Discussion Characters / TheOrderOfTheStickTheOrderOfTheStick

We definitely should. The real question is determining how to split the page. Will have to check which folders are large.

A basic suggestion: we keep this page for the "General" folder information, and we split the rest into two pages: human members (Roy, Haley, Elan) and non-human members (Vaarsuvius, Durkon, Belkar).

I had the exact same idea.

That means if and when someone adds Minrah to this page, her folder should be titled "Minrah Shaleshoe" and not "Spoiler Character", correct?

Generally, I find when people say "do your own research, I'm not going to provide any links or quotes" they're... less than reliable. A revert is a good idea.

Moreover, when a note says "don't change this, if you want to please go to discussion" and someone... well, just changes it, that doesn't give me a lot of faith.

Agreed. This sounds like someone who doesn't want it to be ambigious for personal reasons. Furthermore, "congratulations, you're a transphobe" is an ad hominem fallacy.

Yeah that... also set off alarm bells.

"Genderqueer", like "queer", is a rather vague term. It is definitely an acceptable gender label for someone to identify as, though, and if the Giant claims that's what Vaarsuvius is, then that's what they are.

So really, the only thing to do is for someone with a copy of book 5 to read it and see if the Giant says that. If he does, V's gender label should be updated. (Citing a page number would probably help greatly.) If he doesn't, we leave it as unknown.

The "congratulations you're a transphobe" bit is way more abrasive than it needs to be, but not essentially false, as it's shorthand for words to the effect of "it's rather suspicious that we're only questioning the Giant's word on a character's gender for the one that he said was non-binary." (It's also not ad hominem, technically — it's not "you're a transphobe therefore you're wrong", it's "you're wrong and your wrong thinking stems from transphobia". And it was explicitly only applied to a single argument.)

That's... a really needless analysis of a potential vandal's thinking. But okay.

No one's questioning the Giant's word on it, we're questioning him for the claiming word of god with no backing whatsoever. Then they go ahead and strawman and say "the only reason anyone could be as wrong as you is if they're a transphobe."

So yeah. I'm not giving this guy the benefit of the doubt, that's for sure.

In response, to checking book 5 from 2 comments up from this one, I checked my copy of book 5; found a potential indicator. It might be implied in the commentary before strip 918, but is by no means... certain to apply to V, given how it's phrased.

^^ I'm pretty sure that "Is that actually something the Giant said or are you making that up?" is a completely different argument than "I agree that the Giant said this thing, but was he correct when he said it?", and criticisms of the latter are not intended to apply to the former.

^ What actually was the phrasing, anyway? Did the word "genderqueer" even appear in the text? (Some people have a bad habit of using "genderqueer" as an umbrella term for "anything other than binary and gender-conforming", which wouldn't be really useful here.)

Sorry for the long delay in responding.

On Tarquin wigging out about Elan's role in the party, and about stories to control the future, being afraid of an unknown future:

"It's no accident that he's a wealthy old straight white man losing his marbles over the fact that the tale he is experiencing doesn't focus on the other straight white man at the expense of the black man, the woman, the genderqueer person, and even the Latino guest star."

So, yes, the Giant himself *probably* referred to Vaarsuvius using the exact term 'genderqueer'

Okay, yes, that is definitely Rich describing V as genderqueer. That's pretty unambiguous, unless Belkar comes out as genderqueer before the comic's end.

The only question here is did Rich mean "genderqueer" in a specific or general sense.

I talked with the person who did it and they said it had too much of a "Stop Having Fun" Guys vibe because it was too focused on stat and ability optimizing instead of story or character relevance.

That might work.

Honestly, the entire section seems a bit exagerrated. While not of them are Min/Maxing, the builds aren't nearly as horrible as the section suggests.

Roy: He's got high Int and Wisdom, but honestly, he seems to have high stats across the board. We've never seen anything to suggest that he's taking penalties in the important stats.

Belkar: No arguments here. He's a horrible class build.

Haley: Admittedly, she wasted a few feats (especially Manyshot). Not carrying a melee weapon isn't that big a deal, as once you've dumped enough feats into ranged attacks, its usually better to take a five foot step back and shoot your target.

Vaarsuvius: This one is just laughable. I'm not saying Conjuration isn't a useful school, but the statement that all Vaarsuvius has is pure combat spells is provably false, given the range of non-combat spells we've seen him cast.

Durkon and Elan's sections are fairly accurate.

In short, I don't think this warrants an entry. While none of them minmax, only Belkar's build is so horrible to qualify as explicitly averting it.

Considering he also quoted the line, almost exactly...

Please leave that sort of thing to the Class and Level Geekery thread on the official forums. TV Tropes as a wiki doesn't need to be concerned about it and it distracts from the tropes.

Plus, Burlew has said he deliberately keeps the levels and abilities vague in order to not restrict the jokes. Going into that much detail on it seems to be missing the point (plus, Elan just got level drained anyway)

And will get those levels back if he makes a Fortitude save or gets a Restoration spell. The point is that the comic is deliberately vague about the characters' precise stats and as such we should not list them here, even if they were relevant to TV Tropes, which they are not.

Also, levels are something that change throughout the story. Trying to keep track of them isn't just worth it, and those stats are meaningless for non-D&D gamers.

Well, I'd say the main consideration would be: is there tropes or not?

If a few specific character tropes can be found relating strictly to Banjo, then it can warrant an entry.

He should be listed under the deities though, I would think.