Happy new year to you too!

Anyway on to business.

SPOILER ALERT FOR ONE PIECE, AND POSSIBLY FOR THIS COMIC!
















I just realized something pretty dark. Now that Rika is playing as the soul of the going merry, and the ship has to get destroyed later on in the series and go through the big emotional funeral, and also Luffy and Usopp have to have their dramatic fight in water 7, It's made me think about how that will translate to this comic. Does anyone else think Rika might die?
It's the only way it would make sense to me that the players would care so much about what happens to the Going Merry that they could effectively go through all that drama and have their funeral scene still be as emotional as it was.
I'm imagining that she'll end up contracting a terminal illness, and all the players are expressing their frustration and fear through the events of water 7. Later, she shows up for one last game session during the part where the Merry carries everyone to safety, she says their goodbyes to everyone on her deathbed, and they all cry for her at her funeral, expressed in game as the going merry funeral.

Anyone else have any thoughts about that?














END SPOILER

I don't think it'll be quite that dark.
Mayhaps Phil and Rika will start dating and he thinks this is them trying to get one of them out of the group, unaware that she's going to be taking control of Franky.

I don't see her coming back for the final one. I see the whole arc becoming a funerary thing. The GM plays the Going Merry on their last outing.

So the whole arc, nobody is really in character. Luke and Phil come to blows over whether to keep the ship or not. In the end, they burn the ship.

I appreciate the spoiler alert. I know One Piece has been out forever and all, but there are so many things to catch up on that it keeps getting shunted to a backburner.

I think Phill will be in character for that entire arc and will do everything knowing it's what Usopp would do. Luke of course takes a more practical standpoint wich draws the ire of Usopp. Skip to the end of the arc and everyone has a big in character funeral.
GM: Everybody add 1000 XP

Hmm...

I think when we try to predict these things, we might be forcing DragonTrainers hand, or at least making it awkward for him to tell the story he intended.

I mean now if he does not do this and simply does what I expected, people might find it anticlimactic. Any number of real world emotions and situations can leak into a game, and it is entirely plausible (especially considering how something like Darths & Droids unfolded) that players will do some "character hopping".

Rika (for example) might constantly be trying out different characters because as the actual Merry, she isn't getting to do enough. It always falls through after a bit so she's back as the ship. This could be used for all the various tag-along and temporary guest characters we see.

Maybe she eventually becomes Chopper. Maybe she becomes Franky or Brooke. Maybe she actually does keep taking on the role of different supporting characters forever being "She who has no character." The Going Merry's death could represent so many things, from someone's relative or friend dying (especially someone the entire group knows) to a job loss or someone moving away.

Now though all of that might seem like a copout. XD

I was worried about that myself, but I figured if that really was the case, the writer could delete it from the comments section.

'cept that tends to be a big clue to whomever posted it in the first place... and if that person was worried about affecting things, he or she wouldn't be posting theories here (under the comic as opposed to say in the forums) anyway.

Then again maybe I have it backwards simply because I read these comments but have only set virtual foot in the forums once, maybe twice?

I didn't know there were forums for this comic. Where are they?

Not for this comic, but for Comic Fury in general. I assume if there isn't one already, someone could start a Grand Line 3.5 thread.

http://comicfury.com/forum/index.php

dude...why would you even think that. just let the story go where DT takes us.

I DON'T CARE!

MERRY MUST LIVE!

I know Sanji is intimate with starvation since his mentor cannibalized his own leg... but its still bad to offer roasted Land Cow to a Sea Cow.

It adds that double beef flavor that can't be beat!

It adds that double beef flavor that can't be beat!

Double beef flavor, and double comments apperently.

In the words of Eduardo in The Social Network:

"Fish eat other fish! Like with the marlin and the trout!"

...why?

For all we know their physiology is different and they just look similar. Actually, the only reason it wouldn't be that way is because it is one piece and they can play fast and loose with the biology. In the real world a fish that happens to look like a cow is still a fish.

Heh, now if it was bad for a sea cow to eat regular beef, then I could have seen it worked into this script as an attempted attack.

Luke: Let him eat the meat.

Gordon: That seems out of character for Luffy...

Luke: Someone told me the monster manual says that Sea Cows are actually magically altered land cows. If we do this, it'll get mad cow disease and be easier to fight, right?

Gordon: ...

That isn't how that works, even if the entry said that. Just... just fight the &@%! thing.

Taa-dah? >.>

I wonder about that... it's possibly a "carnivorous fishes can very well eat other types of fishes" situation.
A (carnivorous?) sea monster that happen to look like a cow probabaly can eat meat no problem.

Happy New Year!
And God Bless Rika's encyclopedic knowledge.

Happy New Year! And happy new comic strip.

Hey, have you ever thought about putting these comic pages in JPEGs so we can save them? Darths and Droids implemented this so I was wondering.

Why wouldn't you be able to save a .png? If you need to convert it to use it somewhere else or view it on something else, just use GIMP.

Wouldn't she come back as the thousand sunny or the little going merry?

Actually her playing the going merry (which SPOILERS is doomed ) makes me think she ends up playing Franky playing as the ship and then "dying" gives her the motivation to play as a shipwright the rest of franky is luke "fixing" she character which explains why luffy is excited whenever franky does robot things. he has just as much invested in franky as Rika does.

Given the Spead of this Comic, I dont think we need to worry about any of that for another Decade at least. So ... yeah. ;)

Dont get me wrong, I like it a lot so far. But if Dragon Trainer decides to do (almost) everything escluding Fillers and keeps to the current update schedule it WILL take ages.
One Piece is after all ... rather stretched. ^^