While this may well get me flamed, personally I hope Torg and Oasis end up together for good.

Why?

Well first off, I don't like Zoe anymore, especially after all that has happened and how she has changed. She is a bad fit for Torg. They're good friends but Zoe is everything Torg is not. She doesn't take other people's feelings into account, she can be dishonest, and above all she doesn't stick her neck out and try and help others.

Oasis on the other hand is a much better match for Torg. We now know she's taken to focusing her powers for good, albeit without thinking the whole set of consequences out (also like Torg). She loves Torg unconditionally, and hopefully will do so even after she snaps out of it. She and Torg have a lot in common. They're both kind of zany, and I think at heart they are both good people.

We also know that Torg on some level cares for Oasis. He was alarmed each and every time she was "killed", especiall so the most recent time
http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=020714, http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=020724, http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=020802. He also smushes DoL Zoe and stakes Valrie without thinking: http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=060430, while his first response with Oasis is to run around her: http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=060501. When he does kill her, Chaz is activated, thus spurring http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=060508. All this points to some feelings of care, not love yet, but given the right circumstances it might work.

DoN Zoe will always be a sort of substitute for DoL Zoe from now on, and an ill fitting one. Oasis, however, is a blooming character with real feelings and problems, problems Torg could help her out with. She is someone striving to be one of the "Good Guys" with the same sort of naivety that Torg has.

I want to see the comic end in a Torg/Oasis wedding.

He kills the ones already dead with no problem because their death is a fact. Oasis is still alive. Fresh guilt is worse than old guilt.

And just because DoN Zoe can be a bit insensitive at times, i dont see your full point. Since the DoL Zoe, who was part of a boring, stupid world that Torg in general found irritating, WAS a replacement herself.....

Well, its a fair argument, but i think youre being awfully fast at jumping to conclusions.

Was being the operative word. He and DoN Zoe have never had a relationship, while he presumably got conjugal with DoL Zoe.



I don't think this is what will necessarily happen, I just think it is what should happen. Torg and Zoe aren't right for each other. He and Oasis could reinforce each other's qualities and make each other grow, they could both give each other their all. Their sum would be better than their parts. Torg and Zoe I think would turn into Torg putting his all into her, and her often overlooking Torg.

Sorry... DoN?

Sluggy Prime, Dimension of Nifty.

Even though, just recently, he acknowledged, with bun-bun's help, that the Zoe that died wasn't "His" Zoe. he says "She wasnt really Zoe". that suggests VERY strongly where his emotions still lie. In fact, the entire shadow play forces STRONGELY that his fear is for Zoe herself, not DOL Zoe OR Oasis. After all, the fear he wouldn't face was Zoe, the Zoe of his world, dead. Im sorry, i cant accept that part of the argument. You picked one SMALL item from the sequence and ignored the massive weight of evidence to the contrary.

No, the fear lurking in his head was the dead DoL Zoe, the fear he had been avoiding, and the fear he couldn't face was another person he cares for dead because of his actions.

His fear isn't Zoe of his world dead, it is of another person dying because of his actions. Thus the big "Torg's fault" above her head, and the innocent Oasis over there as another thing he couldn't face.

In the end though, my argument is based on character personalities. Oasis makes a better Mrs. Torg, for reasons stated above, than Zoe.

Oasis and Torg can never, ever get together. Both of them conciously acknowledge that Oasis's love for Torg is merely the result of one of Dr. Steve's orders. For Oasis this constitutes a personal obstacle, and gives Torg further guilt over being unable to "save" Oasis. Neither of them would feel comfortable *having* real and free feelings for one another, let alone expressing them.

Dear God, I sound like a woman .

I think Oasis' current unwillingness to acknowledge this particular bit of brainwashing hints at a degree of sincerity to her feelings for Torg. Which is probably justified in that over the course of her existence, Torg is probably the only guy who hasn't been a total jerk to her.

Okay Torg and this sensei guy, but I mean he's like old and junk, so that ain't gonna work.

Yeah, I think what will happen is once she pushes through the barrier, she'll realize that despite all the horrible things she has done for him, he keeps on going to bat for her and trying to help her, not hurt her. From this, real feelings will be flowing, and he won't initially believe her.

I have an even better reason you're both wrong: it would throw off the drama of the romantic tension between Zoe and Torg so completely.

It goes against the grain to say it, but I think you're being unfair on Zoe. Yes, she's been acting like a total jerk ever since the creepy cloner geeks. But I think the events before and at the party have at least started to teach her her lesson. She's not Gwynn; at heart she's a well-meaning, self-sacrificing, honest, GOOD person. Recently she hasn't been acting like it, but that's because she hasn't been acting true to herself. And that, in turn, is largely due to feeling rejected by Torg (and at the same time being in denial about her feelings for him). Zoe's been trying to move on and change herself, but she's taken the wrong route and I think she will realise that now. Give her a chance.

Also, Zoe's qualities match up with Torg's just fine; she's the sensibleness to balance his nuttiness, the worry to his recklessness etc etc. They both care deeply about others and have high standards. They'd be great together. Oasis on the other hand is... what do we actually know about Oasis /as a person/? Does she even have a personality? Seems to me til she knows herself we can't know her either - she's just a bundle of psychosis and violence. All she does is react. When she starts behaving like a person rather than a wind-up toy we'll be able to see if she's right for Torg, but until then I'm calling Zoe all the way...

I have to go with fes on this one.

Zoe's been acting a bit bitchy lately, selfish and generally self-centered, at the expense of her friends. But that's *not* in character for Zoe, and probably has more to do with her feeling rejected by Torg... this bout of nastiness only began recently after Torg returned from the DoL and all but ran out of the house without explanation. He had his reasons, but she couldn't know what they were. So she focused on her career, and that made things worse by creating an on-air persona where she felt more free to vent. But before all of this, she was the voice of sanity for the whole crew, she was the one they mooched off of for several *years,* she was the one who got unwillingly hauled off into a dozen bizarre adventures over the years, and it's pretty much unquestionable that a big part of her lackluster college performance was due to her friends. The fact that she's stuck with them come Hell or Maneating Aliens in spite of all of that speaks volumes more than her more recent behavior.

And with that in mind, she complements Torg well, and always has: Where Torg is impulsive, Zoe is deliberate, where Torg is adventurous, Zoe is the voice of caution, where Torg is carefree, Zoe is responsible, and where Torg has the attention span of Kiki on pop-rocks, Zoe can have quite a temper and a stronger focus. They've also changed each other over the years - Zoe's sense of responsibility has clearly rubbed off on Torg (it was her drawing a line in the sand that got Torg started on the path to his current 9 to 5 job), while Torg's impulsiveness has rubbed off on Zoe's natural caution - her party-girl routine to hop a ride on the time machine, and her recent, poorly thought-out (but very Torgish) agreement to use monkeys as an instrument of revenge.


We'd have to know more about Oasis's non-manipulated personality to even begin to guess her quirks, let alone her compatability with the other characters.

Not only would it throw that drama off, it would pretty much throw off the tension and 'feel' of the entire comic.

As I see it the entire premise of the comic is the Sluggy crew as a bunch of careless free-lancing single individuals who can pretty much pack up and go gallavanting across dimensions and pockets of the universe within 10 seconds at any time.

Have a couple of them get married, start a real career, have some kids, settle down in the suburbs and what do you get... not Sluggy... maybe 'Everybody Loves Torg' or something.

I just don't see the comic surviving any more as it is if anybody actually "ends up" with anybody, unless that ending up actually signals the end of the comic itself. And I don't want that to happen :(

I'm not saying it can't be done, but I would consider it a master stroke of genuis from Pete if he was actually able to pull that off without Sluggy completely jumping the shark from then on.

Having said all that, i would definitely vote for Oasis. She's just SO much cooler and lovable ... but I would expect it to actually go the other way: The overarching cliche in any public depiction of married life in American culture will always have the male be a bumbling silly fool/child who just can't seem to get it together, while the female will be a sharp, intelligent, sensible grown-up woman who corrects the male's bumblings and keeps from him harm.

This is very far from the truth in real life... but it's been ingrained into all of us through TV sitcoms, movies comics and every possible kind of cultural device, that we just accept it as a fact... and I have never seen an exception of it... so as much as I respect Pete as a writer and artist, if I had to bet money on it, I'd say Torg and Zoe will indeed be the final couple.

Edit: You know, actually i CAN think of an exception... The Lucy Show. The whole cliche still stands regardless, I think

I'm in the camp that thinks Sluggy is on the way to a glorious end, maybe two or three years from now. I think it would be a good thing too. The gang deserves a happily ever after.