They have a lot of history
November 9, 2015
2:54 am
I think we’re in the homestretch of this arc, there’s more I could do but I’m gonna wrap it up soon so I can draw other things.
Manly Guys Doing Manly Things
Updated Mondays or whenever I feel like it
YOU SWIM LIKE A MINIVAN
more love for commander, more magically humanising a(n otherwise) roid raging lunatic by demonstrating respect and affection and understanding
Sounds like he’s not so straight thinking even when he isn’t juiced up though, if he has a history of deliberately setting himself off.
I mean hey, I roll a berserker barbarian in 5e, it can seem like a good idea at the time…
#11: Not allowed to berserk for the hell of it, especially during royal masquerades.
Mr. Welch is a deranged but entertaining mind.
I was disappointed that the Iron Bull was not more entertaining at the Winter Palace, but Sera more than made up for it.
Yeahhh, the pro and con of Iron Bull is that he’s a shirtless James Bond.
The name’s Bull. Iron Bull.
Except instead of a dry martini, shaken not stirred, “Everything on the wall. Poured into a giant glass. With a novelty straw.”
“…and one those little umbrella tooth picks with fruit on it!”
But…Does Iron Bull give you wings?
I would think not, because most things made of iron fly in the same way as bricks don’t.
Well, there is a Led Zeppelin, that defied all the laws of gravity.
Um. It didnt defy physics or gravity, if you make a heavy material thin and spread out enough(like the mythbusters did) you can make anything go up using helium.
Mythbusters proved it!
“Red” doesn’t make you fly or give you wings either, though, it just makes you go three times faster.
…Which is exactly what you would need to get to the bathroom fast enough to prevent a bladder-burst…
Bull’s a spy, he knows how to behave.
Pretty sure Mr. Welch played a class with the sole intent of not being useful.
Also, being a level-headed barbarian would be like getting improved cleave without a bulk order of rats.
Two things:
1. What are these rules? They sound hilarious, I want to know more.
2. I know a Mr. Welch. My Mr. Welch is as history teacher at Oakmont Highschool. If your Mr. Welch is my Mr. Welch, maybe he can tell me about those rules.
Here’s an index of them:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Blog/ThingsMrWelchIsNoLongerAllowedToDoInAnRPG
Thank you.
http://theglen.livejournal.com/16735.html?page=
here’s the full list for you
that is never not a good idea.
even when the other three members of your party are also berserkers.
ESPECIALLY when the other three members of your party are also berserkers.
Relevant story.
Holy CRAP that sounds like it was fun to play. To DM, not so much.
Man, I know it’s occasionally hard to roll with the changes, but the DM really should have known what he was getting into after the first cave.
Also, J deserves to have something terrible happen to him for helping the DM try to deus ex the rest of the party. Never sell your party out to the DM!
Also relevant
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/12936417/
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/12939196/
As great as the Deep Rot was, it doesn’t seem particularly related to all-berserker parties.
Indeed.
Historically a multi berserker party is legit. There were lodges of them because only another Berserk really gets what you’re going through. Bands of 12 are reported in the sagas, so if you want to run a party of Berserks go nuts with it, it was a totally thing back in the Viking era.
At one point, Berserkers actually served as the quote unquote royal guard to the Swedish kings.
And then one (don’t know which, maybe a Swede might) outlawed the berserkgangs.
Speaking AS a GM? 1 Berserker per party is a fantastic plot device, to such a point where if there isn’t a zerker, you damn well better believe that that old codger running the only inn without any glass ANYWHERE is the world’s oldest zerker
Run that codger Cohen-style.
I think next time I am going to run a ‘Zerker, I’m basing him off Hunter S Thompson. It just seems fitting.
Yes, yes it does.
In Third Edition there was a combination where you could use intimidate instead of diplomacy, and perform checks instead of intimidation, so at the royal ball your big barbarian would hulk out and roar, ripping his shirt off and sweeping the tables to the side.
Then hit the floor and start breakdancing, immediately making everyone best friends.
Good grief that’s awesome.
That one was cool, but I preferred the Jumplomancer. Fighter/Druid/Exemplar; you use everything you can to boost speed and Jump checks and take feats that allow Jump to count as Diplomacy. Then you run roughly 150 ft per second, make a leaping attack with about +370 to your Jump check, land in a crowd and all of a sudden everyone in the area is your loyal minions because of how damn impressive the jump was.
And having both of them in a party makes a great distraction.
Indeed.
That “substitute Jump for Diplomacy” thing sounds like a joke feat, though.
It was a variant of Impressive Performance, which allowed you to substitute any skill for Diplomacy, if memory serves.
Still not as bad as the Arseplomancer.
Uh… I lack knowledge, and am unsure if I wish to be educated.
Can’t help it. I feel very sorry for Tank.
Indeed, but we haven’t seen whether or not he prefers it this way.
Like a minivan, hehehe :D
Well, I do guess all those metal parts don’t help buoyancy.
Was thinking his circuits would get fried… more than they were before he decided swimming sounded like a good idea
nah man, if you build a cyborg step one is waterproofing
It’s probably more of a buoyancy issue.
I am reminded of my friends terrible driving in Dead Island. Terrible to the degree he somehow made a truck AMPHIBIAN. It actually worked as a boat for a short while before it sunk with us in it.
You survive?
Wait, so there’s an ocean (or at least part of it) inside this survival dome? Man, I’m confused. I could really use a layout breakdown of whatever’s in this place.
I like how Rock isn’t even shown moving between panels. It’s like you blink and suddenly he’s another foot in the water. I choose to believe that’s exactly how it’s going down from Tank’s eyes.
Clearly they repurposed the domed island from The Truman Show for survival contests.
That is a good headcanon!
I bet they used to do this in swamps. but then the Commander using this tactic to keep from fighting Tank caused the Locals in the past to think of him as some kind of swamp monster when he left, thus causing all the various swamp monster stories we know about to exist. And that is why they now use what appears to be islands in the middle of nowhere.
Well that could explain the Legend of Beowulf. Still raging cyborg or not tank is still his brother and the commander doesn’t want to unnecessarily fight family. I can respect that.
Also, Rocky knows he is no match for Tank
Tank and Rock are not brothers, unless you meant Brothers-in-Arms.
Hard to tell. I thought they were part of the same cloning group just like with face angel and the rest.
They grow them in batches, their “siblings” are the ones they were grown and raised with as a family/tactical unit. Commander’s brothers and sister are Jet, Ace, and Cate. Angel’s sisters are Brunhilde, Wagner, and Sigrun. Tank’s sister is Spider. A handy guide.
Angel… Brunhilde, Wagner, and Sigrun
One of these things is not like the others…
Or is this similar to B52 going by Rock Lobster because his last few digits don’t form an easily pronounced word?
What do you mean? To many people, specially the Old Norse, Valkyrie are synonymous with the Biblical Angels (which one do you believe doesn’t fit?)
Well, similar, but not quite the same thing. Valkyrie were the harvesters of the dead but their job function isn’t quite as broad as the Angels portfolio. Odin is a bit more hands on then the Christian god who acts a lot more through emissaries and messengers. Odin might be any one-eyed codger you run into on the street.
They call her Angel Eyes because she looks like Lee van Cleef.
That actaully only works because of how hairy commander is. If he had a bald body then it would be the legend of the shiny tall man rather than the legend of the hairy wet monster. Respect to commander, not only does he rock full body hair timelessly, he shuts down violence with humour and good taste.
Tank could not be more wrong calling Commander a pussy when he is obvoiusly confronting the fish with his bear hands rather than using the rod
*bare hands
Grammar nazi away! ::woosh::
No, i’m pretty sure bear hands is correct in this context
Indeed, bear hands are the best to confront fish with. Just ask brown bears about it, but do it from a distance.
Your Grammar Nazi just got a D-Day up his arse
I want to be Commander when I grow up.
I’m pretty sure everyone wants to be Commander when they grow up.
I’m pretty surre that was the idea.
I want to be a Jared when I grow up
I am loving everything about Commander and Tank’s interactions.
True. I laughed my ass off i dislocated my hips :v
I got a really big laugh with the idea that, the whole time this conversation is happening, that Commander is thinking, “Come on, fish, bite already! Give me a good distraction here!”
Hey, swimming is hard :-(
Coming from someone who swims like a minivan
Go home Tank, you are drunk… on rage.
Commander will sooner become one with the ocean than he will fight you Tank XD
I find it interesting that Tank apparently rage-roided himself intentionally for this competition, assuming I interpreted Commander Badass/Rock correctly. Considering that he also has issues with his female commander for no apparent reason, one has to wonder what the is the deal with Tank. He’s overly aggressive, sexist/misogynistic (which is weird considering he’s from a vague future in which it’s more important to be badass than what gender you’re born with) and seems to have it in for Commander Badass. Is he holding a grudge about how Rock put and end to the involuntary modifications or something? Or is he just an asshole who feels the need to demonstrate his strength on the closest thing to a rival alpha male in his family group?
You’re reading too much into it man. The dudes chemical signals all messed up, like a teenage girl. You obviously never had sisters growing up.
*teenager
All teenagers are batshit, or did you not have brothers growing up?
Truth. I’ve got both.
Angry people incite fights, his behavior’s focused like a laser beam on getting Rock to fight him. Everything else that comes out of his mouth is almost certainly just trying to screw with Rock. Even in normal cases, when you get pissed enough the first thing you’ll do is try and pick on someone’s most obvious problem. ie. “You fat *expletive deleted* That’s likely where Tank’s coming from right now. All the crap he’s spewing is trying to provoke Rock into attacking him instead of just avoiding him which is only irritating him even more.
I suspect that it’s a lot simpler than that: he got messed up by the Vague Space Future Man, they can’t completely fix him, and this is literally the only place where he can scream sh*t to the world and nobody will call him on it.
He seems to believe that the primary qualification for leadership is who can hit the hardest. some stupid primal dominance bs.
but if that’s the case some people are confusing biology namely sexual dimorphism for sexism and misogyny.
He was gene-tailored to fit one of several marketable definitions of “cool” when he was conceived, but we’ve seen that process doesn’t always produce quite what the people working it intend. Rock up there turned out far more stable than his creators intended, for instance. If Tank was chemically built to be an alpha-male type, they may have started him out with unbalanced brain chemistry predisposed to aggression. If they then rewarded that behavior as he grew up, his behavior would have been fairly firmly set even before he was cybered without consent.
Plus they probably dinked with his brain for certain implants. As a player of shadow run I can think of a few that would be useful, but the most relative would be an Adrenalin Pump. People who go through brain surgery rarely come out the same.
He might even think he’s being quite reasonable. He might be thinking he’s saying “Rock, as your brother, we should be working together. Being a Dynamic Duo and taking this contest by storm. I hate it when we have these arguments so lets work together like the old days.”
When really what we hear is “Misogyny, rage, furious expression, why are you running away! Pussy!”
That makes a lot of sense, yeah. And the Brass tried to turn Rock into Batman through emotional trauma–they probably would’ve given him encouragement and various tokens of approval if he’d Batmanned up the way they wanted. The script they had for Tank is fairly easy to infer, and every time he followed along (read: acted like he’s doing now), he’d have gotten approval from the Brass. So here he is, doing the things that usually get him the approval he craves, but no one’s approving. Now I can’t stop seeing him as an abused kid who beats up other kids at school because that’s what gets them approval at home.
More the latter.
Well judging from what we’ve seen so far and deducing from what Rock as said, i think its been said before that tank is usually somewhat chill but he tend to have fits because his implants are messing with his brain chemistry, hence why Rock simply avoids tank until “his chemistry levels out” and tank calms down to a more reasonable state where they can peacefully sort out whatever beef tank might’ve had that got overblown in proportion by the temporary brain chemistry mess.
Like, maybe tank just wanted to have his brother Rock in his team for the survival contest for the same reason we all want to team up with our best friend but then his brain shorted out and it got overblown out of proportionned and cascaded into the dumb sexist junk he said earlier.
Im probably reading too much into it but i prefer thinknig tank is a nice guy like Rock who just unwillingly has fits from time to time
Tank is Spider’s brother, not Rock’s
Except Rock’s already said before that everyone in theire unit considers themselves brothers and sisters, even if its not true on the biological level.
Also, i dont remember where they said tank was spider’s brother. i just remember them being the two who got cybernetics, thats it.
I honestly don’t remember writing that, unless you just mean in a general “brothers at arms”. The only ones he refers to as his brothers and sister are Ace, Jet, and Cate because they were raised as a family unit. I write it like that so it doesn’t seem weird that the super soldiers date each other, if he referred to Spider as his “sister” like he does with Cate it would seem weird in the context of he and Spider going out for like ten years when she still had a human body.
There was a chart that flat out lists which of them consider each other siblings a couple months ago.
You could probably have made that more clear. When I read it, I presumed it was just the teams they’d assigned themselves, not family groups.
After all, Angel’s husband (Jet, I believe?) is presumably a closer relative than Commander is by now.
The coloured groups are the siblings and the grey pie slices they’ve been divided into are the teams.
I always find it hilarious when people like you start arguing with Coela about the comic. You are aware she writes this comic, yes?
My theory is the ocean has a thing for commander and is setting tanks chemicals off by sending fish and crustacean ninjas into the camp, all for the purpose of forcing commander into the deep. Now all that’s left is to wait for the uprising of shark samurai trained by commander to fend of the demons of the ocean in order to reunite with the survival games.
That my friend should be the sequel to Pacific Rim.
My new hobby in D&D is to make the largest possible class for myself, such as a whale unicorn that flys, and make it a rogue.
…Teach me this power!
I do not know how to teach this power. but you can learn how from here. http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/comic/almost-a-true-story
Dragons with class levels in rogue are terrifying.
So basically Tank just Tsundere the shit out of Lobster since the very beginning?
I know people who get like Tank who aren’t cyborg supersoldiers. Doesn’t make them any easier to talk to when they get like that.
My wife and kids are all good swimmers, and then there’s me, who’s…not so much. I *have* to share “You swim like a minivan” with them, so they can all have a good laugh at my expense. :-p
I’ve got a measure of sympathy for Tank. His teammate, Spider, abandoned him to build that resort. Rock’s bestie, Ace, is involved, giving Tank a way to call it Rock’s fault. Poor guy is lonely and lashing out. I’m glad he has Rock to help when he calms down.
Got to love how the Commander de-escalates things. :D
I feel kinda bad for Tank. I mean sure, every time we’ve seem him he’s been spouting sexist slurs, but the guy was literally designed to have fucked up brain chemistry, And you just know the army did everything they could to drill berserker macho manliness as an ideal into his head. dudes messed up, and from what we’ve heard the captain say he has periods where he’s lucid enough to realize how messed up he is, I give even odds at least part of his bluster is to hide a worryingly large amount of self loathing.
Yeah. Most stories, his character arc winds up with him put in his place. Here, I’m rooting for the unpleasant fellow. I hope we get a strip sometime with him reaching for a happier life.
Am I the only one who imagines the Commander speaking in Patrick Warburton’s voice?
Lot’s of people have said that. Apparently he sounds like Beetlejuice.
Nah, Patrick Warburton, while having an incredibly sexy voice, doesn’t really have the Commander’s accent.
Though I am now hearing Tank’s voice as Jayne from Firefly.
YES. It is beautiful.
Ha! I had thought Rock was moving in because the water would have shorted Tank’s exposed circuitry.
And I know this isn’t really the place to post this, but there isn’t a comment thread on Platinum Black, and I was wondering if it was still active or abandoned. I’m not trying to persuade or coerce you or anything, I was just wondering if it was still active.
I’m pretty sure that one requires a great deal more planning, thought, and effort, whereas this one is more dedicated to episodic laughs, so there isn’t as much need to plan for the long-term.
I’m still working on it, it’s just been an insane year with my job switch and visa issues.
Okay, thank you. I really enjoy the story so far.
Ditto
there is something innately pleasing about the phrase “swim like a minivan” and I can’t quite put my finger on it
I am infinitely amused by Commander just calmly avoiding the confrontation. I’ve been in that sort of situation with family where you know that they’ll be a completely different person after they calm down, but until that point, you just have to avoid them entirely if need be.
Commander walking into the ocean because Tank can’t swim is a hilarious touch. Again going off of personal experience, sometimes the best thing you can do in a situation like that is just walk away.
I know Rock is walking slowly into the ocean, but I think it is far more hilarious to think of him sliding away from Tank.
Now I’m getting curious about how Rock’s fellow soldiers all chose their human names – Rock and Ace are obvious enough and some of the teams might have chosen them as a group (Charlie Angels and The Valkyries).
Like a few folk have said, I really appreciate the humanizing of Tank, despite him running his mouth. Commander’s patience is endless! (and amusing)
Sooo… it’s Tank like Krieg (Borderlands) but with slightly more coherent speech patterns? Another thing though, boy, he’s gonna tank hard after the adrenaline winds down. And it`s very possible that involves crying and feeling shame.
It’s a lot of self-disgust and feeling like throwing up but not at all able to.
I like to think that Tank speaks like Krieg when he’s less aggro and more berserk.
Respect for the Commander just grows and grows.
I’d buy “Commander Badass’s Guide To Dealing With Aggro Jerks”, full of handy advice for this modern internet.
I think a more suitable title would be “The Commander Badass Way to dealing with the Problems of the Universe (and also its inhabitants)”, font written in the same way as “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” and it just being about how the Commander would approach different situations like he has been shown to (go back to when he gave Jared his car and he bent it a little and he didn’t flip his burgers).
So Basically being a decent human being.
Hmm. I have… had a sister with sever emotional problems, so the first part of it rings far too true for me.
The punchline (which is machismo) is still hilarious.
hmmm. seeing how Tank turned out, reminds me of how they wanted to provoke Rock Lobster to do something stupid by angering them, but ended up giving him permission to punch his superior officer in public place instead (because it sounded cool to marketing).
You got your cards, you play them cool.
And then he turns into a submarine.
oh, this is the most recent one? man, this webcomic isn’t really that long
This is a very strange comment.
Presumably they just read the archive.
I’d say it’s pretty long, but it’s still dwarfed by some of the long-running behemoths.
That’s just a beautiful insult. It’s not over the top, it’s not particularly elaborate, it’s just an oddly specific matter of fact observation, that just so happens to be insulting.
“We all know you swim like a minivan.”
Has Tank always been kind of an asshole even before he was turned into a cyborg and the stuff that was done to him just made it worse? Or was he relatively normal before he got converted into a cyborg and his being an asshole trying to assert himself as the alpha male is a byproduct of that?
Either way, I feel kinda sorry for the guy.
I guess it’s a bit of a question of the chicken or the egg. In my opinion, we’re all a little bit of assholes inside. I don’t mean to brag, but a lot of people consider me a pretty chill dude. While that perception of me generally may be true, that’s only because I don’t have a mech-fist to beat the hell out of people with. If I did, I would probably put in a little less than half the effort I currently do to be a chill dude.
I just do drugs, its good for staying calm. Though, its not helpful when someone dies, Im just like ¨Awwww well, I guess thats not good… I guess¨
He was a macho grandstander even before the robot bits but he was also a seven-foot-something genetically modified juggernaut before the robot bits.
The color made the comic so much better
was making him into a berserker asshole the plan from day one? or did they just decide he’d have the most “marketable” reaction to them taking a sledgehammer to his neurochemistry?
I don’t know why, maybe the commanders comment, I just imagine someone saying “And so he defused the situation by becoming a submarine” since apparently the best way to deal with this is going underwater, which is actually pretty hilarious given how calmly he seems to be doing it. Also wondering if part of the training is that Tank is reminded of how strong he is as a means of asserting power, IE he was conditioned to inflict pain on others to take back the power that the brass stole from him with what they did.
Dear god. With the coloring all I can picture is Dory swimming around the Commander :/
The page looks great in color
Yes it does, also why do some people have their name as a link? in red.
They put links to websites along with their name in the comments.
:o so I could make my name a link to pornhub? how do I do this magic
Im testing to see if this links my name to pornhub
I have won the internet guys, go ahead and go home
No being should have that kind of power
True enough
Hi Disloyal Subject. I know its you.
Not that I’m not enjoying this story arc, I always love seeing Rock interacting with his fellow super soldiers, but anyone else kind of feel like this is starting to drag on a bit? I’m starting to miss Jared and seeing Rock’s face.
I guess you didn’t read the comment directly under the strip?
My apologies, I miss such things easily when I’m operating in sleep deprivation mode.
Yay! Colour!
I know it is daft, but everytime I hit the page and there’s a black and white comic, I am all ‘Yes! Two comics this week!’
i no rite =D
To be perfectly fair, I swim about as well as a minivan too.
Can we get a close-up of Rock’s shorts? o-O
only if you are brave enough to click my name
i almost want this to never end but tank is gonna calm down eventually
Testing to see if this links my name to pornhub
Omg it totally does, that is amazing
Please don’t put pornhub as your web address, I’m worried it’ll futz with my spam filter and if it does I’m going to have to manually mark all your comments as spam.
Hhh, okay, yeah, I just got a whole pile of spam comments making it through the filter, so I have to mark them all individually delete the pornhub links from your posts, please don’t do that anymore.
Yeah sorry, I was testing it out once, it posted the same comment twice, and I couldnt delete it, could you add a delete comment feature so if we screw up we can delete it? (im going to change the website to something random every single comment I make, no more porn tho)
I love your comment by the way, I love your art style, and your sense of humor, keep it up!
Shit I meant to say comic.
lol the tops of trees are shapeless blobs, but you manage to make it look like a work of genius.
Second panel and beyond, the first panel has leaf detail
In my mind, after Tank cools off , and the brain chemistry is somewhat calm. There is a scene of him in a room hugging a teddy bear, hearing mariah carey songs and saying with a cracking voice, why nobody wants to play with me?
Not particularly. The aftermath of a berserk leaves you exhausted and numb, sometimes for days.
is there any possibility of getting the last panel as a high quality wallpaper? because i need this. for reasons.
Click my name for the answer.
you suuuuuuck *sobs*
“Stop walking into the ocean when I’m trying to talk to you!” has got to be my favourite line in all of webcomics history.