Exposition 1b
This is the second half of the page the posted yesterday. ~STH
Exiern
Swords, Sorcery, And Then Some!
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Swords, Sorcery, And Then Some!
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Written by Scott T. Hicken with art by Antipus, the comic updates Mondays.
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Games…this could be a fun way to let us in on the pieces as well as Tiffany.
Got to ask yesterday, but was the “Lord Xanatos” bit are a reference to gargoyles?
Indirectly, maybe – probably a reference to a “Xanatos Gambit“, where you’ve contrived a situation where, no matter what the other guy does, you still win.
Ok, but that still doesn’t explain what’s up with Isabel, though i guess it’s likely she might have angered one of the members of Rem’s Justice.
I’m also wondering how Typhan-Knee fits into any of this, he’s not exactly the type for “subtle plans”.
No wonder Teresa took it personally when Typhan-Knee accused her of being a pedophile back when they first fought.
Uhm… “Hi, my name is Theresa. The church I used to work for has evidence against me as a pedo. They also wants to stop me from abusing my magical powers. The same powers I am using constantly rigth now.. Me becoming queen is just a bonus , realy, no reason to misstrust me, just listen to my song!”
“I am the King. I lie and murder, but I am still willing tomrisk all for some commoners kids! I am not hypnotised, no sir!”
On the other hand, would add to the story if both T and K is honest atm. I have perhaps misconceptions against both of them.
Yeah, asking Princess P-cups to try and figure out clues without a flow-chart is just being mean 😛
When are they going to let Knight Typh in on the plan? Obviously that was what Kingie was going around to do (unless he still thought Terry and Princess P-cups was still there)
I have deleted a post which, I believe and hope, was intended to reflect the bigoted beliefs of characters and organizations inside the comic’s world. However, it’s wording did not necessarily reflect that. If it was your comment that was deleted, and my assumption is correct, please make clear the context of the comments if you decide to repost.
I have deleted a reply to that deleted comment so as to not cause confusion.
Its a interesting Parallel to the indecent in the Catholic church. I wonder if this was partly why Tiff Accused Theresa? If there been rumors and jokes like in are world with Catholic Priests? I also wonder at the root?The Catholic church had several Founders and Saints as known Pedophiles Emperor Constantine, and Augustine of Hippo..(these are historical facts not empty theory) as a result many Priests felt they could be excused if there most respected holy of hollies could. So wondering if the Church of Rem had a similar history?
There even a Rumor Pope John II was Poisoned.
Games? Did someone say Games?! ;”D
I can say that this storyline was purely born from the implications of Typh and Teresa’s exchange way way back that @Bandit already referenced.
Real life parallels can certainly be made, as they can be with most things, and I’m only posting this comment here to make it clear that my intentions are only to show a powerful fictional organization that has been corrupted by individuals, and not an attack on, nor broad sweeping characterization of, real events, individuals, or institutions.
“All appearing in this work are fictitious” and what-not.
Figured as much, it explains why it bothered when Typhan-Knee made that crack. I mean, Teresa otherwise usually a laughs it off when people insult her, but that comment had touch a nerve.
I love that Scott is referencing old events like that.
Bandit or Scott, can you identify where that is? I don’t remember it.
The exchange starts here; http://www.exiern.com/2010/07/01/exiern-2010-06-051-jweb/
The actual accusation is here; http://www.exiern.com/2010/07/06/exiern-2010-06-06-j-1-web/
Oh, yeah. “Best parade ever.”
I am guessing my post was the one deleted. I made a lot of extra effort trying to word it in a way that would get my point across, but not make myself look like a stupid bigot. That most definitely is not the kind of person I am, nor the kind of attitude I want to post here. However, there is a very real point I want to make here, so I will try again in a very different way.
Theresa is a gigantic hypocrite.
Theresa was a holy man, turned into a woman. And, due to whatever personality and sexual issues he has, he loved the change. He then defied the church, and prevented their efforts to change him back, and to punish him for his indiscretions.
The church of rem, as I understand it is a 100% male organization. No girls allowed. His actions are an affront to their traditions.
Skip ahead to now, and we discover that he has taken this to a whole new level, and has married the king. How many holy vows has he now broken? How heretical and shameful must he appear to the church? How much has he shamed himself, and doesn’t even care? All for his selfish (sexual?) desire to be a woman and live a woman’s life.
Now, I am not faulting him for being transgendered. I am a good bit of TG myself, and I think this would be an amazing experience if it happened to me. But I am going to be blunt here. For all intents and purposes, Theresa is a sexual deviant, especially in the eyes of the church.
Now with that said, I find it incredibly hypocritical that after all of that, Theresa wants to “Bring down the church”, over a different kind of sexual deviant.
I am certainly NOT condoning pedophiles, but what I am reading here is “All my blasphemous behavior is fine, but we gotta do something about those other guys!”
Just wow. I didn’t really like Theresa to begin with, but wow.
The difference is that Coriander is raping children, if we are to believe the story. I get the impression that he and his cronies have other plans, as well.
Theresa apparently only wants to live her own life.
Granted, we still do not know why the Church deprecates female spellsingers. And I have my own qualms about Theresa and Urtica’s plan.
(Also, in the referenced fight, i get the impression that Tiff resents Theresa for enjoying her change as much as anything. This suggests Tiff is denying her shame over own preferences.)
But I’ll wait and see.
I’m still waiting Peonie to ask about the statue in the room.
And I’m waiting to find out what, exactly, Peonie and Tiffany can do to help.
@JMV But again, Teresa is nothing like the pedophiles, what they are doing is obviously worse. Whatever sex Teresa has had were consentual and with people of legal age.
So no, Teresa is not a hypocrite. The prose stories have also stated that she and the King are going to do reforms to allow women to enter the church of Rem.
@50srefuge: I especially wonder what Typhan-Knee could do to help, considering Typhan-Knee’s way of dealing with this would be to just kill them.
As satisfying as that would be, i think the King and Teresa are looking for a more subtle way of dealing with this matter.
Btw, @ScottHicken will we learn what exactly happened to Isabel soon? I just want to know if she’s ok.
For that matter, will we learn more of her relationship with Teresa?
@Jake – I don’t have the pages in front of me, but I THINK the page with Isabel’s explanation will time out to post on the 10th.
JMV, the difference is that Theresa’s sexual deviancy is something that most readers of this comic will condone, while the other guy’s sexual deviancy is something that most readers of this comic will not condone. As far as the in-comic world/church goes, yes, they’re both probably equally sexually deviant.
Anyway, I still don’t see why that woman is stone now. Will the revelation of what’s going on be a head-smacking, “Holy cow, that was foreshadowed here and there, and we all totally missed that,” or a “ok, the character used in-world knowledge that we don’t have to come up with a conclusion that, while it shows us how smart that character is, isn’t something that any of us could possibly have done” revelation? In other words, is this going to be like Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, or Sherlock Holmes?
The 10th? That’s a lot of exposition still to go.
I’m actually surprised Peonie has momentarily forgotten about what happened to Isabel.
Then again, she got quite the bombshell dropped on her lap.
Teresa has further good reason to distrust “Rem’s Justice” even if the charges are false. Despite empirical evidence that the gender change was done by an outside entity against Thomas/Teresa’s will, there is also the fact while there are some who can SUPPRESS the curse, temporarily, it rebounds, and attempting to suppress it with too much force causes it to retaliate.
Even after being presented with all that, Rem’s Justice slapped a “silence” collar on Teresa, and tried to drag her away (presumably for imprisonment, torture, and execution going by a rather heated discussion King Urtica had with the head of that particular squad a bit later) WHILE SHE WAS DEFENDING CASTLE URTICA from several armed and hostile forces. In addition, they magically assaulted her legal council, Denver, for daring to actually ask for an enumerated list of charges against her.
Saying that Teresa is a hypocrite for opposing pedophiles is like saying someone who smokes pot is a hypocrite for opposing murder… both are illegal after all…
It literally makes no sense at all unless you *are* equating transgender and pedophilia.
JMV, if the only thing you see wrong with pedophilia is that it deviates from the norm, there’s something very wrong with your understanding of sexual morality.
Deviations are deviations. Abuse is abuse. The two neither indicate nor exclude each other.
tiff has yet to claim her reward for saving peonie. tiff gets to wed peonie.
@Sassafras That was changed to wedding the King and Typhan-Knee turned it down.
“The Catholic church had several Founders and Saints as known Pedophiles Emperor Constantine, and Augustine of Hippo..(these are historical facts not empty theory) as a result many Priests felt they could be excused if there most respected holy of hollies could. ”
While I cannot speak about Augustine of Hippo, the fact that Constantine was a Pedo is *not* correlated with him being a Christian to much degree, but far more to him being the Emperor. This was the man who captured the Church for the Empire to use as glue to hold itself together. Powerful human males, being at the top of their local hierarchy, often exhibit their personal agency cost to the hierarchy’s great detriment. Unfortunately, partaking of pedophilia is one of the lesser such costs when you observe how many an otherwise virtuous Emperor can get killed, such as Valens did at the Battle of Adrianople.
That smaller degree of agency cost is why pedophilia is so often passed over by others in their society, on top of the fact that the top dog in the hierarchy is most often someone that is dangerous to antagonize. This gets even worse when we find people high up in elites getting away with it for the same reasons.
We have the recent case of the billionaire financier, who had his own little island in the US Virgin Islands, stocked with barely pubescent girls, which population would wander around at parties for the rich and famous on the island, topless, when they didn’t wander off with adult men and sometimes women. He made sure he invited many of the most elite people he could find, from Bill Clinton to IIRC, several Saudi Princes. He flew them to the island on his personal jet. Doing this, he assumed it would insulate himself from prosecution. It did for a number of years, till some of the girls survived to grow to adults, gain other means of income, and were thus able to hire lawyers. Those Billions could soon be distributed among his victims of abuse, while he rots in jail.
The point is that these agency costs to society are little stemmed by religion, because these behaviors have *deep* roots in human evolution. Among the most concrete is that it genetically behooved the leader of a gang/party of hunter-gatherers to select those females to invest in that would have the longest number of fertile years. It’s the number of grandchildren that rules human evolution as long as natural selection is the determining factor. Perhaps this will change as genetic engineering becomes the selection factor in the near future.
This is a creative solution to a problem created by poor layout planning.
Not sure if I’m complimenting or criticizing you for it?
… yeah, me neither. 😛
Remove them is a nice way of saying kill them. This is the only sane thing to do. The bad seeds in the church of Rem are way to powerful to leave on this side of the dirt.
I think the King and Tess are provoking a attack by them to elminate them.
That way they can look like the good guys.
I am also going to guess Isabel was stoned to keep her loose lips shut.
>> >> Got to ask yesterday, but was the “Lord Xanatos” bit are
>> >> a reference to gargoyles?
>> Indirectly, maybe – probably a reference to a “Xanatos Gambit“, where
>> you’ve contrived a situation where, no matter what the other guy does,
>> you still win.
The Xanatos Gambit is explicitly named for David Xanatos from “Gargoyles,” so using that name isn’t just a reference, it’s a well-deserved Lampshade Hanging on Urtica’s many Magnificent Bastard qualities.
@Bad Taiming71 : Unlikely since Isabel is friends with Peonie and would not have any reason to have loose lips.
At this point it’s obvious it was the guys Teresa is fighting against that did that to Isabel, especially since Isabel is an old acquaintance of Teresa.
@T’Ren but his point was that it was reference to the trope itself.
Jake, Isabel might not have a malicious reason to spread tales–she just might be enough of a chatterbox that Theresa and Urtica couldn’t take the risk.
But I agree it’s more likely, if not obvious, that she is the victim of enemy action.
Blanking the future!
That’s what the song is for.