Discord GM: Congratulations!
DM: Wait, you mean…
Discord GM: That's right! It's time.
DM: Okay… One by one, the walls of the hedge maze collapse into dust. …Right?
Discord GM: Oh, absolutely.
DM: Pretty soon, the six of you find yourself in a crater the size of a hoofball field. You can just barely see the rest of the royal gardens from where you're standing.
Twilight Sparkle: So… what does this mean, exactly?
Discord: It means you've cleared the stage, little Sparkle.
Twilight Sparkle: We… won? I thought we had to reach the center.
Discord: We both know that was never the real test. You should all feel proud! Despite my best efforts, not one of you gave up or cheated. True to my word, the Elements are yours to claim. Of course, that's not to say I didn't score a few victories of my own… But I'll let you figure that out amongst yourselves.
On my count four of them have had their elements reversed. That leaves Twi and Rainbow (assuming this isn't an elaborate trick) as the only ones who'll still be able to use the elements.
Unrelated: This comic beat 8-bit Theaters callback record, didn't it? I remember that happening.
Rainbow WAS cursed. Her text box was black and white instead of blue-outline like she normally is. Betcha the elements being hidden away is what will cause her to bail out.
Really? I saw that in the comments, but I've gone through and compared the not-cursed textboxes with the ones after she reappears and I honestly haven't noticed any difference?
I think the colors are just for when the character speaking isn't on-panel and/or is difficult to tell from the rest. Pretty sure Rainbow just hasn't been speaking while off-panel yet.
8-Bit Theater doesn't hold the callback record anymore, anyway. In strip count, Homestuck has run away with the title and built a frankly insurmountable lead over anyone else. In real-world time, Order of the Stick sports a 13-year callback. I don't know if those are absolutely the record-holders, but they're the ones called out on the 8-Bit Theater wiki entry for strip 1221.
Alright, this is where the party wizard hatches a scheme that requires one Hail Mary arcana skill-check and then a series of logic loops to break the curses. Maybe. :3
It was unexpected, so of course as a spirit of chaos he had to do it.
Except if he had to do it, it wouldn't be so unexpected, so basically we're left oscillating between two expectations (the chaotic not-following-the-rules thing, the meta-chaotic following-the-rules-because-people-expected-otherwise, and again meta-meta-chaotic not following the rules and so on).
One curious things about chaotic characters is that you can't really expect them to do the chaotic thing; otherwise, it'd be just reverse lawful, not chaotic.
It's like the unexpected hanging paradox. You're expect it to be unexpected, but then it acts like you expected it, and this is unexpected, and you're confused.
Of course he's playing by the rules. He's a GM. You're not supposed to fudge the rules (especially not homebrewed rules) unless it's in the best interests of the game. Refusing to keep his promise or altering his own rules would ruin the fun.
That's an interesting statement from Discord here. Does that mean that Discord was trying to get one of them to break their curse? Would Discord have punished them for this? Its an interesting statement, that shows both Discord's brilliance and also his skirting around the line of out of character frustration and drama.
I just noticed a tiny RD pasted into the crater wide angle shot. Nice attention to detail.
I wonder if in this new version of the season 2 premier RD ends up giving everyone a boot camp talking to for going way overboard with their curses than they needed to. Like Rarity's curse was to covet the diamond. She didn't have to go full Gollum and turn into a raging jackass towards everyone.
One of my past selves as a man with a plan too. I don't like him much. I mean he's great at parties and who doesn't love spoons, but he was always two steps ahead in chess. It's not fun.
I guess the fact that Rainbow Dask don't seem to have been cursed, prove that Fluttershy was wrong, which in my opinion, mean she was just as much a jerk in her session as Discord was, accusing someone of railroading is a rather grave accusation in roleplaying, so Fluttershy doing it just because Discord made getting away a challenge was a jerk move, of course Discord then getting angry was a jerk move too, but in my opinion Fluttershy was a jerk first in that scene.
I'm not sure I consider Fluttershy's player a jerk there, but she may have been wrong. The way Shy's player reacted indicates to me pretty strongly she's been abused by others in the past, and this was her default reaction to feeling abused. If anything, her crime was in not recognizing the difference between an OC (out of character) and IC (in character) interaction, and reacted OC to an IC abuser.
So she may have been wrong, but I think its a defensible kind of wrong based on factors that are hinted as likely way too complicated to actually be dealt with in the course of this comic.