointless) slaughters that occurred.
Take me back to Constantinople!
The uh, Christmas Truce was kinda immediately followed by them shooting the hell out of each other again, just pointing that out there. Also, the years afterwards, both sides were explicitly ordered not to do it again.
All of that making it an incredible parallel to the situation above, actually.
Huh. The Truce of Traal. That’s how Penk’s dalliance with sanity will be remembered.
The Christmas Truce was mostly a demonstration of how pointless World War I was. It didn’t take long for the war to stop being about Serbia and Austria and geopolitics and start being about just winning the war. After all, if you lose, all of those young men died for nothing. If you win, they still died for nothing, but you can pretend there was an actual point. When people absolutely despise each other they don’t sit around and play football with each other once the holidays roll around. Didn’t exactly happen with the Soviets and Nazis, did it?
They’re as applicable to this war as they are to any other, or to anything in general. I would say that the value of acting honorably towards your opponents probably correlates closely with how comfortable you are committing genocide. In this particular scene I suspect that there’s some variance in that comfort level.
Applicable, alas, is not always applied.
Harky is just miffed he missed out.
Also that he is becoming obsolete.
Now drop down and gimmie 20…human heads.
biiiitch…
Wow, and then they wonder why the humans call them savages !
Actually I’m pretty sure a human group would have attacked the trolls once they were done with the Beast. The Peacekeepers are more open minded and racially diverse. The humans tends to be just as bad as the trolls about the war…
If not worse. Harky would have simply ordered that the humans were their enemies, and the fighting would have resumed after their mutual truce. I imagine the human council in the same situation, and can’t help but think they’d almost certainly PRETEND there was a truce still on, while plotting to eliminate their enemies with no resistance.
Human leadership would probably have commanded their soldiers to see to saving human lives, but let the “savage” enemy die at the, er, tendrils, of the beast.
It’s not like none of the Peacekeepers pushed to “let the beast eat them,” calling Frigg of all people a “savage-lover” for seeing a problem with this.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, until the time my enemy has been slain, then they become the enemy, and must be slain as well.
To steal from another webcomic, 29. The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy. No more. No less.
Just in case anyone was in danger of thinking the leadership of the Savage Races were somehow better than the leadership of the Gastonians…
I heard something interesting in the RL world, said by every living CIA director: “We can not kill our way out of this.”
Amazing how difficult a concept that is for people to grasp.
Duh Penk! It’s called FACTION WARS for a reason! Go join the care bear server if you want to be all friendly.
Allowing the Peacekeepers to leave in peace after the battle would certainly have been a reasonable and humane thing to do, but honestly I was surprised that Penk invited them to eat and party with the Savage Races. That may have been a bridge too far.
It would have been the humane thing to do. Not the trollane thing to do.
Kind of off-topic, but when will the archive page update? The last few chapters have been great, but it’s getting difficult to go back on an archive binge.
I wonder if Penk is telling Magda all about this, or just remembering it.
Well I guess this vindicates hammerhead’s position.
Looks like Harky’s being a real HAMMERHEAD on the issue.
Unfortunately, seeing how the human-and allies-government works, he has a point.