PONTAGAR: Father, if this is another one of your rants against Ipola, I’m not in the mood right now. Just because she refused your bed —
ARROGOND: That … has nothing to do with this.
PONTAGAR: I see.
ARROGOND: She’s always on about the harms the ancients wrought, on the fish and the birds and the plants – the damn trees, for Fire’s sake! Grass! As though that was more important!
PONTAGAR: Well – Father, we do need the forests, we need grass to feed the –
ARROGOND: In those days we had control of it all! It was all controlled! Of course we made some sacrifice of the luxuries like pretty scenery. Some of the animals died out, but Pontagar, we had the power. We had the power to make the world as we wished. Animals? We could make more of them, as we chose! Whatever shapes we wanted! Grass? Ha! We could make them eat anything we wanted, and thrive!
PONTAGAR: Father, if this is another one of your rants against Ipola, I’m not in the mood right now. Just because she refused your bed --
ARROGOND: That … has nothing to do with this.
PONTAGAR: I see.
ARROGOND: She’s always on about the harms the ancients wrought, on the fish and the birds and the plants - the damn trees, for Fire’s sake! Grass! As though that was more important!
PONTAGAR: Well - Father, we do need the forests, we need grass to feed the -
ARROGOND: In those days we had control of it all! It was all controlled! Of course we made some sacrifice of the luxuries like pretty scenery. Some of the animals died out, but Pontagar, we had the power. We had the power to make the world as we wished. Animals? We could make more of them, as we chose! Whatever shapes we wanted! Grass? Ha! We could make them eat anything we wanted, and thrive!
28 thoughts on “Control – Page 1221”
Tiff Hudson
“Yes, it was the Third Reich, but it was OUR Third Reich.” We’ve heard this riff before.
Tom Billings
I’m getting a bit weary of hearing similar things from those worshiping our agrarian past as well. The rant is different, but the style is the same at the local universities. This is mirror imaged from that, but essentially the same in Arrogond’s arguments for those on top. Just as King A wants to ignore the problems of a magic-induced power lock on the environment, we now get professors telling us that Empires that used 1,000,000 people on agrarian projects, … and *used*them*up* (think “The Chin Dynasty”) were somehow a glorious past, as long as it built an irrigated plain on which they could feed conquering Armies, and of course the academic scholar/officials to direct things, … then it was OK, even when it left the loess plains spilling dust 2,000 kilometers downwind. The desire for present scholar/officials to be given similar power to do similar things again is as unhealthy as King A’s mind already is. Sorry, … too many conversations with people studying at the local Confucius Institute in Portland.
Calisto
>takes out soap box<
Some do need reminding that (just one example) the great Wall of China, glorious marvel of the ancient past that it is, one of the VERY few man made objects that can be seen from space, is literally built on the graves of THOUSANDS of slaves whom died in the forced construction. A great achievement I am sure.
RBZ
Actually, it’s a myth that the Great Wall is visible from space. It’s certainly very long, but comparatively very thin and short, meaning spotting it from space it would be like to trying to spot a hair on a painting while stood at the opposite side of a crowded art gallery.
Not trying to detract from the nature of its construction, btw.
Calisto
This is not to argue the point but I have seen photos taken from low earth orbit where the wall or parts of it are visible. The photos could have been “enhanced” or doctored I suppose. I just don’t know why someone would bother. Thanks for the feedback.
Some Ed
I think there are two different cases being considered here. RBZ seems to think we’re viewing the wall from directly above while on the moon. I feel like, from that perspective and distance, they’re absolutely right.
But from the orbital heights we consider for artificial satellites, and that we imagine people from other worlds would choose if they were to orbit our planet for some reason, while not directly above it, it’s quite visible. But not as visible of some of the pictures I’ve seen purporting to be the great wall as seen from space.
That having been said, it’s certainly not the only work of man visible from orbit. It’s just most of them are things like cities, where you’re not looking at just one object, or farms, where you really need to know what you’re looking for to distinguish it from the surrounding countryside.
As far as why people would edit images from space to make the great wall look bigger – national pride, of course. It’s the one Chinese structure that virtually every adult human on the planet knows by name, even those who’ve never met anyone from China. It’s likely that they also intentionally edited out some other things from China that people with expertise on Chinese history would know to look for. I cannot name any of them off-hand, but one of my former coworkers who is of Chinese descent cited a few. Some of them were close enough to the wall to be plausibly “removed to make the wall resizing look more natural”, while others were decidedly not.
Reservist
Well, the Great Wall sure is an incredible feat of construction and fortification design.
42 Night Blossoms In The Summer Gardens
“Bah. They were only slaves! Not important!” – Yours Sincerely The 1%
“Yeah. The hell with those guys.” – The 99% at the French Revolution
“We’re truly sorry. We were kids. We didn’t understand the consequences.” – The Ancient Gods & Goddesses (All Of Them)
RBZ
“And the continual influx of immigrants from the other Tribes who just live off our hard work, displacing loyal Fire Tribesmen, and not contributing to the Fire Tribe…”
“They’re refugees fleeing Urrt invasions, father!”
SanBernInAtlanta
Anyone else thinking Shuach already has a firm foothold in the Fire Tribe, whether they know it or not?
Reservist
Aye. Alas. :-S
Some Ed
I’d say it’s probable in a sufficiently large population, any actual deity has a secure inner sect of believers. That said, I’ve thought for a while now that Shuach has more adherents in the Fire Tribe than the goddess the Erogenians supposedly all follow.
On page 1192, Sogen asked for a show of hands, everyone who would be surprised if the Fire Tribe had some holdout Erogenian Shuach cultists. Nobody spoke up. There were probably a few people who were going to be surprised who didn’t read the comments or who don’t normally reply to comments, but I suspect most people felt that was going to be a “surprises nobody” moment. I’d say it’s closer to a “surprises nobody” moment, but there are few things that literally surprise nobody. OK, sure, the sun rising in the east likely doesn’t surprise *too* many at this point, but there’s enough young people that I’m sure it surprises some people every day.
calisto
The truly sad part is it doesn’t HAVE to be Shuach, this is an evil we bring to the table with our own hands. The blame belongs to ourselves, that is why it is so easy to not see. Stay vigilant my friend.
All Shuach, and other like him, need do is find glory in our folly.
Some Ed
Sure, it doesn’t have to be Shuach to start, but we’re talking deities here. This is a door for Shauch. You think he might not use it? May not already be using it?
I’d recommend looking at it less from a “whose fault is it” and more of a “how bad is their security broken” perspective.
drachefly
So, Arrogond is named really on-the-nose.
Sleel
Not sure what was ‘glorious’ about it. All the Mongols did was go around it. Ended up being a huge waste of time and lives accomplishing nothing. Except in movies. Then they dropped down on the invading ‘evil’ on ropes and shit.
Sleel
Here’s hoping Arrondwhatever dies the slow death he deserves. To end up being eaten by urrts and shat out like the POS he already is.
SFCGator
You are correct. Having been in the Intell system I can verify that it takes optical equipment the see the Great Wall from space. You can’t see it with the naked eye. All the images you pull up on the internet are… from imagery satellites. 😉
RBZ
Also, it helps to photograph the general area its in when the sun is low in the sky there. (wider shadows)
Jeff
About 2 weeks ago, the secure URL for this site went down and no longer shows the site. https://barbarianprincess.com does not resolve on Chrome or Safari. http:// does work.
RBZ
I, and others, pointed this out in various ways in the previous page’s comments.
It looks like the problem is with the security certificate for the site, as it’s affecting several features that rely on SSL, including HTTPS and RSS.
Tiff Hudson
Going back in the history, pages 5-to-1177 don’t display a comic. When I try to display the image with a right-click->Open Image In New Tab…, I get a 400 error (“We cannot complete this request, remote server returned an unexpected status code (400)”).
Stupid pet trick: If I open the image in a new tab, then edit the URL to say “http” (instead of “https”) and remove “&ssl=1” from the end, I *DO* get the image. Ergo, I assume the history problem will go away when the SSL certificate is fixed.
jedraft
It’s an issue with the new version of WordPress that Godaddy updated us to. Still looking for answers, and updating my theme didn’t help.
That being said, opening the image in a new tab and removing the prefix altogether is a clumsy way to actually see the comic.
Sincere regrets,
-JED
SanBernInAtlanta
So true. However, I’m thinking he’s ripe for the old Erogenian god to regain a foothold in their aristocracy.
Deceptobot
I thought that last one was from the architects of online social media.
Lora
Finally able to see the comic again! I had to Google it to find a working link. I was worried.
And I already disliked Arrogand, but damn! He’s really working hard to be truly despicable.
Tiff Hudson
JED, No worries. I understand how much trouble updates can be.
Some Ed
You could make creatures eat anything you want and make them thrive. Ok, sure.
What is cheaper to make than grass?
Ok, in this world, one answer is ‘Kudzu’. But if the ancient Erogenians went with an answer like that, you’d expect to see it all over the place. It seems like they did crap that hurt the grass (and probably wheat and barley and other grains that fall under the category of `grass`) that wasn’t replacing them with something better.
Unintended fallout from the crap one does is not something one can safely ignore. That one is inclined to suggests that maybe, just maybe, you may be prone to doing things with unintended fallout that will lead to your downfall and not caring about it.
We may even be witnessing some of that right here.
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