16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by Wolfie » Thu Jul 19, 2018 10:16 am

AXIS wrote: Tue Jul 17, 2018 5:41 am [sic] we should be getting a big hit of emotion
There is a big hit of emotion: Panic. Minmax is panicking and acting a fool. He's in love, she's in trouble, and he's unsure of what to do. His friend and intelligent side-kick isn't there to coax him in the right direction.

Also, there is another emotion: Amusement. Thaco is amused and trolling Minmax and CoN is being appreciative of that.

This type of trolling occurs in my house all the time.
Is this X?
Nope, Pay attention. It's X.
Oh. Thanks. I thought it was X, but I guess I was wrong.
Etc. Etc. :lol:
I'm waiting on next week's episode where they rag on him about his feelings, forgetting that Kin can hear... but letting her in on a few details Obliviating the necklace made her forget. (This is all speculation, of course)
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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by BuildsLegos » Thu Jul 19, 2018 10:48 am

Minmax was instructed by Not-Walter that only GOOD role-playing will earn him experience, and the player has been slowly taking that to heart ever since. He's gone from "Slaughter monsters hur-dur." to "Gee, this snake girl sure is swell!" to "Oh gods, I've ruined everything; I deserve this emotional groin-kick." And now, his coping mechanism for also losing Forgath is to bond with the one goblin who is too pitiful to kill even if picking such a fight was currently a good idea -it isn't, because dungeons have reality-bending rooms that require smarts to progress. The goblins, even if they still had Chief, know they might need an over-powered meathead to muscle any large creatures or puzzle blocks away and the only outlier to that concession has been quelled by his father.

Wolfie, Ruby's subterfuge made EVERYONE forget. Kin has used the teapot specifically to find Minmax, so it's already clear that she's grown beyond needing to remember it.
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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by Davis8488 » Thu Jul 19, 2018 2:32 pm

Morgaln wrote: Thu Jul 19, 2018 10:01 am
Sessine wrote: Wed Jul 18, 2018 5:22 am
Morgaln wrote: Wed Jul 18, 2018 3:25 am They did make camp once, here: http://goblinscomic.com/comic/12232015-2. But even if we assume that they rested for 8 hours and every room in this dungeon took them an hour to complete (which is a very generous assumption), from the view of Minmax and the GAP it has still been less than a day since:

Kin broke up with Minmax
Fumbles came out of his catatonic state
Chief got tortured to death
Forgath died
The Axe of Prissan broke and hell started to take over
Complains transformed further into a demon several times
Thaco, Ears and Complains almost died in an explosion
Ears lost a hand
Fumbles almost got killed by a botched ritual

One would expect all of this has some emotional impact on the characters. Their constant snarking and bickering seems somewhat incongruous with the state of mind they should be in at this point.
True, but... there are meta considerations. This is not a novel. It is a web-comic being published page by page over a period of many years. Some incongruity is inescapable. If the characters had been constantly angsting over those losses this whole time, the fan reading experience would have been terrible.

In a way, it's only an exaggeration of tabletop gaming, where character timelines just about never match up with a player experience of, say, weekly gaming sessions. When players remember, they might roleplay a bit of grief over another character who died a dozen dungeon rooms back, but for the players it was three months ago, so they're not going to be doing it all the time. That would be no fun. They snark and joke, both in and out of character. The comic's real-world timeline has been much more stretched out than this.
Novels don't get written in a day either; some of them are taking years to write, or in the case of long series, they might even take decades. Just ask George R.R. Martin or Robert Jordan (might have to find a good medium for that one, though). Considering the doorstopper nature of their writing, they have a lot more stuff happening that they need to keep straight than a webcomic with a few hundred pages. Yes, novels go through a lot of editing and proofreading after they have been finished. A webcomic cannot do that. But that doesn't mean a webcomic is exempt from quality control. It just means that quality control needs to happen at an earlier point in production.

As for the tabletop gaming, I am once again struck by how different everyone's experience seems to be from mine when it comes to RPs. My players will absolutely change the behavior of their characters if something happens that affects them emotionally. They will consider how a situation affects their characters and they will adjust their game accordingly. If their characters are distressed, or angry, or depressed, they will play them like that and they will not suddenly forget about it from one session to the next. I guess I'm just blessed with awesome players, since not caring about the story or character development is apparently the standard.

I think the point being made isn't about the period of time over which the comic is being written, but the time which it's being read. A novel can devote several chapters to gloomy characters, and a reader can be through it in an evening, but if Thunt's characters are depressed for a whole chapter, that could mean years of the comic being sad. Really, if Big Ears had taken a normal amount of time to grieve the loss of his close friend One Eye, then it would be more than a decade of time in the comic, and grief would define his character.

Perhaps we should stop to consider that these are people who live closely with death. When death is a part of life, macabre humor often develops, not just for soldiers, but also in the medical and mortuary fields. For people who live like the characters in this comic do, trauma isn't always on the surface. Time doesn't stand still just because you need to grieve. We saw Complains have a breakdown, but then he needed to keep going.
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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by RocketScientist » Thu Jul 19, 2018 3:42 pm

Does anybody know how old Minmax actually is?

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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by Scoshan » Thu Jul 19, 2018 4:37 pm

I've always guessed early twenties, or eighteen at the youngest, based on his personality and appearance; plus what was on the character sheet the goblins had at the beginning.
He seems like the type to start his adventuring career as soon as he can, rather than wait around for years.

I don't think his age has been mentioned anywhere that I know of.

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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by crow76308 » Thu Jul 19, 2018 10:46 pm

RocketScientist wrote: Thu Jul 19, 2018 3:42 pm Does anybody know how old Minmax actually is?
Minmax, or his player? Minmax, I'd sy 17, maybe 18. His player? 13, maybe 14.
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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by Generic » Thu Jul 19, 2018 11:18 pm

Davis8488 wrote: Thu Jul 19, 2018 2:32 pm
I think the point being made isn't about the period of time over which the comic is being written, but the time which it's being read. A novel can devote several chapters to gloomy characters, and a reader can be through it in an evening, but if Thunt's characters are depressed for a whole chapter, that could mean years of the comic being sad. Really, if Big Ears had taken a normal amount of time to grieve the loss of his close friend One Eye, then it would be more than a decade of time in the comic, and grief would define his character.
Many webcomics solve this by having a more consistent tone.
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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by Generic » Thu Jul 19, 2018 11:21 pm

RocketScientist wrote: Thu Jul 19, 2018 3:42 pm Does anybody know how old Minmax actually is?
What age gives the best stat boost?

And at what age does ones dick become purple?
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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by BuildsLegos » Fri Jul 20, 2018 10:13 am

Generic, I have explained why this is entirely consistent and Davis went and explained it even better in the paragraph that you deleted. For that, you've invoked MY purple worm!
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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by Morgaln » Fri Jul 20, 2018 12:30 pm

Davis8488 wrote: Thu Jul 19, 2018 2:32 pm
I think the point being made isn't about the period of time over which the comic is being written, but the time which it's being read. A novel can devote several chapters to gloomy characters, and a reader can be through it in an evening, but if Thunt's characters are depressed for a whole chapter, that could mean years of the comic being sad. Really, if Big Ears had taken a normal amount of time to grieve the loss of his close friend One Eye, then it would be more than a decade of time in the comic, and grief would define his character.

Perhaps we should stop to consider that these are people who live closely with death. When death is a part of life, macabre humor often develops, not just for soldiers, but also in the medical and mortuary fields. For people who live like the characters in this comic do, trauma isn't always on the surface. Time doesn't stand still just because you need to grieve. We saw Complains have a breakdown, but then he needed to keep going.
The effect of traumatic experience isn't limited to standing around and lamenting your fate. Yes, people need to go on; they need to do that in the real world as well. But when someone goes through a traumatic experience, it affects them; it makes them change. The things you go through will affect how you behave, especially when they're just a few hours past.
Seriously, consider what Minmax experienced recently. If you want to have real-world equivalents to the emotional burdens he's carrying around, this is what happened:

Minmax declares his love to a female friend. When she tells him she isn't interested, he tries to rape her to make her see how great he is (that is the closest real-world analogy to trying to mind-control her into having a relationship with him, I'm afraid). He doesn''t go through with it, but she parts with him forever in a highly emotional scene. His best friend gives him a ride home, but they have a car crash on their way. Minmax is taken away by an ambulance, with the last view of his friend being him lying on the ground motionless, with a paramedic trying to revive him. He spends a night at the hospital in the company of several other people who keep telling him what a terrible person he is and how everything is his fault. The next day, he turns on the TV only to learn that war has been declared on his country and invasion forces are on their way, declaring their intent to genocide the whole populace.

And you really think he will act like nothing happened and go around making stupid jokes after all that? This is not the kind of emotional burden you just suppress and act like everything is okay. You need time to deal with all of that and until you do, your behavior will be affected.

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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by BuildsLegos » Fri Jul 20, 2018 2:43 pm

Except instead of a ride home, Metaforgath invited him to assault a group of whichever minority you think best represents goblins, and they were caught in the sights of a serial killer (as opposed to a car-crash) who also targeted the [minorities]. Now instead of a hospital (given his lack of injuries) Metaphormax and the [minorities] are making their way through urban ruins together with the serial killer (from whom Metaforgath barely escaped moments after the others were locked behind a door) hot on their trail AND genocidal war has been declared because Big Ears couldn't shut up on Twitter.

All the same, it goes right back to "you don't know these people". Maybe the role-playing on display here isn't perfect, but the attempt is excellent. Regarding Kin, Minmax made his feelings clear with "Actually, she dumped me"; meaning he's come to terms (until just now) with never seeing her again, and he knows he has only himself to blame. (There's also Ruby, but it seems nothing can be done about that even if any of them figured it out.) And I've already made clear the situation with Forgath.
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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by BookWyrm17 » Fri Jul 20, 2018 10:40 pm

I would like to note that, above all, this is a game of DnD being played by a bunch of people who were here to have fun. And a good DnD game isn't defined by the best story or the best Roleplay or the strongest characters. A good DnD game is defined by if the whole group is having fun.

Yes, sometimes that means a deep, serious story with realistic mourning and grief and learning to live again. But having players that can do that without complsint doesn't mean they're the *best* players. I myself love some good RP, and dice rolling.

But recsntly I visited some old friends and we played a game of DnD fallout, and it was unlike any game I've played before. No character sheets, we only rolled D20's on occasion, and it was the most ridiculous, chaotic game I've ever played. We ended with Shrek showing up and roar-ing us all into a fine mist.

But we were laughing and joking the whole time, and I'll always remember it as one of my favorite games. Not saying I want to play it often, or even again. But its all about having fun.

As Thunt established early on, the players in this comic love jokes. That's all the first few pages were, even. Memes and laughs and ridiculousness.

Eventually, the players started to see the world, and get attached to the characters, and really fall into their heads. To understand them, and find a plot, and run with it. To enjoy the serious roleplay too.

But underneath it all, even between the grief and pain and epicness, the players enjoy corny, silly, rude jokes. And while normally, that stuff would be out-of-character, just funny jokes around the table, its clear that this world is much more meta than that, and the characters are as much the players as the players are the characters.
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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by redfeather » Sat Jul 21, 2018 8:18 am

Morgaln wrote: Fri Jul 20, 2018 12:30 pm Minmax declares his love to a female friend. When she tells him she isn't interested, he tries to rape her to make her see how great he is (that is the closest real-world analogy to trying to mind-control her into having a relationship with him, I'm afraid).
Uh, no, grabbing her leash was NOT equivalent to trying to rape her. It was more like threatening to blackmail her, when she's previously been blackmailed for years by a horrible cruel man who raped her. Minmax did NOT come even close to raping Kin; he just blurted out in mid-argument "You wouldn't say that if I BLACKMAILED YOU!", and she didn't have time to stop and think "he'd never actually do that, he's just yelling because he's upset", because SHE was too upset to have that thought. She just panicked and ran at the merest suggestion that her Hellish experience would come back again.

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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by Morgaln » Sat Jul 21, 2018 8:49 am

redfeather wrote: Sat Jul 21, 2018 8:18 am
Morgaln wrote: Fri Jul 20, 2018 12:30 pm Minmax declares his love to a female friend. When she tells him she isn't interested, he tries to rape her to make her see how great he is (that is the closest real-world analogy to trying to mind-control her into having a relationship with him, I'm afraid).
Uh, no, grabbing her leash was NOT equivalent to trying to rape her. It was more like threatening to blackmail her, when she's previously been blackmailed for years by a horrible cruel man who raped her. Minmax did NOT come even close to raping Kin; he just blurted out in mid-argument "You wouldn't say that if I BLACKMAILED YOU!", and she didn't have time to stop and think "he'd never actually do that, he's just yelling because he's upset", because SHE was too upset to have that thought. She just panicked and ran at the merest suggestion that her Hellish experience would come back again.
You're wrong. Blackmailing gives you a choice. You can give in to the blackmailer and do what they want you to do, you can refuse and call their bluff, you can proactively remove whatever it is that you get blackmailed with (e. g. by admitting to it publicly), you can even try to get rid of the blackmailer. Not to mention that blackmailing usually involves some dark secret/misdeed on your own, because otherwise you couldn't be blackmailed in the first place.
Kin didn't have a choice. The leash forced her to do whatever Minmax wanted to; she had no way of refusing or fighting back. She was completely at his mercy. And she didn't do anything to cause or deserve it. Minmax forced his will on her and she couldn't stop him in any way. That is not blackmailing; that is the equivalent of overpowering someone with force and restraining them physically.
BookWyrm17 wrote: Fri Jul 20, 2018 10:40 pm I would like to note that, above all, this is a game of DnD being played by a bunch of people who were here to have fun. And a good DnD game isn't defined by the best story or the best Roleplay or the strongest characters. A good DnD game is defined by if the whole group is having fun.

Yes, sometimes that means a deep, serious story with realistic mourning and grief and learning to live again. But having players that can do that without complsint doesn't mean they're the *best* players. I myself love some good RP, and dice rolling.

But recsntly I visited some old friends and we played a game of DnD fallout, and it was unlike any game I've played before. No character sheets, we only rolled D20's on occasion, and it was the most ridiculous, chaotic game I've ever played. We ended with Shrek showing up and roar-ing us all into a fine mist.

But we were laughing and joking the whole time, and I'll always remember it as one of my favorite games. Not saying I want to play it often, or even again. But its all about having fun.

As Thunt established early on, the players in this comic love jokes. That's all the first few pages were, even. Memes and laughs and ridiculousness.

Eventually, the players started to see the world, and get attached to the characters, and really fall into their heads. To understand them, and find a plot, and run with it. To enjoy the serious roleplay too.

But underneath it all, even between the grief and pain and epicness, the players enjoy corny, silly, rude jokes. And while normally, that stuff would be out-of-character, just funny jokes around the table, its clear that this world is much more meta than that, and the characters are as much the players as the players are the characters.
And this brings us full circle to the original point. If the characters just want to have a good time and act like they want to, regardless of the situation, then their behavior is incongruous with the situation they are in. If they want to have fun and joke around, that's fine. But it doesn't change that having a grimdark setting with traumatic experiences piled on top of each other will clash with characters that are completely unaffected by those traumatic experiences. Immersion and suspension of disbelief will suffer from that, whether you want it or not.

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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by thinkslogically » Sat Jul 21, 2018 9:24 am

Or maybe goblins are just more resilient to the death of their friends. They're literally set up from the start of the comic as fodder for L1 adventurers. When it is your in-world purpose to get murdered, you probably develop a few coping strategies so as not to be miserable all the time

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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by redfeather » Sat Jul 21, 2018 10:48 am

Morgaln wrote: Sat Jul 21, 2018 8:49 am You're wrong. Blackmailing gives you a choice.
*facepalm* Okay, fine, it's not EXACTLY the same, I never said it was, but it's closer than rape.

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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by Morgaln » Sat Jul 21, 2018 11:42 am

redfeather wrote: Sat Jul 21, 2018 10:48 am
Morgaln wrote: Sat Jul 21, 2018 8:49 am You're wrong. Blackmailing gives you a choice.
*facepalm* Okay, fine, it's not EXACTLY the same, I never said it was, but it's closer than rape.
It's not. Nothing about what Minmax did had anything to do with blackmail. Blackmail involves making a threat against someone in order to gain something. In other words, "do this, or else..." That's why the option to choose is intrinsic to blackmail. Giving someone that choice is the defining feature of blackmail. Minmax didn't do that. He didn't threaten Kin with anything; he didn't say he would reveal embarassing or incriminating information about her, he didn't threaten her or someone close to her with physical violence, he didn't threaten to destroy her livelihood or home or anything else.
What he did was, again, to force her to do what he wanted her to do, in a way that made her unable to resist. That alone would probably be closer to kidnapping than anything else. However, the level of violation of trust and personal space that comes with mind control, especially for a woman in Kin's situation, puts this closer to rape, or sexual assault at the very least.

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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by BuildsLegos » Sat Jul 21, 2018 1:29 pm

The mind-control leash has always been a blatant rape metaphor. Thunt even explained in great detail -at her permission of course- that Kin's story is a loose adaptation of his mother's recovery from sexual assault. Goblinslayer used the leash to, in his own words, "rape her every night"; Minmax went and betrayed his own moral compass that compelled him to start that fight by literally using the same tool that made the crime possible.
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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by BookWyrm17 » Sat Jul 21, 2018 1:43 pm

Morgaln wrote: Sat Jul 21, 2018 8:49 am And this brings us full circle to the original point. If the characters just want to have a good time and act like they want to, regardless of the situation, then their behavior is incongruous with the situation they are in. If they want to have fun and joke around, that's fine. But it doesn't change that having a grimdark setting with traumatic experiences piled on top of each other will clash with characters that are completely unaffected by those traumatic experiences. Immersion and suspension of disbelief will suffer from that, whether you want it or not.
I would like to note that its not impossible to both tell jokes AND have traumatic moments. Its part of the reason why I like this comic, because its some sort of crazy alternate dimension that's all part of a game. Its a fantasy world, and everything is accelerated and better in fantasy. Travel time, growing stronger and more powerful, and getting over losses too. Sure, this is balanced out by having Hell break through the borders of the world, but it's a thing.

Honestly, if breaking immersion because the characters aren't reacting realistically to the world is a problem with you, this mishmash of game and players and characters and art and world doesn't seem like the best thing for you.

No point I make will FORCE you to like the story. Or the characters. Or the jokes. It is how it is, and I don't see much of a point in complaining because it literally does nothing to change anything.

Maybe I'm just easy to please, I guess.

Regardless, if you don't like it, there's not much I can do except express why I do like it and hope you don't feel bothered to post about character mistakes on a obscure online forum for a comic you dislike reading.
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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by redfeather » Sun Jul 22, 2018 1:21 pm

BuildsLegos wrote: Sat Jul 21, 2018 1:29 pm Minmax went and betrayed his own moral compass that compelled him to start that fight by literally using the same tool that made the crime possible.
True, but it still wasn't a full-on rape. It was only the first step which could have led to one.

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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by BuildsLegos » Sun Jul 22, 2018 4:27 pm

Red Feather, take it from a dedicated literalist, you're taking it too far. I've explained the symbolic purpose of the leash and the use of it summons the exact same trauma that Goblinslayer instilled in her as burning trees stabbing her in the tail. So no, it's not literal rape, I'll give you that; but it was sexual assault that resembled rapes past. For a parallel, that sounds like a smaller discrepancy than yours.
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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by Krulle » Mon Jul 23, 2018 3:02 am

Minmax grabbing the leash was not a sexual assault. He wanted her to listen to what he has to say.
And grapped at an opportunity to prevent her from leaving.
Once he recognised what he is holding, he let go.

Yes, he could've followed up with a rape, but that was never his intention.
Grabbing the leash was an honest mistake by Minmax. A bad mistake, but still "just a mistake".
He, being Minmax, was not able to think through the implications of grabbing at something that would make her stop leaving the discussion with him.


And yes, I know that the background for this part of the story is worse, much worse that the depicted elements.
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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by Morgaln » Mon Jul 23, 2018 3:33 am

Yes, grabbing the leash was a mistake. Just as throwing someone unwilling to the floor and ripping off their clothes is a mistake. Or like chaining someone to a wall to prevent them from leaving is a mistake. He didn't take it further, but it is still the first step to force himself on her.

I know we've had this discussion before, and many people like to deny this, but he was perfectly able to think through the implications. He grabbed the leash deliberately for the power it would give him over Kin. His whole body language tells us that he knew exactly what he was doing. I know he was in a highly emotional situation, but there is never a situation where taking physical steps to prevent someone from breaking up with you is okay. It's not "just a mistake" that you forgive just like that. And to do it to someone with Kin's background is even worse and displays complete lack of empathy for the trauma she went through.

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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by Krulle » Mon Jul 23, 2018 7:29 am

Both of the other examples you give are more than that.
the first one consists of two steps, the latter one even of a whole bunch of things to do before you're done.

Anyway, also honest errors can be going too far, and be unexcusable and unforgiveable.
Seeing Kin's story, this is one of them.
And Minmax seems to have taken the decision to give up on Kin for good because of that.
Hence he is totally dumbfounded now, and may be willing to follow his new adventuring party and leave her behind, believing this is a trick.
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Re: 16 July 2018: Sorry, who's up there?

Post by Morgaln » Mon Jul 23, 2018 8:16 am

All the steps in my examples are inherently part of the leash's magic. By just grabbing the leash and telling Kin to stop and listen, she is forced to stand there, as effectively as if she was chained up or tied down. Even more so, she can't even try to fight back; we know that she cannot take any harmful action against the person holding the leash, and she can't resist passively either because she can be ordered to comply.
This kind of control, the knowledge that she can be made to do anything, also must go alongside a feeling of helplessness and vulnerability that is certainly far worse than "just" being stripped naked. And it's not just a theoretical possibility, she has practical experience in the horrible things she can be made to do.

For anyone who has trouble really understanding what this kind of loss of control means and the effects it has on the victims, I recommend watching the Netflix show "Jessica Jones" (1st season, to be exact). It deals a lot with this exact kind of abuse through mind control and is very chilling to watch.

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