Greenhilt afterlife conundrum.

[Wizard_Lizard]

So, I was just rereading oots and Roy's sister saiid that she was true neutral, since all of Roy's family are lawful good, does that mean that she won't end up in the same afterlife as her family?

[Aveline]

I would presume so.

Per the other Eugene thread, it seems Eugene is probably True Neutral as well, so if he ever gets off the cloud he can probably look forward to an afterlife with his daughter.

[Wizard_Lizard]

huh.
Are all wizards in oots neutral?
V
Roy's sister
Eugene

[understatement]

huh.
Are all wizards in oots neutral?
V
Roy's sister
Eugene

No.
Praise Larry Gardener

But most of the Evil wizards to tend to have Neutral tendencies on the law/chaos.



Also, can Roy be killed in his celestial state? And if Eugene can still use some spells, can Julia occasionally pop over for a visit?

[Borris]

Also, can Roy be killed in his celestial state? And if Eugene can still use some spells, can Julia occasionally pop over for a visit?

If Winstriker can visit Miko, I'm sure the Greenhilts will be able to visit each other.

[Caerulea]

If Winstriker can visit Miko, I'm sure the Greenhilts will be able to visit each other.
No.

*Banana's wisdom*




Visiting people of a different alignment...didn't Soon promise Miko that Windstriker would come to visit her as often as he was able? Whatever destination Miko ended up in, it probably wasn't Celestia. It was probably one of those less cushy places you mentioned. Yet she's going to be able to receive a visitor from Celestia from time to time, unless Soon was being Jedi-honest and really meant that the horse would visit her as often as he could, which was never. In which case he should go to hell for lying, but I digress. If the gods can issue celestial day passes to horses, why is the same impossible for mortal souls?

Because they don't. Yes, they could, but they don't.

This is not a debate. You asked why X is a certain way in this comic strip. I, the author, am telling you why. Windstriker is not a dead soul, he is a living Celestial creature; he is not bound by the same rules. He needs a pass because he is in the service of the Twelve Gods and will likely be assigned to another paladin at some point, from whom he must get permission before going on a trip. If he were unemployed, he would be free to go to whatever plane he could find a way to travel to. Dead souls have no such freedom.


[bolding mine]

—Caerulea

[Aquillion]

That might just be a general rule, though (ie. spirits lack an inherent way to change planes.) We know dead people can still cast spells, so it's possible a ghost with Plane Shift could use it to visit people.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Mko is going to acheron or the nine hells for being lawful stupid.

[Reboot]

That might just be a general rule, though (ie. spirits lack an inherent way to change planes.) We know dead people can still cast spells, so it's possible a ghost with Plane Shift could use it to visit people.

Don't spirits that try to go to another outer plane in 3.5e just end up auto-teleported back to the centre?

OTOH, I believe TN souls (uniquely) can end up in another afterlife as chunks of the TN plane itself periodically drift into the other planes?

[Peelee]

I think it's really crappy that Tennessee gets its own plane. It's not like they built the moon rocket or anything.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Don't spirits that try to go to another outer plane in 3.5e just end up auto-teleported back to the centre?

OTOH, I believe TN souls (uniquely) can end up in another afterlife as chunks of the TN plane itself periodically drift into the other planes?

that woud make sense. Sucks if it drifted into the abyss for a few decdes.

[Rogar Demonblud]

So, I was just rereading oots and Roy's sister said that she was true neutral, since all of Roy's family are lawful good, does that mean that she won't end up in the same afterlife as her family?

No, it means that right now, in her mid-teens, she's True Neutral. We have no idea what she'll end up as when she's older.

[Squire Doodad]

I suspect that the afterlife hosts have certain arrangements to allow for family members to visit each other. However, I imagine that the one who must initiate contact will have to be the Good member of the family (or Neutral if the case may be). After all, if you have one person who is a great hero and one who is a maniacal sadist who spent three years torturing their younger sibling, you don't want the sadist to be actively reaching out to their heroic sibling because they'll just cause pain. If the heroic sibling wishes to see them though, that might be more possible.

No matter what, it would be harsh to not let people see their relatives/adoptive-family, though I imagine there's a bit of metaphysical paperwork to take care of to do so.

And while the souls themselves cannot travel at will without spells, the Archons and Devas would probably be more than willing to facilitate a meeting. There's probably a pub in the first tier of the NG Afterlife dedicated to having family members meet from different parts of the afterlife (since TN is kind of a weird place, and LG or CG represents a more specific mindset, NG works best). Let's call it...hm... The Pub at the Beginning of the Afterlife.

[Darth Paul]

No matter what, it would be harsh to not let people see their relatives/adoptive-family, though I imagine there's a bit of metaphysical paperwork to take care of to do so.

This is going to sound really bad, but... well, let's say my brother and I were both OOTS characters, OK? And given the plane he's likely to end up on, I wouldn't really want anything to do with him in the afterlife any more than I do now, unless people can reform themselves up there (down there?) and change their alignment posthumously. (And personality too.) :smallannoyed:

[Wizard_Lizard]

This is going to sound really bad, but... well, let's say my brother and I were both OOTS characters, OK? And given the plane he's likely to end up on, I wouldn't really want anything to do with him in the afterlife any more than I do now, unless people can reform themselves up there (down there?) and change their alignment posthumously. (And personality too.) :smallannoyed:

same. my brother is kind of lawful good while I am chaotic neutral.

[Squire Doodad]

This is going to sound really bad, but... well, let's say my brother and I were both OOTS characters, OK? And given the plane he's likely to end up on, I wouldn't really want anything to do with him in the afterlife any more than I do now, unless people can reform themselves up there (down there?) and change their alignment posthumously. (And personality too.) :smallannoyed:

Presumably there's consent needed on both ends, but I don't want to go write out the framework for 92% of an Afterlife. I'm not Dante, nor am I starting a religion.
Also my sympathies.

[Mandor]

If Winstriker can visit Miko, I'm sure the Greenhilts will be able to visit each other.

Is there actual Word of Giant that Miko is going somewhere other than Celestia? I always thought Miko was in fact Lawful Good throughout her life.... simply also Delusional and seeing the world through Miko-only-lenses. It was one of the things that made her so interesting as an antagonist... she was a defender of the law and basically good, just her perceptions so WARPED by her delusion of personal destiny. I mean, yes, she committed an evil act and lost her Paladinhood. No disputing that one. And she doesn't get to be a paladin again afterwards. Soon was clear on that, too.

But up until the final week of her life, she was still a paladin. That's got to be a fairly long track record of Lawful Good, no?

I just assumed Windstriker could visit her down on the lowest level of Celestia until some day when Miko finally realized it wasn't actually all about her. and then she could start climbing.

[Darth Paul]

Is there actual Word of Giant that Miko is going somewhere other than Celestia?

Summon Banana V!!

But I think it's strongly implied by her conversation with Soon that the manner of her Fall (an unambiguously Evil act, striking down her defenseless liege lord who also happened to be an octogenarian) excluded her from the LG afterlife. She might possibly have shifted to LN, considering her actions over the many strips we saw and her devotion to the letter but not the spirit of her professed alignment. Consider Roy's review: the Deva told him that trying was the most important thing. He followed the spirit but not always the letter.

I would argue that Miko wasn't trying to be Lawful Good any more; she was rules lawyering her alignment.

[Peelee]

I certainly wouldn't peg her as Truth, Justice, and the Celestial Way (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1138.html).
ETA:
.
I would argue that Miko wasn't trying to be Lawful Good any more; she was rules lawyering her alignment.

I disagree, and think she fell into the same trap that ensnared Gin Jun. She was so concerned with whether what she was doing was Good or Lawful, that she didn't take any time to consider whether it was right or just.

[Squire Doodad]

Summon Banana V!!

But I think it's strongly implied by her conversation with Soon that the manner of her Fall (an unambiguously Evil act, striking down her defenseless liege lord who also happened to be an octogenarian) excluded her from the LG afterlife. She might possibly have shifted to LN, considering her actions over the many strips we saw and her devotion to the letter but not the spirit of her professed alignment. Consider Roy's review: the Deva told him that trying was the most important thing. He followed the spirit but not always the letter.

I would argue that Miko wasn't trying to be Lawful Good any more; she was rules lawyering her alignment.

I agree; Miko is probably going to have a 3 hours discussion with the relevant Deva(s) about her alignment, but no matter what she won't be LG. She almost definitely is LN, I could see an argument for TN (Chaotic ends for Lawful means and such) and maaaybe LE but Miko isn't selfishly doing things for herself so much as it is that she is superimposing her worldview such that it interferes with her intentions. She does believe herself to be a force of good, and her choice to snap Sabine's neck instead of going along with her does mean more than you'd expect for the LN iteration over the LE one.

Just because she claimed to be LG and attempted to lead a LG lifestyle doesn't mean she is LG Afterlife compatible. Also, the whole bisecting unarmed octaganerian leige-lord and then Falling thing, while not necessarily enough by itself for LG to go into LE, also is a really big black mark. Even if it is the only black mark in one's life, you need to seriously and intentionally make up for that to not be pushed down. If Miko had realized she had done something terrible, given herself up to the authorities peacefully, and taken the punishment willingly, she would have an argument that she was trying to make amends but died a bit soon.

[Reboot]

Remember, there's nine alignments, but 16 main afterlife plains. There is a plane (Arcadia) between "true" LG and "true" LN.

(Also, once again we see one of the fundamental rules of this board - threads allowed to continue will inevitably tend toward talking about Miko)

[hamishspence]

Remember, there's nine alignments, but 16 main afterlife plains. There is a plane (Arcadia) between "true" LG and "true" LN.

17 - the 16 of the Wheel, and 1 for TN - the Outlands - the "hub of the Wheel".

[Darth Paul]

I disagree, and think she fell into the same trap that ensnared Gin Jun. She was so concerned with whether what she was doing was Good or Lawful, that she didn't take any time to consider whether it was right or just.
Y...y...yess..... only, in Miko's case, she assumed that, as the leading Paladin of the Sapphire Guard, she was automatically doing what was Right and Just. Dispensing steely death to those who opposed her was only Right and Just, because she is the embodiment of Law and Good. All she had to do was retroactively justify how her acts were Lawful, because she was the Law, and Good because she was Good by definition... and if you're Lawful and Good, can you do anything else? By definition? Sort of like a rogue cop deciding they can make up the law as they go along.


(Also, once again we see one of the fundamental rules of this board - threads allowed to continue will inevitably tend toward talking about Miko)

Or Star Wars.

Or, what if Miko had been a character in Star Wars??

[Ruck]

I suspect that the afterlife hosts have certain arrangements to allow for family members to visit each other.

I mean, direct word from the creator is that they do not.


I certainly wouldn't peg her as Truth, Justice, and the Celestial Way (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1138.html).
She seems more like "There's only one right path," although she frequently expresses it more like "My way or the highway." The "one right path" is pretty much "whatever Miko thinks is right at any given moment."


ETA:

I disagree, and think she fell into the same trap that ensnared Gin Jun. She was so concerned with whether what she was doing was Good or Lawful, that she didn't take any time to consider whether it was right or just.

I find it hard to separate right/just from Good. I think Gin-Jun's problem was more akin to the paladin Roy first adventures with, where he only cared about doing the minimum to maintain his alignment. Killing "generally Evil" creatures is still Good enough, so he stays Good. Miko I think was just far more deluded about her own righteousness and infallibility.
Darth Paul is right, I think.

[Peelee]

I find it hard to separate right/just from Good. I think Gin-Jun's problem was more akin to the paladin Roy first adventures with, where he only cared about doing the minimum to maintain his alignment. Killing "generally Evil" creatures is still Good enough, so he stays Good. Miko I think was just far more deluded about her own righteousness and infallibility.
Darth Paul is right, I think.

Killing Evil creatures regardless of why apparently is enough to count as Good, but I wouldnt call it right or just.

[Darth Paul]

Killing Evil creatures regardless of why apparently is enough to count as Good, but I wouldnt call it right or just.

I agree completely with that point. The Giant has illustrated multiple ways of how not to be a paladin, and they all center around being more concerned with either being Lawful Good or making others be Lawful Good, than with actually following the law and doing good. In other words, Justice and Right. Being a Paladin is actions, not lip service.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Plus the disconcerting detail that most Evil creatures will be killed by other Evil creatures (the Blood War alone will see to that). Hard to see fiends getting into the Upper Planes, no matter how many Evil-ites they've slaughtered.

[MesiDoomstalker]

Plus the disconcerting detail that most Evil creatures will be killed by other Evil creatures (the Blood War alone will see to that). Hard to see fiends getting into the Upper Planes, no matter how many Evil-ites they've slaughtered.

Outsiders don't go to afterlives. It varies depending on the Outsider in question, but most just re-meld with their plane of origin and at some point their essence gets spewed back out as another of their kind. Some, usually Evil, Outsiders are formed from mortal souls but even those remeld with their origin plane upon death. That's why regular Raise Dead (and derivatives) fail to return Outsiders and require a specific, higher level spell for it.

[Snails]

I certainly wouldn't peg her as Truth, Justice, and the Celestial Way (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1138.html).
ETA:

I disagree, and think she fell into the same trap that ensnared Gin Jun. She was so concerned with whether what she was doing was Good or Lawful, that she didn't take any time to consider whether it was right or just.

And that is different from ruleslawyering her alignment how?


Killing Evil creatures regardless of why apparently is enough to count as Good, but I wouldnt call it right or just.

While that may well be a sentiment that Miko and a certain elf with goblin prisoners may hold, do you actually believe that such is a general argument that is accepted by most Good characters/gods in the OotsVerse?

[Ruck]

Killing Evil creatures regardless of why apparently is enough to count as Good, but I wouldnt call it right or just.

Sure, I guess what I mean is that [spoiler character] was only interested in doing Good in the most technical, "I like killing them and I have to have a good justification in order to keep my paladin powers" sense. Sort of like [other spoiler character].

[Wizard_Lizard]

there is no way miko is going to mount celstia.
She is lawful stupid.
if tiamat believes wht sh is doing is good, it doea not make it good.
same applies to Miko.

[Vinyadan]

No.


[bolding mine]

—Caerulea

The nice fact about this for the Greenhilts is that Celia, in theory, could visit Roy after he croaks.

EDIT: I do not feel so sure about Miko being lawful. To what moral code was she adhering? "I am awesome, and you are all setting me up" doesn't strike me as one. True Neutral would be my (charitable) guess.

[Wizard_Lizard]

The nice fact about this for the Greenhilts is that Celia, in theory, could visit Roy after he croaks.

EDIT: I do not feel so sure about Miko being lawful. To what moral code was she adhering? "I am awesome, and you are all setting me up" doesn't strike me as one. True Neutral would be my (charitable) guess.

I was thinking more lawful evil, she believes a code and strictly adheres to it, but will twist it to get her desired outcome. But true neutral wrks too

[Peelee]

And that is different from ruleslawyering her alignment how?
Intent and execution, I'd say.

While that may well be a sentiment that Miko and a certain elf with goblin prisoners may hold, do you actually believe that such is a general argument that is accepted by most Good characters/gods in the OotsVerse?

Well, she stayed a Paladin until she cut down Shojo, so...

[Goblin_Priest]

The OotSverse is blatantly unfair, so any claim that "X should work like Y because otherwise it'd be unfair" have no grounding whatsoever.

Also, Eugene is officially Lawful Good, as far as I'm aware, and despite everything we've ever seen of him.

[Aquillion]

The nice fact about this for the Greenhilts is that Celia, in theory, could visit Roy after he croaks.

EDIT: I do not feel so sure about Miko being lawful. To what moral code was she adhering? "I am awesome, and you are all setting me up" doesn't strike me as one. True Neutral would be my (charitable) guess."Death to evildoers" is a code. She clearly has a very rigid view of the world and how it ought to be. Also, it's worth remembering that we only saw a small part of her life - a Paladin can fall from one action, but it won't necessarily change their alignment. Most of her interactions with the OOTS were plainly from a lawful perspective, fixated on small and big rules.

To a certain extent her conspiracy-theories were a symptom of her excessive lawfulness, since she was obsessed with the idea that the entire world was run according to these rigid systems when it actually wasn't.

[TheOneHawk]

The OotSverse is blatantly unfair, so any claim that "X should work like Y because otherwise it'd be unfair" have no grounding whatsoever.

Also, Eugene is officially Lawful Good, as far as I'm aware, and despite everything we've ever seen of him.

Eugene considers himself LG, hence why he went to Celestia. He hasn't had his interview yet, because of the outstanding blood oath. Just like Roy almost got kicked down based on his actions, despite considering himself LG, Eugene almost certainly will actually get kicked down to true neutral.

[masamune1]

Killing Evil creatures regardless of why apparently is enough to count as Good, but I wouldnt call it right or just.

Pretty sure the Giant has said the exact opposite- that killing evil creatures for no good reason can actually make you change alignment in the wrong direction.

Well, admittedly, what he said was closer to "evil races are not INHERENTLY evil so their are Neutral and even Good aligned members of every race, particularly their children", which is why per Word of Giant the Paladins' who killed Redcloaks goblins all Fell when they massacred them.

Even so, I don't think there is anything in this comic that says that killing an evil creature without a good reason or at least a reasonable suspicion is anything other than Evil itself.

[Chronos]

If O-Chul or Hinjo screwed up royally (well, commonly, in O-Chul's case) at the end of their lives, that one screw-up might not be enough to shift them out of Lawful Good. But while Miko was good for most of her life, she was never very good. Even at her best, she tended to value Law over Good (see, for instance, the mattress tag). When you're close to the line, it doesn't take much to move you over it.

[Darth Paul]

"Death to evildoers" is a code. She clearly has a very rigid view of the world and how it ought to be. Also, it's worth remembering that we only saw a small part of her life - a Paladin can fall from one action, but it won't necessarily change their alignment. Most of her interactions with the OOTS were plainly from a lawful perspective, fixated on small and big rules.

To a certain extent her conspiracy-theories were a symptom of her excessive lawfulness, since she was obsessed with the idea that the entire world was run according to these rigid systems when it actually wasn't.

That's why I think she did lose her Good status at the end. Roy already gave a pretty decent summing up of how she didn't really follow the precepts of Lawful Good here (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0251.html). Just following the letter of the alignment isn't good enough. She was fairly Lawful (except for the "taking the law into her own hands" moment at the end), but the only Good she really did, as Peelee points out, was killing Evil beings. I believe she was borderline Good, and the act of killing Shojo pushed her off.

[Peelee]

Pretty sure the Giant has said the exact opposite- that killing evil creatures for no good reason can actually make you change alignment in the wrong direction.

Well, admittedly, what he said was closer to "evil races are not INHERENTLY evil so their are Neutral and even Good aligned members of every race, particularly their children", which is why per Word of Giant the Paladins' who killed Redcloaks goblins all Fell when they massacred them.

That's not what he said, and that's not what he said.

[woweedd]

huh.
Are all wizards in oots neutral?
V
Roy's sister
Eugene
Dourkan was a good guy.

[Darth Paul]

Dourkan was a good guy.

Long lost cousin of Durkon and Dorukan?

[Ariko]

Long lost cousin of Durkon and Dorukan?

That, or a eastern ruler with an unpleasant personality.

[2D8HP]

...(Also, once again we see one of the fundamental rules of this board - threads allowed to continue will inevitably tend toward talking about Miko)



....Or Star Wars.

Or, what if Miko had been a character in Star Wars??



...this is a thread about a magic meme, there needs to be a version of Godwin's Law that relates to Star Wars...



It only took 26 posts to turn this into another thread about Star Wars.

Impressive. Most impressive.



I find your lack of faith disturbing.



...All roads/strips lead to Familicide and Star Wars, I see...



....I suspect we have Lucas's Law at work here - a parallel law to Godwin's...



This is an interesting thread; first you talk about OOTS, then Redwall, which is followed by King Arther, then Lord of the Rings, THEN the hardness of different metals, then some more about Lord of the Rings, throw in another Redwall Refrence, Some more King Arthur, then end it with metals again. Oh, and this post. I like it!:smallbiggrin:



Forget Godwin's law, at the Playground most sufficiently long enough threads touch on:


1) Star Wars

2) Lord of the Rings

3) Grammar


I for one welcome our continuing obsessions.



I vote we call it 9HPAvg's law


Unfortunately my efforts to add new obsessions have failed

....Which is good, true and beautiful, though I'm a bit befuddled that Harry Potter doesn't come up more, but no biggie.

However, I'm VERY DISAPPOINTED!!! at the lack of The Planet of the Apes references.

YOU MANIACS!!!

DAM...

Anyway, more apes please.

Also Buckaroo Banzai and Galaxy Quest.

Thanks.


well, mostly failed

By Grabthar's Hammer... .


...It was a hooked hammer that once belonged to his ancestor Grabthar, who used in in a major battle allied with the dwarven king Warvan and his sons....


By Grabthar's Hammer, I try!

[Prinygod]

That's why I think she did lose her Good status at the end. Roy already gave a pretty decent summing up of how she didn't really follow the precepts of Lawful Good here (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0251.html). Just following the letter of the alignment isn't good enough. She was fairly Lawful (except for the "taking the law into her own hands" moment at the end), but the only Good she really did, as Peelee points out, was killing Evil beings. I believe she was borderline Good, and the act of killing Shojo pushed her off.

I don't think you can go that far. Even with in the comic she went out of her way to save the farmer despite delaying her mission. I don't think she demonstrated any sadism with killing evil creatures, even during her obsession with Belkar. If trying gets you credit in the after life, I would say she certainly was.

[D.One]

That, or a eastern ruler with an unpleasant personality.

Or a very unfriendly tiger...

[Aquillion]

She was fairly Lawful (except for the "taking the law into her own hands" moment at the end), but the only Good she really did, as Peelee points out, was killing Evil beings. I believe she was borderline Good, and the act of killing Shojo pushed her off.
That's not quite true.

While it's true that she kills Evil fairly indiscriminately, she was concerned that the OOTS may have killed a good dragon (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0207.html). She did care about fighting the ogres honorably (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0215.html) (but found a strategically-effective way to do so.) Also, she saved people when the inn was burning down (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0243.html).

Remember, we kind of saw her at her worst, since the OOTS rubbed her the wrong way since the beginning.

[Rogar Demonblud]

She also had the 'ride for the city to spread the alarm' moment there before the Battle of Azure City. The Giant explicitly called that out in commentary as her doing her duty as a paladin.

[Wizard_Lizard]

She also had the 'ride for the city to spread the alarm' moment there before the Battle of Azure City. The Giant explicitly called that out in commentary as her doing her duty as a paladin.

yesm But doing something because it is her duty is very lawful but we uhave no ide as to the goodness of the act.
I thibk she is lawful stupid.
But you do have lot of good points and may even chang my mind!

[hroþila]

I think it's very likely that Miko gave generous alms, based on her dialogue and her lifestyle.

[Wizard_Lizard]

I think it's very likely that Miko gave generous alms, based on her dialogue and her lifestyle.

I guess so. Even if she was a delusional psycopath, she wasn't ALL bad.

[Sir_Norbert]

yesm But doing something because it is her duty is very lawful but we uhave no ide as to the goodness of the act.

Sure we have. Putting yourself in danger for the sake of others is good. Doesn't matter whether you had a code a duty reinforcing it; that just makes it lawful in addition to good.

[Darth Paul]

We're talking about different stages of her character development. Also, bear in mind that people can do good things, without being strictly Good aligned. Even Evil Has Loved Ones.

There's no doubt she acted to warn Azure City because she cared about Azure City. But in the ogre battle, despite her concern to fight honorably, the main message that I took away is that she treated the OOTS as playing pieces to order as she needed them to act. V certainly took it that way. Not even hinting at her plan, expecting everyone to respond as she ordered without a question; that's not a Good "within the spirit of the alignment" attitude. It's extremely Lawful, though; "I am in charge, and you do what I say."

[Fyraltari]

I guess so. Even if she was a delusional psycopath, she wasn't ALL bad.

Miko certainly wasn’t a psychopath. She was violent and deluded, yes, but she did care for a great many things and people (Shojo and Windstriker).

[LadyEowyn]

So, I was just rereading oots and Roy's sister saiid that she was true neutral, since all of Roy's family are lawful good, does that mean that she won't end up in the same afterlife as her family?
If Julia remains True Neutral. At this point I think it’s just representative of the fact that she’s a self-absorbed teenager still figuring out who she wants to be. True Neutral is (among other things) a kind of ‘default’ alignment.

She may pick another alignment once she’s grown up a bit and decided what she wants her life to be about.

EDIT: Seriously, how does a thread that’s completely unrelated to Miko derail into a Miko argument within half a page?

[Prinygod]

We're talking about different stages of her character development. Also, bear in mind that people can do good things, without being strictly Good aligned. Even Evil Has Loved Ones.

There's no doubt she acted to warn Azure City because she cared about Azure City. But in the ogre battle, despite her concern to fight honorably, the main message that I took away is that she treated the OOTS as playing pieces to order as she needed them to act. V certainly took it that way. Not even hinting at her plan, expecting everyone to respond as she ordered without a question; that's not a Good "within the spirit of the alignment" attitude. It's extremely Lawful, though; "I am in charge, and you do what I say."

You cannot become a paladin with out being good. Trying to say she was anything but good before her fall is pointless, even if you find he behavior unpleasant. Being Paladin goes a step further in that they cannot commit evil acts, if they do they lose their powers and have to attone. It's entirely possible she was still good after her fall, as she had dedicated her life to good, despite her flaws.

[Rogar Demonblud]

EDIT: Seriously, how does a thread that’s completely unrelated to Miko derail into a Miko argument within half a page?

Less Seriously: Have you met us?

[Fyraltari]

EDIT: Seriously, how does a thread that’s completely unrelated to Miko derail into a Miko argument within half a page?

It's an alignment/afterlife thread.

[Cinnibar]

All the points about Miko ending up on LN or other than LG just forget one thing: that entire sequence was basically, at most, a blip on the Deva's notes.

Even to Roy, the rules for being LG aren't hard and fast, it will likely come down to Miko was indeed trying to be her alignment of Lawful Good, to the best of her mortal understanding. Neither Roy, nor Miko, had to achieve the ideal LG to be allowed to the LG mountain. Even Roy got a pass on that evil thing he did when he was young, not to mention taking on Belkar and abandoning Elan. The review is a full review, and from what we've seen, takes into account the mortal aspect.

Hence, even Roy's father is hanging out outside the Mountain instead of some other afterlife. Even after impersonating a greater being.

[Ruck]

All the points about Miko ending up on LN or other than LG just forget one thing: that entire sequence was basically, at most, a blip on the Deva's notes.

[citation needed]

[Grey_Wolf_c]

[citation needed]

Roy's Deva: you almost abandoned a subordinate. Had you not realised how bad that was, and gone back, you'd be in TN by now.

Miko's Deva: you actually murdered your boss, and to your dying breath were convinced you did the right thing.

Cinnibar: I see no difference.

Grey Wolf

[Cinnibar]

Roy's Deva: you almost abandoned a subordinate. Had you not realised how bad that was, and gone back, you'd be in LN by now.

Miko's Deva: you actually murdered your boss, and to your dying breath were convinced you did the right thing.

Cinnibar: I see no difference.

Grey Wolf

Difference is that one is a strip, the other is a fond hope, and ignores the fact that the boss was indeed manipulating and tricking the LG Paladins despite their oath, doing 'evil' acts under their noses, even the other paladin there at the time thought this was grievous.

As for your take on my opinion, well, I guess that goes to your creative imagination points as well. Good job.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Difference is that one is a strip, the other is a fond hope

I fail to see how that "difference" is any such thing.


and ignores the fact that the boss was indeed manipulating and tricking the LG Paladins despite their oath, doing 'evil' acts under their noses, even the other paladin there at the time thought this was grievous.

None of which in any way counters that she murdered her own boss, and never accepted she was wrong.

Grey Wolf

[Aquillion]

The context matters. Miko screwed up. Some of that was due to her own delusions, but some of it was (as the author's notes pointed out) because of Shojo's actual lies to her regarding her destiny and identity. She did the wrong thing under the belief that it was right.

Roy knowingly, intentionally, deliberately intended to abandon a companion. It wasn't a misunderstanding on his part. He knew full-well that what he was doing was wrong, and was intentionally doing the wrong thing regardless.

"I thought it was the right thing to do" isn't a universal excuse, of course. But knowingly doing evil is clearly worse.

[Fyraltari]

doing 'evil' acts under their noses

Which ones?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

The context matters. Miko screwed up. Some of that was due to her own delusions, but some of it was (as the author's notes pointed out) because of Shojo's actual lies to her regarding her destiny and identity. She did the wrong thing under the belief that it was right.

She murdered her own boss, and refused to accept she was wrong about having done so despite the gods she claimed to be obeying telling her in no uncertain manner that she screwed up.


Roy knowingly, intentionally, deliberately intended to abandon a companion. It wasn't a misunderstanding on his part. He knew full-well that what he was doing was wrong, and was intentionally doing the wrong thing regardless.

"I thought it was the right thing to do" isn't a universal excuse, of course. But knowingly doing evil is clearly worse.

And Miko and Roy both should have known that they did the wrong thing. Of the two, only Roy did acknowledge his mistake and rectified his actions before he died. Which his Deva highlights is what saved him from being kicked out of LG. Thus, Miko, who did not rectify, does get kicked out.

Grey Wolf

[Ruck]

Difference is that one is a strip, the other is a fond hope, and ignores the fact that the boss was indeed manipulating and tricking the LG Paladins despite their oath, doing 'evil' acts under their noses, even the other paladin there at the time thought this was grievous.

As for your take on my opinion, well, I guess that goes to your creative imagination points as well. Good job.

In addition to what Fyraltari and Grey Wolf have said, I'd like to reiterate that none of this constitutes evidence that "that entire sequence was basically, at most, a blip on the Deva's notes."

[Grey_Wolf_c]

In addition to what Fyraltari and Grey Wolf have said, I'd like to reiterate that none of this constitutes evidence that "that entire sequence was basically, at most, a blip on the Deva's notes."

Agreed, but also to be clear: even if it was (and it was not, IMnpHO), a similar "blip" almost got Roy kicked out anyway.

Grey Wolf

[Prinygod]

I fail to see how that "difference" is any such thing.



None of which in any way counters that she murdered her own boss, and never accepted she was wrong.

Grey Wolf

Which doesn't mean she isn't still good. It certainly is a good case of why she is not good, ignoring mitigating factors, but the rest of her life as a paladin is a good case of why she is good. The afterlife in dnd is not about rewards and punishments, but where you belong in the spectrum of alignments in the afterlife. Roy may be good, but he wasn't "dedicate his life in the pursuit of Good" good. I'm not sure the situations are comparable 1:1.

[Ruck]

Which doesn't mean she isn't still good. It certainly is a good case of why she is not good, ignoring mitigating factors, but the rest of her life as a paladin is a good case of why she is good. The afterlife in dnd is not about rewards and punishments, but where you belong in the spectrum of alignments in the afterlife. Roy may be good, but he wasn't "dedicate his life in the pursuit of Good" good. I'm not sure the situations are comparable 1:1.

[citation needed]

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Which doesn't mean she isn't still good. It certainly is a good case of why she is not good, ignoring mitigating factors, but the rest of her life as a paladin is a good case of why she is good. The afterlife in dnd is not about rewards and punishments, but where you belong in the spectrum of alignments in the afterlife. Roy may be good, but he wasn't "dedicate his life in the pursuit of Good" good. I'm not sure the situations are comparable 1:1.

[citation needed]

[Cinnibar]

[citation needed]
Read the comic rather than demand us do the research for you both?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Read the comic rather than demand us do the research for you both?

Better still: you don't shift the burden of proof (https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/222/Shifting-of-the-Burden-of-Proof).

Grey Wolf

[Cinnibar]

Better still: you don't shift the burden of proof (https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/222/Shifting-of-the-Burden-of-Proof).

Grey Wolf

Nor do you avoid the proof in front of you because it conflicts with your judgement, like Miko. :)

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Nor do you avoid the proof in front of you because it conflicts with your judgement, like Miko. :)

You do realise that you simply stating something is true doesn't automatically make it true, right? That when we [citation needed] an assertion, it is a shortened way of saying "this statement conflicts with our understanding of the canon, please back it up", right?

If you think you have "proof in front of you", present it. Your word alone counts for literally 0, and the more you avoid presenting this "obvious evidence" you seem convinced exists, the more you look less and less reliable.

Grey Wolf

[Cinnibar]

If you think you have "proof in front of you", present it. Your word alone counts for literally 0, and the more you avoid presenting this "obvious evidence" you seem convinced exists, the more you look less and less reliable.

Because I thought you were knowledgeable about this comic, and obviously could see and read the comics instead of resorting to petulant demands for justification by others in the common textbook. It took me little time to find #490 and #285 around where I thought they would be. Perhaps if you had asked what strip rather than sitting on a holy throne going [citation needed] as the meme goes?

But that's okay, I found the reference for you. You may now belittle it as is the next step in the meme argument path this has taken.

Your move, Miko

[GreatWyrmGold]

Mko is going to acheron or the nine hells for being lawful stupid.
That's an insult to both Acheron and the Nine Hells.



This is going to sound really bad, but... well, let's say my brother and I were both OOTS characters, OK? And given the plane he's likely to end up on, I wouldn't really want anything to do with him in the afterlife any more than I do now, unless people can reform themselves up there (down there?) and change their alignment posthumously. (And personality too.) :smallannoyed:
"The Afterlife manager people should let dead people meet their relatives" != "The Afterlife manager people should force dead people to meet their relatives"
(Of course, whether or not the managers should let dead people meet their relatives has little influence over whether or not they do.)



Is there actual Word of Giant that Miko is going somewhere other than Celestia? I always thought Miko was in fact Lawful Good throughout her life.... simply also Delusional and seeing the world through Miko-only-lenses.
That's my thought. Alignment is a pretty broad brush, after all; just because you disagree with a paladin doesn't mean the paladin is evil. (http://goblinscomic.com/comic/08282016-2) Nearly all of Miko's actions were Lawful in some sense and Good in some sense; she followed her own code of honor to the end, and everything she did was an attempt to stop evil from festering. She made mistakes and committed Evil acts, but (as Aquillion noted) so did Roy, and he even knew some of those acts were wrong when he did them.
While Roy is far more moral and just than Miko, I'm not convinced he's meaningfully more Lawful or Good than she is.



I disagree, and think she fell into the same trap that ensnared Gin Jun. She was so concerned with whether what she was doing was Good or Lawful, that she didn't take any time to consider whether it was right or just.
With the alignment system as broad as it is, I wouldn't peg that as anything but Lawful Good. It's obviously wrong (though probably not as wrong as Miko's consistently twisted understanding of the world, I haven't read Scar yet), but that's not really the same thing.



Plus the disconcerting detail that most Evil creatures will be killed by other Evil creatures (the Blood War alone will see to that). Hard to see fiends getting into the Upper Planes, no matter how many Evil-ites they've slaughtered.
Quibbling over metaphysics aside, motivation is crucial to alignment and afterlives*. If you kill baatezu your whole life to prevent fiends from getting a foothold in the mortal plane and ravaging the innocent mortals, you're Good; if you kill baatezu your whole life because you like killing things and they're convenient targets, you're evil.

*Now I kinda want to see an afterlife-focused supplement with that title. Maybe something for Outer Planes adventures, maybe something like the Ghostwalk campaign setting but without the setting, maybe just rules and ideas for adventures post-TPK.



Also, it's worth remembering that we only saw a small part of her life - a Paladin can fall from one action, but it won't necessarily change their alignment.
This, so much. Miko's actions before killing Shojo were obviously not enough to make her non-LG (since if she went LN before that, she'd lose her paladin status), so she must have been LG up until that point, and I don't think killing one helpless old man out of misguided self-righteousness is enough to change your alignment in one fell swoop. If Miko had lived longer, she'd probably fall far enough to settle comfortably into LN territory, but she didn't.
The D&D rules make it clear that alignment changes do not come from one individual incident, and nothing in OotS has suggested otherwise. And no, Miko's fall doesn't count, because losing paladin status is not the same as changing alignment; that is, in fact, the point of the paladin class.




Roy may be good, but he wasn't "dedicate his life in the pursuit of Good" good.[citation needed]
Roy has never shown an interest in good for good's sake. He's shown an interest in beating Xykon for revenge, and beating Xykon to save the world, and beating Hel to save the world and Durkon, etc etc, which are all good things...but that's different than dedicating your life to the pursuit of Good.
Some would say that's just semantics. Others would say that's literally the whole difference between a paladin and a nice cleric/fighter.




the rest of her life as a paladin is a good case of why she is good.[citation needed]
"A paladin who ceases to be lawful good...loses all paladin spells and abilities." (PHB, pg 44)
Thus, Miko's life as a paladin proves that she must be Lawful Good, or else she wouldn't be a paladin. Since the paladin's oath is so much stricter than alignment, and since the DMG makes it clear alignment isn't fragile enough to be changed by a single act (unlike a code of conduct), it stands to reason that without magical influence over one's psyche, they would stop being a paladin before they stopped being Lawful Good.
If a single evil act were enough to change characters' alignments, Elan and Durkon would be the only Good members of the party...and maybe not even them, if we're not allowing "I didn't realize I was doing something wrong" as an acceptable defence.


Sorry about the lack of organization, I wanted to post this before the [citation needed] argument went too long without citations. Do your own dang work, Cinnibar, it's not that hard.

[Peelee]

Because I thought you were knowledgeable about this comic, and obviously could see and read the comics instead of resorting to petulant demands for justification by others in the common textbook. It took me little time to find #490 and #285 around where I thought they would be. Perhaps if you had asked what strip rather than sitting on a holy throne going [citation needed] as the meme goes?

But that's okay, I found the reference for you. You may now belittle it as is the next step in the meme argument path this has taken.

Your move, Miko

I'd like to offer some advice: Instead of just saying the comic numbers, say how those comics address what you're talking about. GW is not asking to be shown a text that they've already read, they're asking for you to state your position based off that text. Unless you claim X, and the text says exactly "X," then you need to formulate an argument that asserts what your statements. Actually, even if the text did say exactly, "X," it would be helpful to argue, "according to comic n, X."

ETA: GreatWyrmGold provides a great example above. He addresses a similar complaint, and he pulls out references, but he states what they say and then explores how it pertains to his argument, instead of just giving a page number to a text.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Because I thought you were knowledgeable about this comic, and obviously could see and read the comics instead of resorting to petulant demands for justification by others in the common textbook. It took me little time to find #490 and #285 around where I thought they would be. Perhaps if you had asked what strip rather than sitting on a holy throne going [citation needed] as the meme goes?

But that's okay, I found the reference for you. You may now belittle it as is the next step in the meme argument path this has taken.

Your move, Miko

So, two strips that in agree with my position and does not agree with yours or Prinygod's, and two ad hominems, bringing the number of fallacies you have now felt the need to employ up to three.

Well, I think I have been patient enough with you.

Good bye.


"A paladin who ceases to be lawful good...loses all paladin spells and abilities." (PHB, pg 44)
Thus, Miko's life as a paladin proves that she must be Lawful Good, or else she wouldn't be a paladin. Since the paladin's oath is so much stricter than alignment, and since the DMG makes it clear alignment isn't fragile enough to be changed by a single act (unlike a code of conduct), it stands to reason that without magical influence over one's psyche, they would stop being a paladin before they stopped being Lawful Good.
If a single evil act were enough to change characters' alignments, Elan and Durkon would be the only Good members of the party...and maybe not even them, if we're not allowing "I didn't realize I was doing something wrong" as an acceptable defence.

A paladin that sits in a room for most of their life doesn't fall. Refraining from doing Evil is not the same as devoting your life to Good. Specifically, it was claimed (not by you) that "the rest of her life as a paladin is a good case of why she is good". I disagree. What little we see of her life as a Paladin does not make a good case of why she is good. As plenty of others have pointed out, she must have been Good despite what we saw of her life as a Paladin, not because of it, until her self-justified actions as a Paladin finally brought her over the line.

In short, she was Good despite her tendency to think that being a Paladin made her Good, not because of it.


Roy has never shown an interest in good for good's sake.
As per Roy's Deva: "you regularly battle the forces of Evil without expecting compensation". That, according to the comic, counts as Roy being a Good man, i.e. interest in doing Good for good's sake.

Grey Wolf

[Cinnibar]

I'd like to offer some advice: Instead of just saying the comic numbers, say how those comics address what you're talking about.

That's easy, I don't know enough about any special codes here on the forum to reference the comic instead of the link which I wasn't sure was acceptable. (Plus, I did enough work for those who wanted citations for someone else's post, so didn't include any argument. :) )

[Ruck]

Read the comic rather than demand us do the research for you both?

I've read the comic thoroughly and repeatedly. When I say [citation needed], it's because the ideas you are stating are nowhere present in the text.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Yeah. Like the idea that Roy isn't good, when his Deva Reviewer explicitly states that he has repeatedly done good acts without thought of compensation or reward.

As towards Miko, I'd have to check which commentary page in W&XPs has the exact citation, but Rich also bluntly stated that Miko had been pushing the very limits of the LG alignment for a long time. My take on that is that her falling was a matter of when, not if.

[Prinygod]

Better still: you don't shift the burden of proof (https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/222/Shifting-of-the-Burden-of-Proof).

Grey Wolf

I'm am not the one saying she is not good. You are, the fact you had to dismiss me with an ad hoc attack, despite the you having the burden, Shows the weakness of your argument.

[Prinygod]

So, two strips that in agree with my position and does not agree with yours or Prinygod's, and two ad hominems, bringing the number of fallacies you have now felt the need to employ up to three.

Well, I think I have been patient enough with you.

Good bye.



A paladin that sits in a room for most of their life doesn't fall. Refraining from doing Evil is not the same as devoting your life to Good. Specifically, it was claimed (not by you) that "the rest of her life as a paladin is a good case of why she is good". I disagree. What little we see of her life as a Paladin does not make a good case of why she is good. As plenty of others have pointed out, she must have been Good despite what we saw of her life as a Paladin, not because of it, until her self-justified actions as a Paladin finally brought her over the line.

In short, she was Good despite her tendency to think that being a Paladin made her Good, not because of it.


As per Roy's Deva: "you regularly battle the forces of Evil without expecting compensation". That, according to the comic, counts as Roy being a Good man, i.e. interest in doing Good for good's sake.

Grey Wolf

Wow I only had time to respond to Grey's first response and he already rq. NP take care

Edit*

Oh and

"A paladin that sits in a room for most of their life doesn't fall. "

citation needed

[Ruck]

This, so much. Miko's actions before killing Shojo were obviously not enough to make her non-LG (since if she went LN before that, she'd lose her paladin status), so she must have been LG up until that point, and I don't think killing one helpless old man out of misguided self-righteousness is enough to change your alignment in one fell swoop. If Miko had lived longer, she'd probably fall far enough to settle comfortably into LN territory, but she didn't.
The D&D rules make it clear that alignment changes do not come from one individual incident, and nothing in OotS has suggested otherwise.

Beyond how flagrantly Evil I find killing a defenseless old man to be: The Deva explicitly tells Roy that if he hadn't gone back for Elan, his file would have gone straight to True Neutral. That's an explicit in-comic example of alignment change from one individual incident, so your post is factually incorrect. Now, what do you think would have happened to Roy's alignment if instead of abandoning Elan, he had just straight-up murdered him?


Roy has never shown an interest in good for good's sake. He's shown an interest in beating Xykon for revenge, and beating Xykon to save the world, and beating Hel to save the world and Durkon, etc etc, which are all good things...but that's different than dedicating your life to the pursuit of Good.
Some would say that's just semantics. Others would say that's literally the whole difference between a paladin and a nice cleric/fighter.

Beyond what Grey Wolf pointed out about the Deva's assessment of Roy, I think we have numerous examples of Roy-- world-saving included-- doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do, and that describing him as someone who "has never shown an interest in good for good's sake" is grossly a fundamental misreading of his character.

[Mightymosy]

The thing is we ALSO have a lot of strips with Miko TRYING to do what's best.

For celestia that's what is important, as the deva says.

The question is how much do you think Miko was "trying"?
How much worth is that "trying"?
Was that to the best of HER abilities?
I find that tough to say, honestly.
She seemed to be intelligent in the early strips she appeared in - and later she seemed irrational at times.
So how intelligent was she?

The whole question with her murdering Shojo is:
From her perspective, with her intellect, how plausible was the idea she had about what happened?

Always remember, it's easy for us to know that Roy&Co want to save the world.
But Miko doesn't.
She sees Belkar, she sees Shojo who fakes senility, etc etc....

I personally wouldn't let her off the hook, but I am a human. I can only guess, and judge her like a human. But I would expect a deva to be able to look deeper, and KNOW whether Miko was well-intentioned or not, and judge her fairly according to that.

[LadyEowyn]

Roy was verging on Neutral through most of NCFTPB (which was what made that book a good place to contrast him with Miko, a Lawful Good but non-nice paladin), as he was pursuing his own objectives - get his sword repaired, destroy Xykon to fulfill his father’s blood oath (and show up his father), hit on Miko - and stringing along the whole Order to help him with them. Haley explicitly calls him on it in strip #212.

He improves over the course of the book, to the point where he chooses to fight Xykon because Xykon is a threat to other people (#293) and tears up the team’s contracts and gives them the free choice as to whether they want to participate (#294).

If he’d continued as he was for most of NCFTPB, his actions would have been predominantly True Neutral, because he’d have been fighting Xykon for his own personal reasons and not for the sake of protecting others.

From War & XP onwards, he’s behaved in a consistently Good and inconsistently Lawful manner, as the Deva observed.

[Ruck]

The thing is we ALSO have a lot of strips with Miko TRYING to do what's best.

For celestia that's what is important, as the deva says.

The question is how much do you think Miko was "trying"?
How much worth is that "trying"?
Was that to the best of HER abilities?
I find that tough to say, honestly.
She seemed to be intelligent in the early strips she appeared in - and later she seemed irrational at times.
So how intelligent was she?

The whole question with her murdering Shojo is:
From her perspective, with her intellect, how plausible was the idea she had about what happened?

Always remember, it's easy for us to know that Roy&Co want to save the world.
But Miko doesn't.
She sees Belkar, she sees Shojo who fakes senility, etc etc....

I personally wouldn't let her off the hook, but I am a human. I can only guess, and judge her like a human. But I would expect a deva to be able to look deeper, and KNOW whether Miko was well-intentioned or not, and judge her fairly according to that.

Setting aside some of the individual details here (I don't think Miko's conclusions that led her to murdering Shojo were plausible, given that even if she was right about Shojo and the Order, there were better ways of handling the situation; see Hinjo's reaction), let's examine what the Deva says to Roy:

"What matters is that when you blow it, you get back up on your horse and try again."

Miko does not do this. When she blows it-- and gets a literal sign from the heavens that she screwed up-- she doubles down that she is right, and that the universe is just trying to steer her to her pre-determined conclusions. Soon tells her as much in her death scene.

[Ruck]

Because I thought you were knowledgeable about this comic, and obviously could see and read the comics instead of resorting to petulant demands for justification by others in the common textbook. It took me little time to find #490 and #285 around where I thought they would be. Perhaps if you had asked what strip rather than sitting on a holy throne going [citation needed] as the meme goes?

But that's okay, I found the reference for you. You may now belittle it as is the next step in the meme argument path this has taken.

Your move, Miko

Aside from the brittle ad hominem: How do either of these strips show that "the entire sequence" of her murdering Shojo and doubling down on the reasoning that led her there "was basically, at most, a blip on the Deva's notes"?

[hamishspence]

let's examine what the Deva says to Roy:

"What matters is that when you blow it, you get back up on your horse and try again."

Miko does not do this. When she blows it-- and gets a literal sign from the heavens that she screwed up-- she doubles down that she is right, and that the universe is just trying to steer her to her pre-determined conclusions. Soon tells her as much in her death scene.
Plus, as Complete Divine points out, events toward the end of a character's life have extra weight when determining a character's appropriate afterlife destination.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Yeah. Like the idea that Roy isn't good, when his Deva Reviewer explicitly states that he has repeatedly done good acts without thought of compensation or reward.

As towards Miko, I'd have to check which commentary page in W&XPs has the exact citation, but Rich also bluntly stated that Miko had been pushing the very limits of the LG alignment for a long time. My take on that is that her falling was a matter of when, not if.

And she did get compensation. Being a paladinwas her reason for being "good"

I would call magic powers pretty good compensation

[hamishspence]

As towards Miko, I'd have to check which commentary page in W&XPs has the exact citation, but Rich also bluntly stated that Miko had been pushing the very limits of the LG alignment for a long time. My take on that is that her falling was a matter of when, not if.

The page in question was immediately before strip 401:


"This was not simply one sudden switch from being a Good Guy to being a Bad Guy; this was the culmination of years of behavior. Being a little too quick to pull out the katana ... being a little too suspicious of everyone's motives ... being a little too willing to find the technicalities in her alignment rather than living up to the spirit of it. She pushed and pushed on the boundaries of what it meant to be Lawful Good and a paladin, until one day, she broke through."

[Mightymosy]

Setting aside some of the individual details here (I don't think Miko's conclusions that led her to murdering Shojo were plausible, given that even if she was right about Shojo and the Order, there were better ways of handling the situation; see Hinjo's reaction), let's examine what the Deva says to Roy:

"What matters is that when you blow it, you get back up on your horse and try again."

Miko does not do this. When she blows it-- and gets a literal sign from the heavens that she screwed up-- she doubles down that she is right, and that the universe is just trying to steer her to her pre-determined conclusions. Soon tells her as much in her death scene.

The question is whether she does so on malicious intent, though.
Does she constantly try to find "the right way" or not?

Watch her closely: once she ends up in jail she rejects Sabine's offer and ultimately knees down to pray - and I have no doubt that - again - she doesn't get an answer from the gods.
So how does she interprete the gods stripping her powers??
She is confused and asks them for guidance - which they don't give.

My impression of Miko is that she she always been a very lonely character. Maybe aggravated by Shojo telling her how very special she was, being the highest ranking paladin, and due to her character she only really trusted the gods and no one else.
She must have trusted Shojo as her fatherly mentor figure - but she LOST him once he turned senile.
It must have been a shock for her to hear that the one mortal person she trusted had actually faked his senility and didn't even bother being honest to her. PLUS he seemed to work with a party containing the vicious Belkar, to boot.

We don't exactly know how Shojo raised her, but I think the Giant said something about Shojo being guilty of making Miko feeling so special and having that ultimately blow up in his face, didn't he?


Watch the very last scene with Miko: ultimately, she meets someone she can TALK to, AND trust: the paladin "god" Soon. He explains to her that she screwed up. Does she deny it then?
For me, Miko seems rather misguided than malicious here... And if the last moments of a character count more...............

Miko made a very very bad lifetime choice in choosing to trust only Shojo, the gods and herself.
The gods didn't give a dime answering her with concrete advice and Shojo betrayed her in faking Senility instead of trying to be a good mentor.
She SHOULD have looked for better friends, then, and maybe asked O Chul or Hinjo for advice, definitely.
But she lives in a world where she IS a high ranking servant of a pantheon of gods. REAL, TANGIBLE gods that could theoretically guide her, but chose not to. It really is tough giving her too much fault for this, especially if you consider she knows she will eventually end up in an eternal afterlife probably governed by these dieties.

Miko did a BAD job, nobody denies that.
But there are mitigating factors at work.
She caught her direct supervisor, Shojo, red handed at betrayal. When she killed him, the super bosses took away her magic weapons but didn't explain nothing.

Yeah, I would agree with Miko when she says everything is so confusing.



One could surely fault Miko for being too quick to draw her sword - why didn't she arrest rather than kill Shojo, for example. And I would surely do that, were I a deva.
The problem in this story, in her world, though is that the world is set up as this weird place where the gods give you crackers (aka experience points) for slaying sentient beings - no wonder stuff goes wrong, is it?

As a side note, I wouldn't be surprised if the "XP for kills" rule is done away with in the aftermath of the story.
In my personal pen&paper roleplaying experience in my youth we eventually found out how and why damaging this rule really is, and nerfed it, and issued more and more points for roleplaying and for completing and adventure and such.

If the universe rewards you for being a bad person, don't be surprised when people turn out bad.

[Wizard_Lizard]

I feel sorry for Miko.
Everything she stood up for was a lie.
But she did not handle it well.

[The Aboleth]

Consider this: If the Twelve Gods themselves appeared to her BEFORE her Fall and told her, "Miko, you're wrong; The Order is not in league with Xykon," what do you think she'd have done?

A) Accepted their words without question and joined the Order in the defense of Azure City

B) Come up with some excuse to dismiss this new information, such as "These are clearly Fiends masquerading as the Twelve Gods to deceive me!"

Based on what we know of Miko's character, I'm inclined to believe she would pick Choice B. Miko's Fall was less about the act of murdering Shojo (though it obviously played a big part) and more about the fact that she was never willing to acknowledge and atone for her mistakes.

[GreatWyrmGold]

A paladin that sits in a room for most of their life doesn't fall. Refraining from doing Evil is not the same as devoting your life to Good.
...
As per Roy's Deva: "you regularly battle the forces of Evil without expecting compensation". That, according to the comic, counts as Roy being a Good man, i.e. interest in doing Good for good's sake.
Sounds like we have different definitions of what Devoting your life to Good" looks like. I focus on motivation, you focus on deeds.
The way I see it, devotion and action are separate. They influence each other, but the same devotion can lead to different actions and the same actions can come from different devotions. A paladin/monk might express their devotion to good by fighting evil, but a paladin/aristocrat might express their devotion to good by ruling justly and inspiring others to do good, while a fighter might fight evil out of a desire to protect others (and a ranger/barbarian might fight evil because he likes the sound ogres make when they hit the ground).



Beyond how flagrantly Evil I find killing a defenseless old man to be: The Deva explicitly tells Roy that if he hadn't gone back for Elan, his file would have gone straight to True Neutral. That's an explicit in-comic example of alignment change from one individual incident, so your post is factually incorrect. Now, what do you think would have happened to Roy's alignment if instead of abandoning Elan, he had just straight-up murdered him?
I don't think it's literally just that one action that made the deva consider chucking Roy in TN. She gives a list of other offenses, which Roy brushes off. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0488.html) Not all of those excuses are weak ("It was an illegitimate authority" is a perfectly valid reason for an LG character to resist arrest), but some very much are ("It would have been destroyed anyway" is a bad excuse for what amounts to fraud and theft, regardless of alignment). And given that that one incident was only worth half a comic but Roy had to spend the entire next strip defending his choice to work with Belkar, I don't think the Elan incident was even the biggest reason Roy would be chucked into TN in that scenario, just the straw (well, brick) that broke the celestial camel's back.
Single actions can be turning points or camel-back-breakers, but only if supported by other actions.


Beyond what Grey Wolf pointed out about the Deva's assessment of Roy, I think we have numerous examples of Roy-- world-saving included-- doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do, and that describing him as someone who "has never shown an interest in good for good's sake" is grossly a fundamental misreading of his character.
Or a different definition of "good for Good's sake". As I told Grey Wolf, i don't think doing something because it's right isn't the same as going it to support the cause of Good, especially if you're motivated to do the right thing/see it as the right thing because of something more specific (like a desire to protect the innocent or save lives or comfort the needy or whatever).

[Aquillion]

It might also be worth considering the deva's final conclusion (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0490.html), which is that the fact that Roy was trying to be lawful good was the most important part.

Note this: "You're trying to be lawful good. People forget how crucial it is to keep trying, even if they screw it up now and then. They figure that if they can't manage it perfectly every waking second, then they should just pick some other alignment because it'll be easier. But it's the struggle that matters. It's easy for a being of pure Law and Good to live up to these ideals, but you're a mortal."

Compare / contrast this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0419.html), which is basically exactly what the Deva was talking about.

Also see what she says on the next page (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0491.html):

"He was doing what he thought was best, to the limit of his abilities - including his ability to judge what was best."

That could describe someone else we know, too.

[GreatWyrmGold]

It might also be worth considering the deva's final conclusion (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0490.html), which is that the fact that Roy was trying to be lawful good was the most important part.
That's the biggest factor against counting Roy's failures against him, which may or may not be the biggest factor in his final alignment. I'd say that the times he thought through his actions and did the right thing are probably a bigger component.


Compare / contrast this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0419.html), which is basically exactly what the Deva was talking about.
It's the extreme, caricatured example of what she's talking about, but it's still an example.


Also see what she says on the next page (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0491.html):
"He was doing what he thought was best, to the limit of his abilities - including his ability to judge what was best."
That could describe someone else we know, too.
If I were Aquillion, this would be the part where I emphasized that just because Miko is about as Lawful Good as Roy doesn't mean they are equally in the right.

[Prinygod]

Consider this: If the Twelve Gods themselves appeared to her BEFORE her Fall and told her, "Miko, you're wrong; The Order is not in league with Xykon," what do you think she'd have done?

A) Accepted their words without question and joined the Order in the defense of Azure City

B) Come up with some excuse to dismiss this new information, such as "These are clearly Fiends masquerading as the Twelve Gods to deceive me!"

Based on what we know of Miko's character, I'm inclined to believe she would pick Choice B. Miko's Fall was less about the act of murdering Shojo (though it obviously played a big part) and more about the fact that she was never willing to acknowledge and atone for her mistakes.

Well considering that it was murdering him was the reason she fell, and not when she attacked Hinjo, I would say that it was the most important reason for her fall. You A and B lack any understanding of the events unfolding. 1st Hinjo did not offer her a chance to defend the city, but a cell. 2nd she never denied that she fell, only that they we're testing her, or she was tricked. I say this not to excuse her actions, btw.

[Peelee]

You A and B lack any understanding of the events unfolding. 1st Hinjo did not offer her a chance to defend the city, but a cell.
Hi.jo would have offered her nothing before the fall. Shojo would have offered it.

2nd she never denied that she fell
I don't recall anyone saying she did?

[The Aboleth]

You A and B lack any understanding of the events unfolding. 1st Hinjo did not offer her a chance to defend the city, but a cell. 2nd she never denied that she fell, only that they we're testing her, or she was tricked. I say this not to excuse her actions, btw.

You know what a hypothetical is, right? Obviously I am aware Hinjo did not present her with a chance to defend the city (though he did mention the use of an Atonement spell, implying he might have been open to it had Miko shown any indication she was willing to atone).

As far as "lack[ing] any understanding of the events," that's incorrect: my hypothetical was based on the totality of Miko's character as shown in-comic, and that led me to conclude that had she been face-to-face with the very Twelve Gods telling her "You are wrong," she would not have believed them because Miko could not admit she might be wrong. And guess what? She did exactly that after she Fell--as you point out, she kept believing it was a "test" instead of considering "Maybe I messed up." Tell me how I am "lacking understanding of the events" here?

[LadyEowyn]

A couple points about the Deva’s “you’re trying to be Lawful Good” conclusion to Roy.

1) In the same strip, she says outright that there’s no questio. that Roy is good. It’s his Lawfulness that is fuzzy and that draws the “you’re trying” conclusion. And balancing Good and Lawfulness is inherently challenging.

2) To me, it seems philosophically untenable to extend the “you’re trying to be Lawful Good” comment to say that anyone who thinks of themselves as Good is, ipso facto, Good. Many people, including some terribly evil people, think of themselves as good. Card Carrying Villains like Xykon who revel in being evil are rare.

Outright deluding yourself that your actions are Good - which is what Miko was doing after her Fall gave her very clear proof that they were not - and persistently continuing in those actions does not, by my read, count as “trying to be good”. Trying has to encompass some kind of willingness to consider that your actions may not be Good and that you may have done wrong. Soon points out to Miko that she never does that. When she’s in prison and asks the Twelve Gods for a sign, she’s already had a very obvious sign - her Fall - that demonstrates their view of her actions. What she really wants is vindication, a contrary sign that tells her that she was right.

[Lacuna Caster]

That's why I think she did lose her Good status at the end. Roy already gave a pretty decent summing up of how she didn't really follow the precepts of Lawful Good here (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0251.html). Just following the letter of the alignment isn't good enough. She was fairly Lawful (except for the "taking the law into her own hands" moment at the end), but the only Good she really did, as Peelee points out, was killing Evil beings. I believe she was borderline Good, and the act of killing Shojo pushed her off.

But I think it's strongly implied by her conversation with Soon that the manner of her Fall (an unambiguously Evil act, striking down her defenseless liege lord who also happened to be an octogenarian) excluded her from the LG afterlife. She might possibly have shifted to LN, considering her actions over the many strips we saw and her devotion to the letter but not the spirit of her professed alignment..
These conversations generally exhaust me, but I am profoundly unclear about what was 'good by technicality' about entering a burning building to rescue the helpless, rather than, say, chasing after a pair of plausibly-evil assassins. Which, by, the way, wound up saving the life of an otherwise defenceless monarch.

There's no objective way to evaluate what Miko's alignment would have been at the time of death, but it's certainly conceivable that fifteen years of otherwise upstanding paladin conduct would count in her favour. And Roy's evaluation in strip #251 is essentially complete garbage (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?571070-Why-are-Miko-s-parents-dead&p=23453771&viewfull=1#post23453771).


I would just say that any line one can draw that makes early-strip Miko non-Good will relegate every other character in the early strip to Neutral at best. There is no good deed the early-Order perform that early-Miko doesn't top. There is no flaw you can point at that other ostensibly-Good characters didn't have in spades.

Miko uses threats and minimal warning to kill based on misleading evidence: She is a reckless and bloodthirsty fanatic. Haley conspires to murder her immediately after learning she's a paladin: She is Chaotic Good. Roy has no problems ambushing enemies in their sleep: He is Lawful Good. We never see Durkon use Detect Evil to verify targets: He is Lawful Good. Both Roy and Durkon presumably killed dozens of goblins in the dungeon who were pressed into slavery by Xykon and mainly guilty by association: They are heroes.

Roy is belatedly willing to rescue Elan in the forest: He is Lawful Good. Miko is instantly willing to rescue random NPCs: She is only interested in killing things. Roy suffers temporary embarrassment to rescue Elan, who would not be in peril if Roy didn't impersonate a monarch: He is Lawful Good. Miko risks permanent immolation for total strangers: She is only fulfilling a technical obligation. Miko uses a King's favour to help others with no thought for personal reward: She is only fulfilling a technical obligation. Miko offers healing, pays for luxury lodgings, observes a restraining order and allows her captives to walk around with minimal supervision: She is only fulfilling a technical obligation. Miko's technical obligations require her to bring back the Order by force: This is no defence for her actions.

Miko says that black dragons must be destroyed: This is murderous racism to be taken in deadly earnest and a serious indictment of her character. Roy and Elan agree with this on the same panel of the same page, and V actually did it: They are funny kidders, ha ha ha. Miko talks about generous donations to local charities on the same page: This is purely an excuse to lecture people. Miko is well below her recommended wealth-by-level: Details.

https://i.postimg.cc/hvK9tpJN/simultaneous-contrast-journal-main.png

[understatement]

Is she just going to Arcadia then?

I mean, seriously: pre-dragging-the-Order-in-chains-to-Azure-City Miko is almost radically different from post-dragging-the-Order-in-chains-to-Azure-City. Pre-Miko was just scowling and grumpy the whole time, but willing to help at those in need. Post-Miko is also willing to do so -- reassuring soldiers she'll have farmers bring them rice -- but suddenly fixates on the Order as her worst enemy. Has she never captured prisoners before?

[Lacuna Caster]

Is she just going to Arcadia then?

I mean, seriously: pre-dragging-the-Order-in-chains-to-Azure-City Miko is almost radically different from post-dragging-the-Order-in-chains-to-Azure-City. Pre-Miko was just scowling and grumpy the whole time, but willing to help at those in need. Post-Miko is also willing to do so -- reassuring soldiers she'll have farmers bring them rice -- but suddenly fixates on the Order as her worst enemy. Has she never captured prisoners before?
Arcadia would be my best bet, but there's no reliable method of determining the real answer. (Aside from my strong suspicion that Miko's deva interview turned into a years-long 5-way legal custody battle with multiple appeals and retrials stretching far beyond the story's nominal endpoint.)

As for pre-and-post-strip-250 Miko- yeah, there are a number of oddities (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?575576-When-did-everyone-become-so-powerful&p=23587200&viewfull=1#post23587200) there, though TidePriestess echoes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?571070-Why-are-Miko-s-parents-dead&p=23450182&viewfull=1#post23450182) most of my views (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?571070-Why-are-Miko-s-parents-dead&p=23450315&viewfull=1#post23450315) on this topic.

I mean, it's interesting to speculate about, e.g, some undiagnosed mental illness that might account for Miko's eccentricities, but his presumes that you can thread a needle through the various data points of her behaviour in the first place, and at this point I just don't think there is any single continuity there. Which is... quite liberating, in a way.

[Rrmcklin]

2nd she never denied that she fell, only that they we're testing her, or she was tricked. I say this not to excuse her actions, btw.

Yes, she in fact, did. In that same strip that was linked with Sabine trying to recruit her, Miko denies being a fallen paladin when Sabine asks.

[Peelee]

Yes, she in fact, did. In that same strip that was linked with Sabine trying to recruit her, Miko denies being a fallen paladin when Sabine asks.

Well color me wrong!

[woweedd]

Arcadia would be my best bet, but there's no reliable method of determining the real answer. (Aside from my strong suspicion that Miko's deva interview turned into a years-long 5-way legal custody battle with multiple appeals and retrials stretching far beyond the story's nominal endpoint.)

As for pre-and-post-strip-250 Miko- yeah, there are a number of oddities (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?575576-When-did-everyone-become-so-powerful&p=23587200&viewfull=1#post23587200) there, though TidePriestess echoes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?571070-Why-are-Miko-s-parents-dead&p=23450182&viewfull=1#post23450182) most of my views (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?571070-Why-are-Miko-s-parents-dead&p=23450315&viewfull=1#post23450315) on this topic.

I mean, it's interesting to speculate about, e.g, some undiagnosed mental illness that might account for Miko's eccentricities, but his presumes that you can thread a needle through the various data points of her behaviour in the first place, and at this point I just don't think there is any single continuity there. Which is... quite liberating, in a way.
Yeah, "you're still reading SOD? You vile Goblin supporter/going to a restaurant that supports gambling is the sort of moral bankruptcy I should expect of those below my station" Miko is a wild different character from Miko before the Inn sequence, probably a result of her changing narrative role from "uneasy ally" to "straight-up antagonist". Ultimately, i think it's a consequence of NCFTPB Rich not being that good a writer. If you want to see what Modern Rich's version of Miko would have looked like...See Gin-Jun.

[Lacuna Caster]

Just picking stuff at random...


Consider this: If the Twelve Gods themselves appeared to her BEFORE her Fall and told her, "Miko, you're wrong; The Order is not in league with Xykon," what do you think she'd have done?
How far before? If your opinion is genuinely "based on the totality of Miko's character as shown in-comic", you'd have to square this with Miko evidently being willing to accept fundamental corrections on the Order's character from strange dwarves she's never met before (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0201.html), and I expect a personal visitation from the Twelve Gods would not have been less persuasive for some time.


And she did get compensation. Being a paladinwas her reason for being "good"

I would call magic powers pretty good compensation
They're not especially, though, unless you're comparing the paladin with some nonentity class like commoner or expert. Paladins are relatively low-tier- if she'd specced as a cleric or sorceror or even barbarian she'd have had greater or equal power without nearly as many ethical restrictions.


The question is whether she does so on malicious intent, though.
Does she constantly try to find "the right way" or not?

Watch her closely: once she ends up in jail she rejects Sabine's offer and ultimately knees down to pray - and I have no doubt that - again - she doesn't get an answer from the gods.
So how does she interprete the gods stripping her powers??
She is confused and asks them for guidance - which they don't give.

My impression of Miko is that she she always been a very lonely character. Maybe aggravated by Shojo telling her how very special she was, being the highest ranking paladin, and due to her character she only really trusted the gods and no one else.
Shojo's treatment of Miko as depicted is pretty inexcusable, but more pertinently I think it's logically incoherent. (e.g, why promote someone to 2nd-in-command of the organisation if you're going to send her on long foreign solo missions that prevent her from actually interacting with subordinates?)

And yeah, as we've covered elsewhere, in the universe that Miko inhabits, someone in her position expecting a certain degree of guidance and direction from the Gods is, like, 100% reasonable. Later-strip Miko may be kinda crazy, but in order to paint her that way she effectively has to inhabit a different universe from one where the Godsmoot and other associated events take place.

EDIT:

Yeah, "you're still reading SOD? You vile Goblin supporter/going to a restaurant that supports gambling is the sort of moral bankruptcy I should expect of those below my station" Miko is a wild different character from Miko before the Inn sequence, probably a result of her changing narrative role from "uneasy ally" to "straight-up antagonist". Ultimately, i think it's a consequence of NCFTPB Rich not being that good a writer. If you want to see what Modern Rich's version of Miko would have looked like...See Gin-Jun.
SoD-Intro Miko seems to be generally acknowledged as character assassination, but I think the "gambling is moral bankruptcy" bonus-strip Miko is pretty consistent with the early character. I mean sure, she lectures her peers on virtuous living, but doesn't actually force them to go along, and cooking them a meal was... nice, in principle?

I liked Paladin Blues Miko up to about strip 270 or so just fine. I didn't like how various characters and/or the contemporary audience reacted to her, or how she was basically screwed around with by narrative contrivance, but the character herself seemed... fine and dandy and entertaining and no more flawed than any of her peers and more virtuous than most. I would certainly not have wanted her replaced with Gin-Jun, of all people. (Partly on account of how Gin-Jun can't actually exist, given 'evil paladin' is a contradiction in terms.)

[Darth Paul]

These conversations generally exhaust me, but I am profoundly unclear about what was 'good by technicality' about entering a burning building to rescue the helpless, rather than, say, chasing after a pair of plausibly-evil assassins. Which, by, the way, wound up saving the life of an otherwise defenceless monarch.

There's no objective way to evaluate what Miko's alignment would have been at the time of death, but it's certainly conceivable that fifteen years of otherwise upstanding paladin conduct would count in her favour. And Roy's evaluation in strip #251 is essentially complete garbage (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?571070-Why-are-Miko-s-parents-dead&p=23453771&viewfull=1#post23453771).

One: linking to another post by yourself as evidence, doesn't really count as evidence.

Two: yes, she helped rescue people from the burning building. Followed by a lecture about how the building burning down was Roy & Co.'s collective fault for being unwilling to sleep in a muddy ditch the way she'd wanted them to. "Vice and luxury can only lead to destruction," she says, and appoints herself moral guardian over them all. 250 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0250.html) She doesn't bother to ask their side of the story; she doesn't fault the assassins for bringing a bomb to the hotel in the first place; it's the Order's fault. (And if they'd been sleeping in the ditch, who would have foiled the assassins?) Miko's not righteous; she's self-righteous.

Remember the reason she's sent on all the solo missions far away from Azure City? She's a pompous bitch. Nothing about her says "Good" to me. She may do the things required of her alignment, she tithes to the temple, but I don't see her as the person who drops a coin in a musician's hat as a generous act. She's the one who cites the musician for unlicensed performance violations and gives them a warning not to get caught on that corner again. (See, for instance, the bonus strip where she criticizes her colleagues' choice of restaurant because of the morality of the staff there.) That's what I mean by "technically good" but not Good.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Honestly, the worst thing about Miko is that she's caught in this negative feedback loop, where her behavior leads to her being isolated, her isolation means nobody addresses her behavior, so her behavior leads to isolation...

Put another way, she needed much better socialization as a child, at least enough to recognize Shojo's spiel about being special as a stock 'welcome aboard' speech.

[Ruck]

I don't think it's literally just that one action that made the deva consider chucking Roy in TN.
Why not? That's what she says.


She gives a list of other offenses, which Roy brushes off. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0488.html) Not all of those excuses are weak ("It was an illegitimate authority" is a perfectly valid reason for an LG character to resist arrest), but some very much are ("It would have been destroyed anyway" is a bad excuse for what amounts to fraud and theft, regardless of alignment).
And she apparently feels no need to question any of those explanations further, weak or not. (I also think the case of "accepting gifts intended for a king" is not as severe an offense as abandoning Elan; I can't say for sure if OOTS-world believes this, but a crime of property is not as severe a crime against life ("respect for the dignity of sentient beings", etc.)


And given that that one incident was only worth half a comic but Roy had to spend the entire next strip defending his choice to work with Belkar, I don't think the Elan incident was even the biggest reason Roy would be chucked into TN in that scenario, just the straw (well, brick) that broke the celestial camel's back.
I mean, again, she says it was enough to chuck him into TN, so I don't know why you're coming up with explanations that contradict what she said.


Or a different definition of "good for Good's sake". As I told Grey Wolf, i don't think doing something because it's right isn't the same as going it to support the cause of Good, especially if you're motivated to do the right thing/see it as the right thing because of something more specific (like a desire to protect the innocent or save lives or comfort the needy or whatever).

I mean, what's the difference between "doing the right thing, as per the values that are considered Good" and "doing the right thing to support the cause of Good"?


It might also be worth considering the deva's final conclusion (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0490.html), which is that the fact that Roy was trying to be lawful good was the most important part.

Note this: "You're trying to be lawful good. People forget how crucial it is to keep trying, even if they screw it up now and then. They figure that if they can't manage it perfectly every waking second, then they should just pick some other alignment because it'll be easier. But it's the struggle that matters. It's easy for a being of pure Law and Good to live up to these ideals, but you're a mortal."
She did not say trying was the most important part. She said he was an edge case between Lawful Good and Neutral Good, and what led her to approve his admission to Celestia is that he continually acknowledged when he slipped from being LG and tried to do better.


"He was doing what he thought was best, to the limit of his abilities - including his ability to judge what was best."

That could describe someone else we know, too.

I think the point is that Miko's behavior was not driven by the limits of her ability to judge what was best, but by the limits of her willingness to judge what was best (vs. just doing what she wanted to do). The contrast with Hinjo's reaction to finding out about Shojo, and especially Miko turning on Hinjo-- who was not part of the conspiracy she imagined, and also she did so after falling for killing Shojo-- is very telling.


Yeah, "you're still reading SOD? You vile Goblin supporter/going to a restaurant that supports gambling is the sort of moral bankruptcy I should expect of those below my station" Miko is a wild different character from Miko before the Inn sequence, probably a result of her changing narrative role from "uneasy ally" to "straight-up antagonist". Ultimately, i think it's a consequence of NCFTPB Rich not being that good a writer. If you want to see what Modern Rich's version of Miko would have looked like...See Gin-Jun.

Honestly I used to think this, but reading back through Miko's early appearances, you can see the first hints of the traits that would later burst forth and subsume the rest of them.

And the throughline is pretty straightforward: Convinced of her own righteousness; jumps to conclusions; prone to shooting first and asking questions later. The only thing that changes is the extremity of the behavior motivated by that, and how increasingly stark the contrast between that and what most people would consider a rational or appropriate response is.


Honestly, the worst thing about Miko is that she's caught in this negative feedback loop, where her behavior leads to her being isolated, her isolation means nobody addresses her behavior, so her behavior leads to isolation...

Put another way, she needed much better socialization as a child, at least enough to recognize Shojo's spiel about being special as a stock 'welcome aboard' speech.

I dunno if "the worst thing" is how I'd phrase it, but it does add an element of tragedy to her story (namely the "pity" of the "pity and terror" Aristotle described). I mean, if things couldn't have turned out differently for her, there wouldn't be any drama in her story.


These conversations generally exhaust me

No one is forcing you to have them.

[Aquillion]

Two: yes, she helped rescue people from the burning building. Followed by a lecture about how the building burning down was Roy & Co.'s collective fault for being unwilling to sleep in a muddy ditch the way she'd wanted them to. "Vice and luxury can only lead to destruction," she says, and appoints herself moral guardian over them all. 250 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0250.html) She doesn't bother to ask their side of the story; she doesn't fault the assassins for bringing a bomb to the hotel in the first place; it's the Order's fault. (And if they'd been sleeping in the ditch, who would have foiled the assassins?) Miko's not righteous; she's self-righteous.I mean, it literally was their fault in a number of ways, although admittedly Miko didn't know the details.

(Roy impersonated the King; Belkar, chasing a lawyer he wanted to murder as part of trying to murder Miko's horse, knocked the fire onto the bomb.)

The king might have gotten murdered if they hadn't happened to stay there, but maybe not, depending on his own guard detail.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Wrong king. The one Miko saved was the King of Somewhere. The one Roy was impersonating was the King of Nowhere. We also saw him later when Ho Thanh was explaining where he was when Azure City fell, with the same assassins still trying to kill him.

[Wizard_Lizard]

A couple points about the Deva’s “you’re trying to be Lawful Good” conclusion to Roy.

1) In the same strip, she says outright that there’s no questio. that Roy is good. It’s his Lawfulness that is fuzzy and that draws the “you’re trying” conclusion. And balancing Good and Lawfulness is inherently challenging.

2) To me, it seems philosophically untenable to extend the “you’re trying to be Lawful Good” comment to say that anyone who thinks of themselves as Good is, ipso facto, Good. Many people, including some terribly evil people, think of themselves as good. Card Carrying Villains like Xykon who revel in being evil are rare.

Outright deluding yourself that your actions are Good - which is what Miko was doing after her Fall gave her very clear proof that they were not - and persistently continuing in those actions does not, by my read, count as “trying to be good”. Trying has to encompass some kind of willingness to consider that your actions may not be Good and that you may have done wrong. Soon points out to Miko that she never does that. When she’s in prison and asks the Twelve Gods for a sign, she’s already had a very obvious sign - her Fall - that demonstrates their view of her actions. What she really wants is vindication, a contrary sign that tells her that she was right.

And that is exactly the point!
She is a delusional maniac!
She just twist stuff to mean what SHE wants, so I feel sorry for the deva who is handling her case, because that is going to take YEARS! And when the deva eventually gives up and sends miko to some place, Miko will just take it as a challenge that the gods have set for her! If she ends up in the nine hells, she will kill everyone there, again I guess.

[Mightymosy]

Consider this: If the Twelve Gods themselves appeared to her BEFORE her Fall and told her, "Miko, you're wrong; The Order is not in league with Xykon," what do you think she'd have done?

A) Accepted their words without question and joined the Order in the defense of Azure City

B) Come up with some excuse to dismiss this new information, such as "These are clearly Fiends masquerading as the Twelve Gods to deceive me!"

Based on what we know of Miko's character, I'm inclined to believe she would pick Choice B. Miko's Fall was less about the act of murdering Shojo (though it obviously played a big part) and more about the fact that she was never willing to acknowledge and atone for her mistakes.

At least now we are getting somewhere!

The way Miko was written I'd think easy A.
She trusts the gods, Shojo and herself - until she is betrayed and breaks down.

[Wizard_Lizard]

At least now we are getting somewhere!

The way Miko was written I'd think easy A.
She trusts the gods, Shojo and herself - until she is betrayed and breaks down.

I am not so sure. Definitely during her final strips she would defer to B

[Prinygod]

You know what a hypothetical is, right? Obviously I am aware Hinjo did not present her with a chance to defend the city (though he did mention the use of an Atonement spell, implying he might have been open to it had Miko shown any indication she was willing to atone).

As far as "lack[ing] any understanding of the events," that's incorrect: my hypothetical was based on the totality of Miko's character as shown in-comic, and that led me to conclude that had she been face-to-face with the very Twelve Gods telling her "You are wrong," she would not have believed them because Miko could not admit she might be wrong. And guess what? She did exactly that after she Fell--as you point out, she kept believing it was a "test" instead of considering "Maybe I messed up." Tell me how I am "lacking understanding of the events" here?

A test is not the same as "These are clearly Fiends masquerading as the Twelve Gods to deceive me!"

[Lacuna Caster]

One: linking to another post by yourself as evidence, doesn't really count as evidence.

Two: yes, she helped rescue people from the burning building. Followed by a lecture about how the building burning down was Roy & Co.'s collective fault for being unwilling to sleep in a muddy ditch the way she'd wanted them to...
Firstly, it's a summary of events that factually occurred within the strip. Secondly, are you saying these two actions are somehow morally equivalent? Coming within an inch of being incinerated or blown to bits in the process of saving the lives of total strangers is cancelled out by giving other people a stern moral lecture? I'm sorry, but that seems like an incredibly uncharitable moral calculus to me.

Thirdly, I am very doubtful that Miko probing the Orders' accounting of events more closely would have reflected better (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0241.html) on them, given that the story Roy volunteered (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0238.html) already stunk to high (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0246.html) heaven (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0248.html). But to the extent that she bought the "assassins after Roy" story, this implied that the assassins would not have bothered folks at the Inn if Roy had been sleeping outside. Say what you like about Miko's later behaviour, but at this stage of the game her suspicions about the Order are basically 100% justified.


Remember the reason she's sent on all the solo missions far away from Azure City? She's a pompous bitch. Nothing about her says "Good" to me...
Yes, I do recall the ostensible reason why she's sent away from Azure City on long solo missions in foreign countries. I also think this reflects far more poorly (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?576774-Why-didn-t-Shojo-just-send-his-wizard-to-fetch-the-order&p=23650283&viewfull=1#post23650283) on Shojo and her paladin peers than it does on her, to the extent that it practically constitutes a plot hole.



Honestly, the worst thing about Miko is that she's caught in this negative feedback loop, where her behavior leads to her being isolated, her isolation means nobody addresses her behavior, so her behavior leads to isolation...
But it doesn't lead to isolation, per se. It leads to her, somehow, becoming individually uber-powerful and highly promoted within the organisation. It's one thing to say that Shojo should have addressed her behaviour more thoroughly, it's quite another when he effectively rewards and reinforces it. But I consider anything post-arrest-scene to be a nonsense sandwich anyway, so I just don't take this setup too seriously.




Honestly I used to think this, but reading back through Miko's early appearances, you can see the first hints of the traits that would later burst forth and subsume the rest of them.

And the throughline is pretty straightforward: Convinced of her own righteousness; jumps to conclusions; prone to shooting first and asking questions later. The only thing that changes is the extremity of the behavior motivated by that, and how increasingly stark the contrast between that and what most people would consider a rational or appropriate response is.
You can see 'hints' at Miko's later development in the sense that certain traits became increasingly flanderized, but the problem is that, early on, she really doesn't possess those traits to any greater degree than the rest of the cast does.

I mean, let's just take the case of going to battle with the Ogres: Does it ever occur to Roy that they should sit down and have a chat with their chieftain, double-check their alignment, or cross-reference descriptions to ensure they haven't been mixed up with their evil twins? No, his plan is to ambush them unawares and, where practical, slit their throats in their sleep. I can see valid arguments that Miko's investigative technique could have been improved, but she was actually more thorough and careful than was typical for the Order at the time.

(Also, if Miko is 'jumping to conclusions', how did neither she nor any other paladin ask "was there a goblin with a red cloak?", either before or during the trial scene, given the org's long history with the crimson mantle?)

[Prinygod]

Yes, she in fact, did. In that same strip that was linked with Sabine trying to recruit her, Miko denies being a fallen paladin when Sabine asks.

Yeah to people who were taunting her, right after the event.

"Miko: Really? Does that mean I get to be a paladin again? "

Clearly she knew she was no longer a Paladin before her death.

[hroþila]

Yeah to people who were taunting her, right after the event.

"Miko: Really? Does that mean I get to be a paladin again? "

Clearly she knew she was no longer a Paladin before her death.
My theory is that while she couldn't seriously deny that she had fallen and that "No" to Sabine was probably a knee-jerk reaction, she only accepted her fall here (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0461.html), when she could rationalize it as part of the gods' plan to make sure she, Miko Miyazaki, would be alive to shatter the gate and save the day. "It all makes sense now" indeed.

[Mightymosy]

I am not so sure. Definitely during her final strips she would defer to B
Which is the point of her arc, exactly.

The fact that she found out her mentor to be lying to her for years and then getting stripped of her powers by her gods shortly afterwards traumatized her.

She clearly took the worst possible direction, no question.

That doesn't change the idea that BEFORE that she ACTIVELY seeked answers from her superiors (which were only the gods becausd Shojo was senile).

Honestly the way she kneels down and prays (first in the circle of candles and later in prison) does NOT suggest that she would decline an explanation if it actually CAME from the gods.


Consider the scene when she decides to shatter the gate:
With the information she has at hand, she deducts that all the setup before, including her fall, whas carefully orchestrated by the gods so that she is there at the right time and place to be able to destroy the gate.

To US this seems AWFULLY contrived and boardering on lunatic.
But she lives in a world where such is POSSIBLE, where gods ARE real and verifyably so.

Simply compare with the recent strips with Thor and Odin. THOR ( a god aka someone who should know what gods can do and can't do) assumes that Odin had a similarily contrived setup in mind when he sent the prophecy that caused Durkon's exile.

[Lacuna Caster]

Yeah to people who were taunting her, right after the event.

"Miko: Really? Does that mean I get to be a paladin again? "

Clearly she knew she was no longer a Paladin before her death.
Yeah, that's a fair point. Miko vacillates between denial and acceptance, but there was at least some capacity for reality penetration, even at the end.

The broader problem is that I just don't give the later segments of her story much credence given how steeped in general moral double-standards (https://i.postimg.cc/ydLpTcch/a-mere-1d6-damage.png), angry projection and occasional sexist bigotry her initial reception was.


To US this seems AWFULLY contrived and boardering on lunatic.
But she lives in a world where such is POSSIBLE, where gods ARE real and verifyably so.

Simply compare with the recent strips with Thor and Odin. THOR ( a god aka someone who should know what gods can do and can't do) assumes that Odin had a similarily contrived setup in mind when he sent the prophecy that caused Durkon's exile.
Also, this. I'm not gonna say that Miko's later-story behaviour is especially likeable or justified, but it's a little mean to frame Miko as some crazy fanatic when she inhabits an insane universe.

[hroþila]

Consider the scene when she decides to shatter the gate:
With the information she has at hand, she deducts that all the setup before, including her fall, whas carefully orchestrated by the gods so that she is there at the right time and place to be able to destroy the gate.

To US this seems AWFULLY contrived and boardering on lunatic.
But she lives in a world where such is POSSIBLE, where gods ARE real and verifyably so.

Simply compare with the recent strips with Thor and Odin. THOR ( a god aka someone who should know what gods can do and can't do) assumes that Odin had a similarily contrived setup in mind when he sent the prophecy that caused Durkon's exile.
I don't think this is very convincing. Yes, some of the gods could perhaps orchestrate such things (note that Odin is intrinsically linked to prophecy and foresight, though, so that he could do something like this doesn't automatically mean other gods could do it too). There is still no indication that this is something that happens with any frequency (or even that it has happened at all in the world Miko inhabits). Some people do or have become kings and emperors and popes in our world, but it would still be lunacy for me to fervently believe that I will too.

[Lacuna Caster]

I don't think this is very convincing. Yes, some of the gods could perhaps orchestrate such things (note that Odin is intrinsically linked to prophecy and foresight, though, so that he could do something like this doesn't automatically mean other gods could do it too). There is still no indication that this is something that happens with any frequency (or even that it has happened at all in the world Miko inhabits).
There is a scene where the Azurite resistance leaders gather and are unified by Mr. Scruffy's appearance next to Thanh being some kind of divine omen, so there's some suggestion that this behaviour isn't unusual by Azurite standards.

In any case, what verifiably does happen in OOTSverse is that the Gods are capable of proactively communicating with their followers and previously gave the Guard official permission for crusades against the Bearer. Which raises oodles of questions about why they didn't talk to Miko specifically, or the Guard/Azure City more generally about the looming threat of hobgoblin invasion.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Has this thread just become a discussion of Miko's alignment?
What of the other characters?
Also who finds it odd that Durkon (Lawful Good) ends ip on ysgard (a chaotic good afterlife)

[hroþila]

There is a scene where the Azurite resistance leaders gather and are unified by Mr. Scruffy's appearance next to Thanh being some kind of divine omen, so there's some suggestion that this behaviour isn't unusual by Azurite standards.
That suggests Azurites are prone to interpret things as divine signs, not that divine signs are necessarily common. We also see Durkon wrongly interpreting Thor's random drunken shenanigans as an omen.

[Prinygod]

Has this thread just become a discussion of Miko's alignment?
What of the other characters?
Also who finds it odd that Durkon (Lawful Good) ends ip on ysgard (a chaotic good afterlife)

You are forgetting that as a follower of Thor, Durkon goes to which ever plain Thor resides.

[Lacuna Caster]

That suggests Azurites are prone to interpret things as divine signs, not that divine signs are necessarily common. We also see Durkon wrongly interpreting Thor's random drunken shenanigans as an omen.
Okay, fine, but to the extent that Miko is wrong about this, she's wrong in a way that's apparently fairly commonplace by the standards of the setting. So this idea that Miko hunting for divine signs- which is in any case only barely visible in her early appearances- was telegraphing some later descent into madness and evil is a bit unfair, to my mind.

And even Miko's belief that the Twelve have some special plan and chosen role for her, personally, is actually pretty reasonable given the Gods' general ability to liaise with followers demonstrated in the later storyline and an implied history of doing so with the Guard in particular. She actually was the logical choice for Champion of the Twelve, personality flaws notwithstanding, and to the extent that those flaws were extant it was within the Twelve's power to either tell her to take it down a notch or suggest someone else get promoted.

Basically, Miko is the kind of character who can only exist in a universe where the Gods don't talk to their followers, and OOTSverse hasn't been that universe for quite some time now.

[Wizard_Lizard]

You are forgetting that as a follower of Thor, Durkon goes to which ever plain Thor resides.

I am just saying he might be alittle uncomfortable with all the chaotic types around him and vice versa.

[Mightymosy]

I don't think this is very convincing. Yes, some of the gods could perhaps orchestrate such things (note that Odin is intrinsically linked to prophecy and foresight, though, so that he could do something like this doesn't automatically mean other gods could do it too). There is still no indication that this is something that happens with any frequency (or even that it has happened at all in the world Miko inhabits). Some people do or have become kings and emperors and popes in our world, but it would still be lunacy for me to fervently believe that I will too.

If you WERE the highest ranked cardinal you would be lunatic NOT taking the possibility into account.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

She trusts the gods, Shojo and herself - until she is betrayed and breaks down.

No one betrayed her.

Grey Wolf

[Prinygod]

I am just saying he might be alittle uncomfortable with all the chaotic types around him and vice versa.

I could be wrong, but think God's have their own Demi-plane inside their resident plane, at least as a general rule. If so, he would be surrounded by Thor followers, including other LG Thor followers. Also I think if durkon had a problem with chaotic good, he would have picked another god. He chose to whorship Thor after all, who is also chaotic good.

[hroþila]

Okay, fine, but to the extent that Miko is wrong about this, she's wrong in a way that's apparently fairly commonplace by the standards of the setting. So this idea that Miko hunting for divine signs- which is in any case only barely visible in her early appearances- was telegraphing some later descent into madness and evil is a bit unfair, to my mind.
I'd say there's a huge difference between believing in omens in general, and believing in omens that express your greatness specifically.

If you WERE the highest ranked cardinal you would be lunatic NOT taking the possibility into account.
No, this doesn't work. High-ranked cardinals are elected popes all the time, it's the way it works and this is immediately verifiable. There's no indication that divine omens and/or orchestration are comparably common.

[The Aboleth]

A test is not the same as "These are clearly Fiends masquerading as the Twelve Gods to deceive me!"

You're right, which is why I left room for other excuses, such as "This is just a test!" I even almost included that in my original post, but since Miko herself uses that excuse in-comic I went with a different example (the "deceiving fiends" one).

Because make no mistake: Miko is making excuses. As others have pointed out, the "sign from the Gods" she was looking for was the fact she Fell. Miki doesn't want to believe that, though, so she grasps at any straw she can to justify her behavior.

[Mightymosy]

No one betrayed her.

Grey Wolf

Her mentor faked senility instead of, you know, mentoring her adequately.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Her mentor faked senility instead of, you know, mentoring her adequately.

That you think that is an relevant statement says much.

Grey Wolf

[Mightymosy]

@GWc: Much but none we will hear, I presume?

....

Ok then.


I'd say there's a huge difference between believing in omens in general, and believing in omens that express your greatness specifically.

No, this doesn't work. High-ranked cardinals are elected popes all the time, it's the way it works and this is immediately verifiable. There's no indication that divine omens and/or orchestration are comparably common.

Look, you brought up the example of OUR world which doesn't have MAGIC and tried to make a point about the OotS world which DOES.

So maybe the take home is that some ideas just don't translate well in either direction, I would think.

[The Aboleth]

Her mentor faked senility instead of, you know, mentoring her adequately.


I think a lot of people forget that Shojo hasn't been faking senility the entire time: Comic #289 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0289.html) notes that Shojo's senility ruse began only a few years ago. Presumably he could have been mentoring her "adequately" up until then (though that's obviously speculation).

[Grey_Wolf_c]

@GWc: Much but none we will hear, I presume?

....

Ok then.

Oh, you need me to make it even more obvious? That latest assertion of yours is not indicative of betrayal.

Not to mention you also accused the gods of betraying her. Which they also didn't do.

Not to mention she was an adult. The mentoring was over.

Not to mention you keep using words to mean things they do not.

Grey Wolf

[hroþila]

Look, you brought up the example of OUR world which doesn't have MAGIC and tried to make a point about the OotS world which DOES.

So maybe the take home is that some ideas just don't translate well in either direction, I would think.
The simple point is that assuming and expecting things that are extremely improbable in a given universe just because you have too high a concept of yourself is lunacy, and that something being theoretically possible is no basis for fervent belief. This isn't complicated. Nothing to do with magic or lack thereof.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Well considering that it was murdering him was the reason she fell, and not when she attacked Hinjo, I would say that it was the most important reason for her fall. You A and B lack any understanding of the events unfolding. 1st Hinjo did not offer her a chance to defend the city, but a cell. 2nd she never denied that she fell, only that they we're testing her, or she was tricked. I say this not to excuse her actions, btw.
Look. I agree with what I'm pretty sure your point is, but you're going about it all wrong. The core question here is "Why did Miko fall?" The Aboleth thinks that Miko's beliefs are what made her fall, and provides a hypothetical example to prove those beliefs. I'm...not entirely sure what you're trying to do, but it doesn't seem to be working.



One: linking to another post by yourself as evidence, doesn't really count as evidence.
Speaking as someone who has linked to stuff he's previously said on various subjects, and even bookmarked a few things I've said so I can link to them as needed, it's less "this is evidence" and more "this is my argument, don't make me type it again".



These conversations generally exhaust me, but I am profoundly unclear about what was 'good by technicality' about entering a burning building to rescue the helpless, rather than, say, chasing after a pair of plausibly-evil assassins. Which, by, the way, wound up saving the life of an otherwise defenceless monarch.

There's no objective way to evaluate what Miko's alignment would have been at the time of death, but it's certainly conceivable that fifteen years of otherwise upstanding paladin conduct would count in her favour. And Roy's evaluation in strip #251 is essentially complete garbage (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?571070-Why-are-Miko-s-parents-dead&p=23453771&viewfull=1#post23453771).
Yeah...I think people are letting their final judgements of the characters in question get out of hand. In the end (ie, after character development and whatnot), the Order proves heroic; in the end (ie, after a combination of the Order's actions and Shojo's deceit becoming harder and harder to conceal), Miko proves unheroic. Also, the OotS (as protagonists) are generally viewed more favorably than Miko (an antagonist even at her most heroic). Therefore, people view the OotS's actions through a heroic lens and Miko's actions through an unheroic lens.
It's important to identify such biases and account for them. It's also important to focus on what we're talking about. When Miko helps people, she's abrasive to even her teammates; when the Order helps people, they average out at being more polite (even with Belkar and pre-character-development Roy dragging down the average). Miko, Durkon, and Roy are equally Lawful Good, but the Order (Belkar and sometimes V excepted) are more righteous than Miko.



I mean, seriously: pre-dragging-the-Order-in-chains-to-Azure-City Miko is almost radically different from post-dragging-the-Order-in-chains-to-Azure-City. Pre-Miko was just scowling and grumpy the whole time, but willing to help at those in need. Post-Miko is also willing to do so -- reassuring soldiers she'll have farmers bring them rice -- but suddenly fixates on the Order as her worst enemy. Has she never captured prisoners before?
None who frustrated her quite as much, who were so clearly suspicious and guilty (because,to be fair, they 100% did what they were accused of, and Belkar was 100% a murderous a-hole rivaling Xykon save in power and focus) and yet went free in the end—and they even had Lord Shojo's favor! Also, two of them were Elan and Belkar; that alone could drive a weaker-willed warrior into a murderous frenzy.
I can easily see that sort of stress, both mundane ("I'm an adventurer!" "Stop repressing my culture, you ethnocentric b*ch!") and existential ("What is my long-trusted Lord Shojo up to?")
That sort of stress, especially the "What if something I trusted my whole life is wrong?" kind, is plenty to change a person—or at least, to open them to change. Durkon* would probably say that this was Miko's true character revealing itself, but I'm inclined to say that it was her true character having to recontextualize itself in a world different than what she previously believed it to be. If murderers like Belkar were let off the hook for destabilizing the fabric of reality, and if Shojo was collaborating with these a-hole "adventurers" behind the Sapphire Guard's back, who could be trusted? That sounds like exactly the kind of situation where Miko would turn to the one person she knew she could trust, no matter who was secretly betraying the ideals of Azure City.



You can see 'hints' at Miko's later development in the sense that certain traits became increasingly flanderized, but the problem is that, early on, she really doesn't possess those traits to any greater degree than the rest of the cast does.
I'm pretty sure that was the point. Miko and Roy were set up as explicit foils—LG, jaded, snarky warriors with more brains than Thog, Belkar, and other more stereotypical warrior-types, who were given quests from distant paternal figures who kinda screwed them up (each in his own way). In the right circumstances, Roy could be the one who went murderously paranoid and Miko could be the one who recognized the direction her life was going and stepped back...but Roy had the perspective or support network or whatever you think was most critical in helping him realized he'd f*ed up, and Miko didn't. Or maybe just the opposite ways that Shojo and Eugene effed up. Speaking of which...



I think a lot of people forget that Shojo hasn't been faking senility the entire time: Comic #289 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0289.html) notes that Shojo's senility ruse began only a few years ago. Presumably he could have been mentoring her "adequately" up until then (though that's obviously speculation).
The Giant has stated that Shojo's mentorship is what planted the seed of "I am the chosen one" in Miko's skull. "Adequate" is about the nicest you could call it.



Why not? That's what she says.
What she says is "If you had done X, I would do Y." As a parallel example: "If you had quoted Ayn Rand, I would call you a moron." That's hardly fair...unless there were other circumstances where quoting Ayn Rand would be the last straw, e.g. if they had already been constructing an argument which was already deeply flawed and inconsistent with Rand's beliefs. (It's the first non-Godwin's-Law example that came to mind, if you insist I can think of a better one.)


And she apparently feels no need to question any of those explanations further, weak or not. (I also think the case of "accepting gifts intended for a king" is not as severe an offense as abandoning Elan; I can't say for sure if OOTS-world believes this, but a crime of property is not as severe a crime against life ("respect for the dignity of sentient beings", etc.)
I'm not saying that "accepting


I mean, again, she says it was enough to chuck him into TN, so I don't know why you're coming up with explanations that contradict what she said.
Again, that's not what she said. Her exact words were "[I]f you hadn't gone back...I would be chucking your file in the True Neutral bin right now." (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0488.html) You can interpret that as "This is literally the only reason you might be chucked into TN," but that seems inconsistent with being concerned about things beyond that one incident. It seems more consistent to interpret that as "This, combined with the rest of your record, would be enough to make me decide to throw you in TN."


I mean, what's the difference between "doing the right thing, as per the values that are considered Good" and "doing the right thing to support the cause of Good"?
I already told you, motivation. One is motivated by Good itself, the other is motivated by something else but still does good. I'm running out of ways to restate that, could you try explaining your confusion a bit more deeply?

[Prinygod]

[QUOTE=GreatWyrmGold;23883143]

Look. I agree with what I'm pretty sure your point is, but you're going about it all wrong. The core question here is "Why did Miko fall?" The Aboleth thinks that Miko's beliefs are what made her fall, and provides a hypothetical example to prove those beliefs. I'm...not entirely sure what you're trying to do, but it doesn't seem to be working.



Speaking as someone who has linked to stuff he's previously said on various subjects, and even bookmarked a few things I've said so I can link to them as needed, it's less "this is evidence" and more "this is my argument, don't make me type it again".


I'll admit that rereading that I missed that he was talking about the 12 warning her before the fall. But I still disagree with his method.

There is no correlation between his examples and the fall. First that his examples are not supported by the comic as he insists. It would be as I said hypothetically she fell because a time wizard casted insanity on her, he just hasn't show up in the comic yet. You cannot use a hypothtical to prove a theory.

The fact you booked marked suff he said in the past is unrelated to this discussion and says more about you than him, not meaning disrespect

[The Aboleth]

There is no correlation between his examples and the fall. First that his examples are not supported by the comic as he insists. It would be as I said hypothetically she fell because a time wizard casted insanity on her, he just hasn't show up in the comic yet. You cannot use a hypothtical to prove a theory.

First: They are not examples, they are hypotheticals.

Second, I have asked you to explain how the conclusions I drew from my hypotheticals are "not supported by the comic." You have yet to answer. If you're not going to, then kindly refrain from referencing me in any further discussions and I will do the same for you.

Third: Your time wizard hypothetical is actually the one that has zero basis in the comic. We don't see a time wizard, and Miko is not insane. She does, however, continually display poor judgment and a knack for jumping to conclusions to validate said poor judgment. THAT is the basis for my argument; I'm not throwing random stuff like time wizards out there, I am proposing a hypothetical based on Miko's in-comic behavior to come to the conclusion that "Even if the Twelve Gods showed up BEFORE her Fall to try and reason with her, she likely would have dismissed them and come up with some other excuse so she could convince herself she was right." Lending support to that conclusion is she essentially does that very thing AFTER her Fall despite the fact that THE TWELVE GODS THEMSELVES appeared to deliver her Fall to her. When confronted with this, she does not go "Perhaps I have messed up," but instead goes (paraphrased), "The Twelve are clearly testing me."

I am tired of repeating myself, so I'll ask one final time: How, exactly, are the things I just typed "not supported by the comic?"

[Prinygod]

First: They are not examples, they are hypotheticals.

Second, I have asked you to explain how the conclusions I drew from my hypotheticals are "not supported by the comic." You have yet to answer. If you're not going to, then kindly refrain from referencing me in any further discussions and I will do the same for you.

Third: Your time wizard hypothetical is actually the one that has zero basis in the comic. We don't see a time wizard, and Miko is not insane. She does, however, continually display poor judgment and a knack for jumping to conclusions to validate said poor judgment. THAT is the basis for my argument; I'm not throwing random stuff like time wizards out there, I am proposing a hypothetical based on Miko's in-comic behavior to come to the conclusion that "Even if the Twelve Gods showed up BEFORE her Fall to try and reason with her, she likely would have dismissed them and come up with some other excuse so she could convince herself she was right." Lending support to that conclusion is she essentially does that very thing AFTER her Fall despite the fact that THE TWELVE GODS THEMSELVES appeared to deliver her Fall to her. When confronted with this, she does not go "Perhaps I have messed up," but instead goes (paraphrased), "The Twelve are clearly testing me."

I am tired of repeating myself, so I'll ask one final time: How, exactly, are the things I just typed "not supported by the comic?"

Why would I have to disprove your hypothtical? It didn't happen. If you are so convinced that not even the God's could disuade miko from her path, why not show in comic examples instead of inventing them. Otherwise it is not supported by the comic.

And before you try to use it, taking away her powers only showed that they did not want her to kill Shojo at best. It gave no what she should do after the deed was done.

[Ruck]

I already told you, motivation. One is motivated by Good itself, the other is motivated by something else but still does good. I'm running out of ways to restate that, could you try explaining your confusion a bit more deeply?

I think what you are calling "motivations other than the cause of Good" are things that are, in fact, baked into the definition of what capital-G Good is.

More later, I hope-- busy day but I wanted to clarify that while I could.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I'll admit that rereading that I missed that he was talking about the 12 warning her before the fall. But I still disagree with his method.

There is no correlation between his examples and the fall. First that his examples are not supported by the comic as he insists. It would be as I said hypothetically she fell because a time wizard casted insanity on her, he just hasn't show up in the comic yet. You cannot use a hypothtical to prove a theory.
First, I'd like to repeat that I agree with what I'm pretty sure your point was.
Second, you're still failing to understand his point. He was saying that Miko's character would lead to her rejecting everything the Twelve Gods could say in favor of what she already "knew" they were saying. (My copy of Small Gods is staring at me for some reason...) That hypothetical wasn't meant as evidence, but as a statement of his belief and explanation of why it was the reason Miko fell, rather than any specific action.
Third, your argument against that point is still flawed. You got snarled up in the details rather than refuting anything relevant to his point...say, by pointing out that Miko's self-centered attitude was present well before her actual Fall and was at most a secondary factor in her decision to murder Shojo (as opposed to her rampant paranoia and passionate desire to slay evildoers). If Miko's de facto authotheism was the reason for her Fall, why didn't she Fall until well after that attitude set in, instead falling when she did a singularly dishonorable act (the first directly dishonorable act we're aware of her performing) which can be equally-attributed to a variety of Miko's flaws?


The fact you booked marked suff he said in the past is unrelated to this discussion and says more about you than him, not meaning disrespect
You misunderstand me as well. I haven't bookmarked stuff Lacuna said in the past; I've bookmarked stuff I've said in the past, so I can link it to other people, just as Lacuna Caster did.
Lacuna wasn't linking their old argument as an argument from authority, but as an argument. You seem to have dismissed it as an argument from authority, without examining the argument itself. That's the flaw I was trying to point out and encourage you to correct.

[Prinygod]

I think what you are calling "motivations other than the cause of Good" are things that are, in fact, baked into the definition of what capital-G Good is.

More later, I hope-- busy day but I wanted to clarify that while I could.

I would say actively seeking out good things to do, oppose to doing good when the opportunity presents itself. Paladin's take an oath to do good not just when it's convenient, but when it's inconvenient. An example is partying with some one who commits evil but is otherwise useful to your cause.

[The Aboleth]

Why would I have to disprove your hypothtical? It didn't happen. If you are so convinced that not even the God's could disuade miko from her path, why not show in comic examples instead of inventing them. Otherwise it is not supported by the comic.

And before you try to use it, taking away her powers only showed that they did not want her to kill Shojo at best. It gave no what she should do after the deed was done.

If you really don't feel like the strips in which the Twelve Gods appear before everyone, zap Miko with a bolt of lightning that causes her to Fall, and her response being "They must be testing me" isn't in-comic evidence to support my claims about what Miko might have done in a scenario in which the Twelve Gods appear and try to tell her she's wrong, then you and I have very different interpretations of what "in-comic evidence" (or examples) means.

EDIT TO AVOID POSSIBLE DOUBLE-POST:

First, I'd like to repeat that I agree with what I'm pretty sure your point was.
Second, you're still failing to understand his point. He was saying that Miko's character would lead to her rejecting everything the Twelve Gods could say in favor of what she already "knew" they were saying. (My copy of Small Gods is staring at me for some reason...) That hypothetical wasn't meant as evidence, but as a statement of his belief and explanation of why it was the reason Miko fell, rather than any specific action.
Third, your argument against that point is still flawed. You got snarled up in the details rather than refuting anything relevant to his point...say, by pointing out that Miko's self-centered attitude was present well before her actual Fall and was at most a secondary factor in her decision to murder Shojo (as opposed to her rampant paranoia and passionate desire to slay evildoers). If Miko's de facto authotheism was the reason for her Fall, why didn't she Fall until well after that attitude set in, instead falling when she did a singularly dishonorable act (the first directly dishonorable act we're aware of her performing) which can be equally-attributed to a variety of Miko's flaws?

GWG gets it. To these arguments, I would respond that Miko's attitude is possibly (not certainly) what Rich meant when he said she had been "pushing the boundaries of Lawful Good" for some time. The murder of Shojo is what pushes her over the edge and forces the Twelves' hands (paws? Limbs?), but it's my belief that when you boil it down to its simplest form, it was ultimately Miko's poor judgment and inability to conceive she might be wrong that led to her Fall.

[Prinygod]

You misunderstand me as well. I haven't bookmarked stuff Lacuna said in the past; I've bookmarked stuff I've said in the past, so I can link it to other people, just as Lacuna Caster did.
Lacuna wasn't linking their old argument as an argument from authority, but as an argument. You seem to have dismissed it as an argument from authority, without examining the argument itself. That's the flaw I was trying to point out and encourage you to correct.[/QUOTE]

You edited your post, there was no reference to lucuna and I had never mentioned them. At the time you must have misstaken directed it at me.

Edit I messed up this quote and don't have time to fix it ATM sorry.

[Ruck]

I would say actively seeking out good things to do, oppose to doing good when the opportunity presents itself. Paladin's take an oath to do good not just when it's convenient, but when it's inconvenient. An example is partying with some one who commits evil but is otherwise useful to your cause.
That's not really what the conversation GWG and I were having is about though. It's more like, what's the difference between "acting to advance the cause of Good" and "acting to protect the innocent, see justice done, and preserve the dignity of living beings"?

[Lacuna Caster]

Yeah...I think people are letting their final judgements of the characters in question get out of hand. In the end (ie, after character development and whatnot), the Order proves heroic; in the end (ie, after a combination of the Order's actions and Shojo's deceit becoming harder and harder to conceal), Miko proves unheroic. Also, the OotS (as protagonists) are generally viewed more favorably than Miko (an antagonist even at her most heroic). Therefore, people view the OotS's actions through a heroic lens and Miko's actions through an unheroic lens...

...That sort of stress, especially the "What if something I trusted my whole life is wrong?" kind, is plenty to change a person—or at least, to open them to change. Durkon* would probably say that this was Miko's true character revealing itself, but I'm inclined to say that it was her true character having to recontextualize itself in a world different than what she previously believed it to be. If murderers like Belkar were let off the hook for destabilizing the fabric of reality, and if Shojo was collaborating with these a-hole "adventurers" behind the Sapphire Guard's back, who could be trusted? That sounds like exactly the kind of situation where Miko would turn to the one person she knew she could trust, no matter who was secretly betraying the ideals of Azure City...

...I'm pretty sure that was the point. Miko and Roy were set up as explicit foils—LG, jaded, snarky warriors with more brains than Thog, Belkar, and other more stereotypical warrior-types, who were given quests from distant paternal figures who kinda screwed them up (each in his own way). In the right circumstances, Roy could be the one who went murderously paranoid and Miko could be the one who recognized the direction her life was going and stepped back...but Roy had the perspective or support network or whatever you think was most critical in helping him realized he'd f*ed up, and Miko didn't. Or maybe just the opposite ways that Shojo and Eugene effed up...

...The Giant has stated that Shojo's mentorship is what planted the seed of "I am the chosen one" in Miko's skull. "Adequate" is about the nicest you could call it.
I think the sequence of Miko's development doesn't hinge entirely on Shojo's revealed duplicity (though that was a legitimately baffling sequence of decisions on Shojo's part.) The critical moment for Miko, really, is when she's apparently willing to cut down five non-evil people (including Durkon) in the throne room in order to execute Belkar, which I think would have been an evil act had Shojo not intervened. And her willingness to do this is based entirely on the antagonism between her and Belkar built up over the prior... 30 minutes or so?... of cat and mouse antics, well before any collusion between Shojo and the Order is established.

I would have to say that I would not expect Roy to turn into a murderous paranoid zealot under analogous circumstances, but this also stuck out to me as an 'I was not expecting that' moment for Miko at the time. I'm also not crazy about the whole "Shojo was the tape holding her together" explanation, given that (A) parents don't usually matter that much in reality (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nurture_Assumption#Summary), and (B) this contradicts the ostensible influence of Gin-Jun persisting long after his own death.

(Also, what's much worse than Shojo giving Miko fancy ideas about her future importance was sending her off on long solo missions in foreign territories without adequate intelligence, communications or backup. That's, um, actively life-threatening.)


It's important to identify such biases and account for them. It's also important to focus on what we're talking about. When Miko helps people, she's abrasive to even her teammates; when the Order helps people, they average out at being more polite (even with Belkar and pre-character-development Roy dragging down the average). Miko, Durkon, and Roy are equally Lawful Good, but the Order (Belkar and sometimes V excepted) are more righteous than Miko.
To be honest, I'm not sure that anyone beside Durkon and Elan initially qualified as less abrasive on the average, and most of her criticisms of the Order were at least adjacent to being justified. (Like... V was completely in the wrong when he fabricated that roaming charge for services rendered and tried to assault her in the process, that's not even a point of contention by now.)




Look, you brought up the example of OUR world which doesn't have MAGIC and tried to make a point about the OotS world which DOES.

I'd say there's a huge difference between believing in omens in general, and believing in omens that express your greatness specifically.
Sure, but Miko's superstition initially just manifests as a belief that the OOTS' loosing their treasure was karma catching up to them (it's actually Roy who thinks (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0227.html) that the universe owed them some recognition of greatness.) And to be fair, OOTSverse is a place where narrative tropes have real power and Gods-empowered oracles pronounce on the fate of heroes all the time. I don't see that there's a million miles between Elan's constant expectations of "X will cause Y, because I am a PC protagonist", and Miko's belief that "W implies Z, because I am the Chosen One." I mean, it's not like the destined champions of the Gods receiving signs, omens and visions hasn't been a fairly common trope in myth and legend.

I'm not personally going to say that Miko hunting for signs and omens as directions from the Gods is a particularly sane or rational thing- my broader point is she could simply get a cleric to cast Commune, or that the Gods could send her a message from their own side, thus obviating this whole question. But it is at least somewhat less irrational in the topsy-turvy world that she inhabits.

[Mightymosy]

The simple point is that assuming and expecting things that are extremely improbable in a given universe just because you have too high a concept of yourself is lunacy, and that something being theoretically possible is no basis for fervent belief. This isn't complicated. Nothing to do with magic or lack thereof.

Alright then, then let's get back to where this came from:



I don't think this is very convincing. Yes, some of the gods could perhaps orchestrate such things (note that Odin is intrinsically linked to prophecy and foresight, though, so that he could do something like this doesn't automatically mean other gods could do it too). There is still no indication that this is something that happens with any frequency (or even that it has happened at all in the world Miko inhabits). Some people do or have become kings and emperors and popes in our world, but it would still be lunacy for me to fervently believe that I will too.

1. Your point is that some people do or have become kings and emperors and popes in our world, but it would still be lunacy for you (or me) to fervently believe we would become one, too.

True, but we are not Miko.
(luckily)

In other words, we are NOT the highest ranked members of a class that has the explicit purpose to enforce divine will on behalf of the gods on the OotS world.
Hence why I said you or I would be NOT a lunatic if one of us WAS a cardinal - someone who really MIGHT become pope at some time.


Suppose you are the Queen on the chess board. Would it really be that lunatic to assume that the chess player has special plans for you?




2. Do such divine orchestrations happen frequently in OotS world? Do omens happen frequently?
We don't know the frequency. But we know that stuff like that happens:
Frequently enough that this was Thor's FIRST assumption (a being so intelligent that he remembers trillions of souls who worshipped him - also sometimes a lunatic himself, to be honest ;-) )
Frequently enough that Miko thinks it possible (ok, THAT one would be circle logic)
Frequently enough the nobles use it to interprete Scruffy as divine will.
Frequently enough that Durkon interpretes the rain (and stopping of the rain) as Thor's divine will (which was WRONG - so Durkon is on the same wrong train as Miko here).


Thinking of all of this, this is exactly the conundrum the comic creates, and what (I believe) Lacuna is so unhappy about.

We see how characters like Miko and Durkon interprete divine will by indirect omens and laugh at how wrong they are, and how stupid that is, because in our real world that would be really stupid.
And it is, in early OotS, portrayed as stupid: in early OotS we read the characters like real world people.
But then, we come to know that the gods are NOT some intangible concept that is purely theoretical and can't influence the world. No, gods in this story are real AND CAN interact with world, in way of their clerics, by direct and concrete information IF THEY CHOOSE TO. (YES, even now that is unclear because with Redcloak it seems different for whatever reason).
And then we read the earlier comics and wonder stuff like "Well, if the gods use the clerics and paladins as pawns, AND they WANT Azure City to remain in play, why don't they tell their pawns what to do??? Not even when they continously ask for guidance?"
In other words, there is some kind of dissonance if one thinks this way (while that deeply disturbs Lacuna, appearantly, for me it's okay because I view early OotS as parody. The reason I post and engage in these discussions is that I feel the need to admit Lacuna where I think he is right, intellectually, if one DOES want to interprete the comic so seriously, and in such deep detail that was probably not intended by the author)

[Jasdoif]

Sure, but Miko's superstition initially just manifests as a belief that the OOTS' loosing their treasure was karma catching up to them (it's actually Roy who thinks (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0227.html) that the universe owed them some recognition of greatness.) And to be fair, OOTSverse is a place where narrative tropes have real power and Gods-empowered oracles pronounce on the fate of heroes all the time. I don't see that there's a million miles between Elan's constant expectations of "X will cause Y, because I am a PC protagonist", and Miko's belief that "W implies Z, because I am the Chosen One."Or Tarquin's insistence that "K means N, because I am the real villain, therefore I J instead of K".

The key difference being what happens when they're surprised: Elan seeing himself in a support role results in him readily rolling with the punches when his expectations aren't met, where Tarquin seeing himself as a driving influence results in him doubling down against the punches when his expectations aren't met. Miko takes the third option, where she looks outside the scope of the surprise to see where the punches are coming from. Which is great for creative problem solving...when the point of contention isn't so core to your identity that "outside" doesn't feel like a meaningful concept.

[Mightymosy]

Or Tarquin's insistence that "K means N, because I am the real villain, therefore I J instead of K".

The key difference being what happens when they're surprised: Elan seeing himself in a support role results in him readily rolling with the punches when his expectations aren't met, where Tarquin seeing himself as a driving influence results in him doubling down against the punches when his expectations aren't met. Miko takes the third option, where she looks outside the scope of the surprise to see where the punches are coming from. Which is great for creative problem solving...when the point of contention isn't so core to your identity that "outside" doesn't feel like a meaningful concept.

You'd think a thread about Eugene and Miko would be improved by adding Tarquin?

Might as well go the full distance and make a comparison with Andi :smalleek:

[GreatWyrmGold]

You edited your post, there was no reference to lucuna and I had never mentioned them. At the time you must have misstaken directed it at me.
I edited my post almost 20 minutes before you posted your thing, and that was just to add an extra reply that I'd missed the first time. (Kinda like The Aboleth did.) And Lacuna is the person Darth Paul originally accused of quoting themself as evidence; I kinda assumed you agreed with him on that point, since you were defending that point.



That's not really what the conversation GWG and I were having is about though. It's more like, what's the difference between "acting to advance the cause of Good" and "acting to protect the innocent, see justice done, and preserve the dignity of living beings"?
Motivation. Are you doing good for Good's sake, or for the good of individuals?
An example: Is a soldier fighting Nazis doing so to protect their homeland, because their family needs the money, or because they think the Nazis are Evil? That's two Good motivations and one that could be construed as Good or Neutral, but only one is really "for Good's sake".
Does that help?



I think the sequence of Miko's development doesn't hinge entirely on Shojo's revealed duplicity (though that was a legitimately baffling sequence of decisions on Shojo's part.) The critical moment for Miko, really, is when she's apparently willing to cut down five non-evil people (including Durkon) in the throne room in order to execute Belkar, which I think would have been an evil act had Shojo not intervened. And her willingness to do this is based entirely on the antagonism between her and Belkar built up over the prior... 30 minutes or so?... of cat and mouse antics, well before any collusion between Shojo and the Order is established.
Wrong on basically all accounts.
1. I don't think Miko's development hinges entirely on any one point, though the reveal of Shojo's duplicity is one of the more important factors that finally pushed her off the edge.
2. You seem to be confusing cause with effect. Miko's increased willingness to attack people is an effect of her negative character development, not a cause.
3. Miko was only ready to murder the OotS members who were actively obstructing her, (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0285.html) not all five.
4. If her willingness to murder most of the Order (especially Belkar) had nothing to do with the mutual antagonism they'd built up in the weeks they traveled together, I'll eat...well, might as well say I'll eat the Sun, for how likely I'll have to follow through.
5. Her hatred for Belkar goes further. Aside from those weeks of intentionally antagonizing Miko (the most elaborate example being when he contacted the lawyers to file a class-action lawsuit (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0228.html)), Belkar murdered at least one guard in an obvious, deliberate attempt to provoke Miko. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0265.html) It wasn't just the dang cat-and-mouse, Lacuna.
6. Miko thought Shojo was evil for collaborating with the Order, not the other way around. If she thought they were colluding, it wouldn't make her more willing to murder them.


I would have to say that I would not expect Roy to turn into a murderous paranoid zealot under analogous circumstances, but this also stuck out to me as an 'I was not expecting that' moment for Miko at the time. I'm also not crazy about the whole "Shojo was the tape holding her together" explanation, given that (A) parents don't usually matter that much in reality (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nurture_Assumption#Summary), and (B) this contradicts the ostensible influence of Gin-Jun persisting long after his own death.

[quote](Also, what's much worse than Shojo giving Miko fancy ideas about her future importance was sending her off on long solo missions in foreign territories without adequate intelligence, communications or backup. That's, um, actively life-threatening.)
I'm pretty sure that kind of danger comes with fighting evil monsters for a living, unless you consistently aim at encounter levels well below your own. Also, Miko was sent with adequate intelligence to locate the Order, and Windstriker seems to be the only backup she needs against basically anything less than a goblin high priest or army.

[understatement]

Why does Miko hate the Order so much? Has she never captured prisoners or slain terrible monsters before?

[Peelee]

Why does Miko hate the Order so much? Has she never captured prisoners or slain terrible monsters before?

I'd wager she felt about other prisoners or monsters similar to how she felt about the Order before the trail. After the trial, well, she may see it as the Order escaping justice.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Why does Miko hate the Order so much? Has she never captured prisoners or slain terrible monsters before?

She does seem to prefer the "attack now and if anyone wants questions answered, a cleric with Speak the Dead prepared will be needed" justice system. She might not have usually found reason to take prisoners, thus why Shojo's cat had to insists on wanting them alive.

Grey Wolf

[Lacuna Caster]

Wrong on basically all accounts.
1. I don't think Miko's development hinges entirely on any one point, though the reveal of Shojo's duplicity is one of the more important factors that finally pushed her off the edge.
2. You seem to be confusing cause with effect. Miko's increased willingness to attack people is an effect of her negative character development, not a cause.
3. Miko was only ready to murder the OotS members who were actively obstructing her, (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0285.html) not all five.
4. If her willingness to murder most of the Order (especially Belkar) had nothing to do with the mutual antagonism they'd built up in the weeks they traveled together, I'll eat...well, might as well say I'll eat the Sun, for how likely I'll have to follow through.
5. Her hatred for Belkar goes further. Aside from those weeks of intentionally antagonizing Miko (the most elaborate example being when he contacted the lawyers to file a class-action lawsuit (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0228.html)), Belkar murdered at least one guard in an obvious, deliberate attempt to provoke Miko. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0265.html) It wasn't just the dang cat-and-mouse, Lacuna.
6. Miko thought Shojo was evil for collaborating with the Order, not the other way around. If she thought they were colluding, it wouldn't make her more willing to murder them.
Oh, I'm aware that Miko had plenty of prior reasons to dislike the Order in general and Belkar in particular- my point is simply that, prior to the cat-and-mouse over the dead guard, this wasn't sufficient reason for her to try and kill them. (Not even Belkar, given she had the opportunity to do so after their second fight outside the ruined inn and earlier implied that she has discretion over the use of lethal force against evil opponents.)

The guard who Belkar murdered would be an entirely fair reason to execute Belkar himself, and I wouldn't personally quibble too much if she did so while he was downed and unconscious, legal niceties aside. But projecting that on the entire Order? (Because the entire Order were set to resist her, and even killing one would be problematic, as "make peace with your Gods" seems to suggest.) I mean, the author describes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?6106-OOTS-285-The-Discussion-Thread&p=928601&viewfull=1#post928601) her as 'bordering on a complete psychotic break' and then (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?6106-OOTS-285-The-Discussion-Thread&p=929083&viewfull=1#post929083) 'pushed beyond what had been a line she didn't cross'.

There's a distinction between 'willing to kill non-evil persons to take down an unconscious criminal' and 'willing to kill one's own liege lord', and I'm not saying Shojo's duplicity didn't contribute to that, but it was crossing the former threshold that actually shocked me more than the latter. Don't get me wrong, I'm obviously someone who thinks Miko gets more of a bum rap than she deserves, but she does seem to be expressing lethal intent here in a context where that would not have been proportionate and justified. If realised, that intent would, IMHO, have already been fall-worthy... and that suggests she was 'over the edge' well before Shojo's nonsense came to light.



Or Tarquin's insistence that "K means N, because I am the real villain, therefore I J instead of K".

The key difference being what happens when they're surprised: Elan seeing himself in a support role results in him readily rolling with the punches when his expectations aren't met, where Tarquin seeing himself as a driving influence results in him doubling down against the punches when his expectations aren't met. Miko takes the third option, where she looks outside the scope of the surprise to see where the punches are coming from. Which is great for creative problem solving...when the point of contention isn't so core to your identity that "outside" doesn't feel like a meaningful concept.
Umm... I guess?

[Rogar Demonblud]

She does seem to prefer the "attack now and if anyone wants questions answered, a cleric with Speak the Dead prepared will be needed" justice system. She might not have usually found reason to take prisoners, thus why Shojo's cat had to insists on wanting them alive.

Grey Wolf

Pretty much. Her first appearance is her swearing to hunt down and slaughter some people who might have possibly committed a crime in another jurisdiction than the one she works for.

[Peelee]

Pretty much. Her first appearance is her swearing to hunt down and slaughter some people who might have possibly committed a crime in another jurisdiction than the one she works for.

She does claim universal jurisdiction, so her first appearance is her swearing to hunt down and slaughter some people who might have possibly committed a crime.

[Rogar Demonblud]

And the local county sheriff swears he can hunt down and arrest anyone in any county in the state or even across the border in another state. Doesn't make it true. Miko works for Azure City, she has authority in Azure City.

[Peelee]

And the local county sheriff swears he can hunt down and arrest anyone in any county in the state or even across the border in another state. Doesn't make it true. Miko works for Azure City, she has authority in Azure City.

He can until someone stops him. In the absence of being stopped by force, then the legal system will respond to that. How'd their legal system respond to Miko bringing them in?

[Ruck]

Motivation. Are you doing good for Good's sake, or for the good of individuals?
An example: Is a soldier fighting Nazis doing so to protect their homeland, because their family needs the money, or because they think the Nazis are Evil? That's two Good motivations and one that could be construed as Good or Neutral, but only one is really "for Good's sake".
Does that help?

Not really, because those motivations are so different than the ones you previously cited as not being "for Good's sake."


Or a different definition of "good for Good's sake". As I told Grey Wolf, i don't think doing something because it's right isn't the same as going it to support the cause of Good, especially if you're motivated to do the right thing/see it as the right thing because of something more specific (like a desire to protect the innocent or save lives or comfort the needy or whatever).

Doing it "for the money" is quite obviously not "for Good's sake"; I'm saying "a desire to protect the innocent or save lives or comfort the needy or whatever" is.

[Lacuna Caster]

And the local county sheriff swears he can hunt down and arrest anyone in any county in the state or even across the border in another state. Doesn't make it true. Miko works for Azure City, she has authority in Azure City.
This may not have occurred to you, but the specific charge levelled against the Order was 'endangering the fabric of reality', and reality contains, among other places, Azure City. That kind of puts them in Miko's jurisdiction. It... puts them in everyone's jurisdiction, really.

[Lvl45DM!]

This may not have occurred to you, but the specific charge levelled against the Order was 'endangering the fabric of reality', and reality contains, among other places, Azure City. That kind of puts them in Miko's jurisdiction. It... puts them in everyone's jurisdiction, really.

That is definitely not how jurisdiction works for law enforcement I'm pretty sure. If theres a guy, a random unaffliated guy, threatening to unleash a super-virus that will kill everyone in the world, and he's in, oh lets say, Madeupistan, a random cop from Notrealiadoesn't have the legal right to go get him.
Notrealia also doesn't have the right to invade Madeupistan to get him, or send elite Notrealia spies or spec-op dudes to get him.

Now I'm pretty sure in this case the OotS were in international waters, which, honestly I have no idea how that works so...
Its outside Mikos jurisdiction but its not IN anyone elses?

[Jasdoif]

That is definitely not how jurisdiction works for law enforcement I'm pretty sure. If theres a guy, a random unaffliated guy, threatening to unleash a super-virus that will kill everyone in the world, and he's in, oh lets say, Madeupistan, a random cop from Notrealiadoesn't have the legal right to go get him.
Notrealia also doesn't have the right to invade Madeupistan to get him, or send elite Notrealia spies or spec-op dudes to get him.I'm pretty sure the Sapphire Guard isn't like law enforcement....Which is a critical detail here: Notrealia and Madeupistan almost certainly have different laws, and Notrealia may indeed see its agents as having the legal right to go after targets in Madeupistan. This could quite easily cause problems between Notrealia and Madeupistan in the trivially-likely case that Madeupistan doesn't agree...but as Peelee was getting at earlier, if the Madeupistanians don't do anything to stop them, the Notrealians are unlikely to stop.

This is, I think, related to Roy's "It was an illegitimate authority" (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0488.html) comment: he didn't recognize Miko as having the authority to arrest him. (He did, of course, fail to stop her (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0251.html).)

[GreatWyrmGold]

Oh, I'm aware that Miko had plenty of prior reasons to dislike the Order in general and Belkar in particular- my point is simply that, prior to the cat-and-mouse over the dead guard, this wasn't sufficient reason for her to try and kill them.
Of course not; they were being brought to justice. But when Belkar escaped, she saw no way to bring him to justice that didn't involve killing him then and there, since he obviously couldn't be held for trial or execution.
It's kinda warped logic, but not that much more warped than the logic Miko had been using before, and IMHO the pressure Belkar added there justifies the additional warping.



Not really, because those motivations are so different than the ones you previously cited as not being "for Good's sake."

Doing it "for the money" is quite obviously not "for Good's sake"; I'm saying "a desire to protect the innocent or save lives or comfort the needy or whatever" is.
So, wait, you think "protect my homeland" is completely distinct from "protect the innocent" or "save lives," and that the latter are equivalent to "good for Good's sake"?
The way I see it, "good for Good's sake" is doing whatever is Good, because it is Good and for no other reason—Good as an ideology of its own. Meanwhile, protecting the innocent, saving lives, comforting the needy, etc are focused on achieving desired ends which are good, but not because they're trying to be Good. (There's a reason I've been capitalizing half of my Good's.)

(And as an aside, do you really think a Good motivation, e.g. "protect my family," become not-Good if one of the steps in your plan involves getting money? Or do you not think that "protect my family" is a Good motivation? Neither of those seems right.)

[Lvl45DM!]

I'm pretty sure the Sapphire Guard isn't like law enforcement....Which is a critical detail here: Notrealia and Madeupistan almost certainly have different laws, and Notrealia may indeed see its agents as having the legal right to go after targets in Madeupistan. This could quite easily cause problems between Notrealia and Madeupistan in the trivially-likely case that Madeupistan doesn't agree...but as Peelee was getting at earlier, if the Madeupistanians don't do anything to stop them, the Notrealians are unlikely to stop.

This is, I think, related to Roy's "It was an illegitimate authority" (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0488.html) comment: he didn't recognize Miko as having the authority to arrest him. (He did, of course, fail to stop her (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0251.html).)

Yeah but Madeupistan's laws are the only ones that matter, since the dude is IN Madeupistan. Notrealia can say whatever it likes, but its influence ENDS outside of Notrealia.
Maybe Madeupistan is worried that Notrealia is exaggerating the threat's importance to kidnap some people to service its own goals.
Which is literally what Shojo was doing, if you recall.

[Peelee]

I'm pretty sure the Sapphire Guard isn't like law enforcement...

They're both Law enforcement and Good enforcement!

[Jasdoif]

Yeah but Madeupistan's laws are the only ones that matter, since the dude is IN Madeupistan. Notrealia can say whatever it likes, but its influence ENDS outside of Notrealia.
Maybe Madeupistan is worried that Notrealia is exaggerating the threat's importance to kidnap some people to service its own goals.
Which is literally what Shojo was doing, if you recall.Influence is being able to cause changes, regardless of authorization or mutual agreement or whatever social construct around delegation or reciprocity. (Militaries have influence, for example; even though they primarily exist for hostile situations.)


As you said earlier, Miko captured the Order outside the bounds of any nation; no secular authority opposed whatever the equivalent to extradition would be in this situation. However,Shojo sending paladins after individuals into other countries apparently happens frequently enough that a travel guide mentions "Azure City has recently developed a reputation for violating sovereign nations over what are perceived as 'personal grudges'."

You can certainly say that Shojo shouldn't be sending the Sapphire Guard after individuals in other countries without the cooperation of those countries; but he clearly can, and clearly does.

They're both Law enforcement and Good enforcement!The paladin members, sure. The cleric members, not necessarily!

[Wizard_Lizard]

You'd think a thread about Eugene and Miko would be improved by adding Tarquin?

Might as well go the full distance and make a comparison with Andi :smalleek:

As the original oster, I do recall the thread was not about any of the three that you stated.


It was about ROY'S SISTER

[Darth Paul]

So, wait, you think "protect my homeland" is completely distinct from "protect the innocent" or "save lives," and that the latter are equivalent to "good for Good's sake"?
The way I see it, "good for Good's sake" is doing whatever is Good, because it is Good and for no other reason—Good as an ideology of its own. Meanwhile, protecting the innocent, saving lives, comforting the needy, etc are focused on achieving desired ends which are good, but not because they're trying to be Good. (There's a reason I've been capitalizing half of my Good's.)



Yeah but Madeupistan's laws are the only ones that matter, since the dude is IN Madeupistan. Notrealia can say whatever it likes, but its influence ENDS outside of Notrealia.
Maybe Madeupistan is worried that Notrealia is exaggerating the threat's importance to kidnap some people to service its own goals.
Which is literally what Shojo was doing, if you recall.

That's called "Extraordinary Rendition" where I come from, buckaroos. And it's not a Good act to invade another sovereignty without provocation, even if you claim you're protecting your homeland by doing so. That's called "a flimsy excuse".

Pretty much the reason for my bias (which I will admit openly) is that I put myself in the protagonists' shoes, which we are meant to do in most stories (not things like Hannibal, hopefully). And I would have a strongly rooted objection to anyone attempting to murder me for no reason, which is exactly what Miko did on her first encounter with the OotS, after they didn't immediately and abjectly surrender so they could be taken away to a death sentence (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0200.html). With no explanation of who the hell she was, or what they were supposed to have done. And my opinion of Miko pretty much ran downhill from there.

Were there some extenuating circumstances, like the fact that everyone she questioned painted this group in the worst possible light? Yes. But was Miko already predetermined that they were a group of evildoers who were going to feel the edge of her sword? YES. Shojo had to pull her back before she even started her mission. Her intelligence gathering, such as it was, only reinforced her preconceived ideas... and later, we would see that she tends to dismiss any evidence that conflicts with her preconceived opinions in any case. Miko never questioned the reliability of the witnesses (even a rogue and a sorceress who tried to attack her) because their accounts fit what she already thought was the truth. She never conceived that she was hunting bumbling heroes instead of evil masterminds.

I feel some pity for Miko when I read her story again. Trouble is, I don't feel enough, because she blinds herself to any possibility that she might be wrong, and that leads directly to her fall. O-Chul shows us that a Paladin's greatest strength is humility. She has none.

[Mightymosy]

Right!

Who is aweome, by the way.

[Lacuna Caster]

That's called "Extraordinary Rendition" where I come from, buckaroos. And it's not a Good act to invade another sovereignty without provocation, even if you claim you're protecting your homeland by doing so. That's called "a flimsy excuse".

Yeah but Madeupistan's laws are the only ones that matter, since the dude is IN Madeupistan. Notrealia can say whatever it likes, but its influence ENDS outside of Notrealia.

That is definitely not how jurisdiction works for law enforcement I'm pretty sure. If theres a guy, a random unaffliated guy, threatening to unleash a super-virus that will kill everyone in the world, and he's in, oh lets say, Madeupistan, a random cop from Notrealia doesn't have the legal right to go get him.
They may not technically have the legal right, but my broader point is that, if folks in Madeupistan really truly are trying to blow up the planet and the government of Notrealia genuinely knows that to a certainty, then they have a moral right- and indeed an obligation- to protect themselves, their citizens and all terrestrial life.

Now, I will be the first (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?545494-Questions-about-the-early-strip-and-Sapphire-Guard) to point out that Shojo had a wide array of tools at his disposal for handling the Order's arrest/recruitment with greater efficiency and less violence. But to argue that Shojo doesn't have the right to take action to ensure that the planet his own city is sitting on continues existing? Sorry, I don't buy that, national borders be damned. This really is something bigger than any set of secular laws, and insisting to the contrary would actually be Lawful Stupid.

EDIT:

Were there some extenuating circumstances, like the fact that everyone she questioned painted this group in the worst possible light? Yes. But was Miko already predetermined that they were a group of evildoers who were going to feel the edge of her sword? YES. Shojo had to pull her back before she even started her mission...
The problem with Shojo's "Mr Scruffy Says" panel is that, if Shojo was genuinely interested in bringing them in alive there are like a billion other things he should be doing differently. And given Miko repeatedly states (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0174.html) that Shojo ordered their execution, I have to take this as being either a lie, a contradiction or a retcon.

Now, I'm not blaming Roy for being unwilling to surrender, but the truth remains that Miko had more and better reasons to apply lethal force, and actually gives more fair warning, than the Order had done up to that point. Maybe you should try putting yourself in the shoes of the NPCs now and then.


I mean, let's just take the case of going to battle with the Ogres: Does it ever occur to Roy that they should sit down and have a chat with their chieftain, double-check their alignment, or cross-reference descriptions to ensure they haven't been mixed up with their evil twins? No, his plan is to ambush them unawares and, where practical, slit their throats in their sleep. I can see valid arguments that Miko's investigative technique could have been improved, but she was actually more thorough and careful than was typical for the Order at the time.

Literally the first major interaction Miko has with the Order involves her stopping in mid-combat to take in evidence that contradicts her previous working theory about her suspects, so I'm not seeing irrefutable evidence of confirmation bias there. But okay, let's imagine that some other very meticulous paladin or intelligence-gathering squad was dispatched to investigate what the Order had been doing. Do you think this would work out in the Order's favour?

Elan, at bare minimum, recklessly endangered hundreds of goblin lives when he destroyed the Keep (which sounds like something that, I don't know, O-Chul might get upset about.) Belkar is a straight-up psychopath who killed dozens in a bar-room brawl immediately before he joined the team. Vaarsuvius likes to blow people up (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0173.html) whenever he doesn't get his way. Haley presumably has an extensive criminal record. The Order might not be strictly guilty of consciously trying to unmake reality, but are they 'innocent'? Hell no. And would Miko, or any other paladin, be justified in thinking that they needed closer supervision? Hell yes.

[Prinygod]

That's called "Extraordinary Rendition" where I come from, buckaroos. And it's not a Good act to invade another sovereignty without provocation, even if you claim you're protecting your homeland by doing so. That's called "a flimsy excuse".

Pretty much the reason for my bias (which I will admit openly) is that I put myself in the protagonists' shoes, which we are meant to do in most stories (not things like Hannibal, hopefully). And I would have a strongly rooted objection to anyone attempting to murder me for no reason, which is exactly what Miko did on her first encounter with the OotS, after they didn't immediately and abjectly surrender so they could be taken away to a death sentence (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0200.html). With no explanation of who the hell she was, or what they were supposed to have done. And my opinion of Miko pretty much ran downhill from there.

Were there some extenuating circumstances, like the fact that everyone she questioned painted this group in the worst possible light? Yes. But was Miko already predetermined that they were a group of evildoers who were going to feel the edge of her sword? YES. Shojo had to pull her back before she even started her mission. Her intelligence gathering, such as it was, only reinforced her preconceived ideas... and later, we would see that she tends to dismiss any evidence that conflicts with her preconceived opinions in any case. Miko never questioned the reliability of the witnesses (even a rogue and a sorceress who tried to attack her) because their accounts fit what she already thought was the truth. She never conceived that she was hunting bumbling heroes instead of evil masterminds.

I feel some pity for Miko when I read her story again. Trouble is, I don't feel enough, because she blinds herself to any possibility that she might be wrong, and that leads directly to her fall. O-Chul shows us that a Paladin's greatest strength is humility. She has none.

This shows a narrow mind, but not a malic intent. Remember that the info of the orders crime came from a divination. It wasn't a case of if they did it but why. That miko wasn't skeptical, is certainly a flaw, but it doesn't mean she is always this way. In189 even after the sorceress damanded forced servitude, miko did not attack first, and even tried to negotiate with the remaining bandit. She could have just as easily demanded them tell her what she wanted to know before untying them, and did not assume the worst of them. She is not selective in her lack of skepticism.

[Lacuna Caster]

This shows a narrow mind, but not a malic intent. Remember that the info of the orders crime came from a divination. It wasn't a case of if they did it but why. That miko wasn't skeptical, is certainly a flaw, but it doesn't mean she is always this way. In 189 even after the sorceress demanded forced servitude, miko did not attack first, and even tried to negotiate with the remaining bandit. She could have just as easily demanded them tell her what she wanted to know before untying them, and did not assume the worst of them. She is not selective in her lack of skepticism.
Yeah, this. It continually amazes me that out of all the things people fixate on in that strip, being insufficiently tactful with people who outright threaten to kill her is considered most telling of her character.

I don't even think it's a case of being narrow-minded or insufficiently skeptical. I just don't think the general standards of logic in the strip were all that high at the time.

[woweedd]

As far as Miko goes...Her face-reveal involves her asking the Order to surrender, and, when she gets a questioning response, attempting murder, not only against orders, but without checking whether any of the party other then Roy were Evil, particularly considering the sprll’s known failabilty. If she’a a law enforcement officer, she’s bad at it.

[Lacuna Caster]

Of course not; they were being brought to justice. But when Belkar escaped, she saw no way to bring him to justice that didn't involve killing him then and there, since he obviously couldn't be held for trial or execution.
It's kinda warped logic, but not that much more warped than the logic Miko had been using before, and IMHO the pressure Belkar added there justifies the additional warping.
Well, hang on a second. The verdict of the trial was 'not guilty', and while one might disagree with that verdict or point out the various other things the Order were guilty of, I would at least expect Miko to respect that verdict if she went to the trouble of bringing the defendants back alive in the first place. And earlier she says (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0203.html) that "your guilt or innocence, in the absence of an evil alignment, is not for me to determine".


As far as Miko goes...Her face-reveal involves her asking the Order to surrender, and, when she gets a questioning response, attempting murder, not only against orders, but without checking whether any of the party other then Roy were Evil, particularly considering the sprll’s known failabilty. If she’a a law enforcement officer, she’s bad at it.
Again, I don't think it really was against orders (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0174.html), and I don't understand why Miko is being held to much higher standards than Roy, who is quite happy to ambush enemies in their sleep with zero warning.

What do you think would happen if Miko had actually been more thorough in her investigation or probing in her questions about what the Order were doing? If she had, for example, taken the time to cast Detect Evil on the entire party before she attack, she would have known immediately that Belkar was evil and responded to him with lethal force. If she had taken a full description of the Linear Guild, she would have known that Belkar's evil opposite was a deceased kobold and thus not responsible for any recent halfling crimes. The same due diligence that might separate Roy from Thog would also separate V from Drr'zzti, and the latter didn't use explosive runes on irritating servants. Using Discern Lies or Zone of Truth while taking a deposition from her suspects would likely have turned up any number of awkward facts. To the extent that Miko did a less-than-perfect job at police investigation, it's far from clear to me that this worked to the Order's disadvantage.

[Peelee]

Yinsufficiently tactful

Calling Miko insufficiently tactful is like calling the Isla Nublar inhabitants tropical lizards.

[hroþila]

Again, I don't think it really was against orders (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0174.html)
It really was though (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0290.html).

[Lacuna Caster]

It really was though (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0290.html).
Yeah, I'm aware of what the panel says. My point is that this looks like either a lie, a retcon, or a contradiction, especially when nothing else about Shojo's behaviour is especially consistent with wanting the Order alive.

[hroþila]

Yeah, I'm aware of what the panel says. My point is that this looks like either a lie, a retcon, or a contradiction, especially when nothing else about Shojo's behaviour is especially consistent with wanting the Order alive.
Only because you're not willing to entertain the possibility that Miko was at fault there by virtue of being so eager to kill that she distorted her orders, either consciously or subconsciously.

[Lacuna Caster]

Only because you're not willing to entertain the possibility that Miko was at fault there by virtue of being so eager to kill that she distorted her orders, either consciously or subconsciously.
Miko is many things, but a brazen liar is not one of them. I mean, even after the trial scene, she obeys Shojo when she explicitly tells her to back down and not kill the Order, and that's when she's under much more emotional stress. So no, I don't give "Mr. Scruffy says" a whole lot of credence.

[hroþila]

Miko is many things, but a brazen liar is not one of them. I mean, even after the trial scene, she obeys Shojo when she explicitly tells her to back down and not kill the Order, and that's when she's under much more emotional stress. So no, I don't give "Mr. Scruffy says" a whole lot of credence.
She's not a brazen liar, but she's good at deluding herself. Hence the "subconsciously" bit I added. At any rate, you're free to dismiss an explicit piece of the comic that clearly shows Miko being instructed to not kill the Order unless strictly necessary, but then there's not much of a point in arguing if canon goes out of the window.

[Peelee]

Miko is many things, but a brazen liar is not one of them.

Ive often encountered people who, when I corrected what they said, asked if I was calling them a liar. Every time, without fail, they were simply mistaken. They all believed with absolute conviction they were correct, and the only possibility was that I was calling them a liar.

Miko could have heard what she wanted to hear, and believed it completely later when relaying what she thought her mission was all without lying. But you cannot say "that panel is inconvenient for my argument, so I will ignore it" and expect meaningful discussion.

[Lacuna Caster]

Miko could have heard what she wanted to hear, and believed it completely later when relaying what she thought her mission was all without lying. But you cannot say "that panel is inconvenient for my argument, so I will ignore it" and expect meaningful discussion.

She's not a brazen liar, but she's good at deluding herself. Hence the "subconsciously" bit I added. At any rate, you're free to dismiss an explicit piece of the comic that clearly shows Miko being instructed to not kill the Order unless strictly necessary, but then there's not much of a point in arguing if canon goes out of the window.
Well, yes. I have been arguing extensively (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?545494-Questions-about-the-early-strip-and-Sapphire-Guard) that the canon of OOTS basically goes out the window as soon as Eugene was revealed to be the BoPLaG. So, sure, you can certainly argue that post-Eugene Miko is a violent and deluded fanatic, but she effectively occupies a different universe from pre-Eugene Miko, and I don't consider it fair to judge her by the same evidence.

A Shojo who actually wanted the Order alive after talking to Eugene would not give Miko vague directions based on his cat's random whims. He would contact Roy with a sending spell to arrange pickup, teleport O-Chul to provide an escort, and provide a complete description of both the OOTS and LG to eliminate any risk of confusion. So... yeah, I'm not buying this story.

[Peelee]

Well, yes. I have been arguing extensively (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?545494-Questions-about-the-early-strip-and-Sapphire-Guard) that the canon of OOTS basically goes out the window as soon as Eugene was revealed to be the BoPLaG. So, sure, you can certainly argue that post-Eugene Miko is a violent and deluded fanatic, but she effectively occupies a different universe from pre-Eugene Miko, and I don't consider it fair to judge her by the same evidence.

A Shojo who actually wanted the Order alive after talking to Eugene would not give Miko vague directions based on his cat's random whims. He would contact Roy with a sending spell to arrange pickup, teleport O-Chul to provide an escort, and provide a complete description of both the OOTS and LG to eliminate any risk of confusion. So... yeah, I'm not buying this story.

I'm not terribly concerned with what you buy. But if you try to debate against other people, especially if you want them to buy what you're saying, then I'm just letting you know that it's a quest largely doomed to failure once you break out the "that's inconvenient for my argument so let's shelve it" bits.

[hroþila]

As Peelee says, your purchasing habits are at your own discretion. Yes, you've argued that extensively, without convincing many people, but at any rate it is irrelevant. Whatever you think of the quality of the story, the fact remains that Miko had orders not to kill unless strictly necessary.

[Lacuna Caster]

As Peelee says, your purchasing habits are at your own discretion. Yes, you've argued that extensively, without convincing many people, but at any rate it is irrelevant. Whatever you think of the quality of the story, the fact remains that Miko had orders not to kill unless strictly necessary.

I'm not terribly concerned with what you buy. But if you try to debate against other people, especially if you want them to buy what you're saying, then I'm just letting you know that it's a quest largely doomed to failure once you break out the "that's inconvenient for my argument so let's shelve it" bits.
No, I'm just profoundly unclear on why, exactly, we're considering Shojo's word to be in any sense a reliable form of evidence here, from either the watsonian or doylist perspective. Shojo is known to be a liar. I mean, if you can get away with saying "Miko must be twisting Shojo's words", I can just as easily imagine that the scene went down like this:

Shojo: "Actually, Mr Scruffy says you should try hard to bring them back alive."
Miko: "*sigh* As your cat wishes, master. If it is possible."
Shojo: "FOR IMMEDIATE EXECUTION"

Would this behaviour on Shojo's part be kind of deranged and schizoid? Sure. But no more bizarre than... everything else I noted.

[hroþila]

With that logic, you could dismiss almost the entire canon by positing that something happened directly after every scene that completely contradicted or undid what was shown on panel. And no, that wouldn't be just as "bizarre" as those alleged inconsistencies you've brought up.

[Prinygod]

As Peelee says, your purchasing habits are at your own discretion. Yes, you've argued that extensively, without convincing many people, but at any rate it is irrelevant. Whatever you think of the quality of the story, the fact remains that Miko had orders not to kill unless strictly necessary.

I don't agree with Lacuna's retcon theory. Miko's orders were to "try hard" to bring them alive, as pointed out "from shojo's cat". She did ask them to surrender, which could fall with in her orders "try hard". Remember by this point she already knows they destroyed the gate, and had circumstancal evidence of their "misdeeds" plus the detect evil. She followed the letter of her orders but not the spirit. But does this mean she was already on the path to falling? It's hard to say.

[Lacuna Caster]

With that logic, you could dismiss almost the entire canon by positing that something happened directly after every scene that completely contradicted or undid what was shown on panel.
You probably could. But I'm not invested in trying to force consistency between portions of the narrative that basically don't fit together, and I'm already in a position of handwaving vast tracts of canon on that basis.

Early strip Miko isn't a liar, isn't insane, clearly demonstrated fidelity to Shojo's orders even under conditions of much greater stress, and states out loud that her master wanted the Order executed. To the extent that the canon asserts something different, the canon is basically broken.

EDIT:

I don't agree with Lacuna's retcon theory. Miko's orders were to "try hard" to bring them alive, as pointed out "from shojo's cat". She did ask them to surrender, which could fall with in her orders "try hard". Remember by this point she already knows they destroyed the gate, and had circumstancal evidence of their "misdeeds" plus the detect evil. She followed the letter of her orders but not the spirit. But does this mean she was already on the path to falling? It's hard to say.
Oh, I'm in broad agreement that the evidence available to Miko at the time essentially justified her initial efforts to take down the Order (though, interestingly, she only uses nonlethal attacks on Haley, V and Belkar.)

The problem is that- again- she earlier states explicitly that her master wants them dead. I don't see a way to reconcile this with even the letter of Shojo's supposed orders.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I don't agree with Lacuna's retcon theory. Miko's orders were to "try hard" to bring them alive, as pointed out "from shojo's cat". She did ask them to surrender, which could fall with in her orders "try hard". Remember by this point she already knows they destroyed the gate, and had circumstancal evidence of their "misdeeds" plus the detect evil. She followed the letter of her orders but not the spirit. But does this mean she was already on the path to falling? It's hard to say.

A paladin whose response to "Bring in criminals for justice" is "My blades will be bathed in the blood of those responsible", and and employs weasel words such as "if it is possible" when accepting orders to give themselves an out to NOT have to bring people alive if they don't immediately surrender is already well on their way to falling.

Grey Wolf

[hroþila]

There's a super simple way to reconcile all that info, Lacuna, it just reflects badly on Miko so you don't want to accept it. The canon is not the problem here.

[Peelee]

No, I'm just profoundly unclear on why, exactly, we're considering Shojo's word to be in any sense a reliable form of evidence here, from either the watsonian or doylist perspective.

Because it's not in crayon. Easy question with an easy answer.

[Kish]

I think Shojo deserves a share of the blame for telling Miko that the orders to bring the Order back alive came from his cat. (And in general, I find it highly problematic that the Sapphire Guard didn't take steps to remove him as soon as they came to believe their leader was insane.)

But this "that panel never happened, 'cause Miko wouldn't disobey orders" stuff is quite unambiguously Lacuna demonstrating his chutzpah again.

[Lacuna Caster]

A paladin whose response to "Bring in criminals for justice" is "My blades will be bathed in the blood of those responsible", and and employs weasel words such as "if it is possible"...
Sometimes it legitimately isn't possible, but according (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?6106-OOTS-285-The-Discussion-Thread&p=929083&viewfull=1#post929083) to the author, "In #120, she's under the impression that some clearly evil force like a giant demon or something is responsible, so the speech there is mostly grandstanding". I wouldn't make too big a deal of this.

Even if we imagine that Miko is flat-out disobeying Shojo's orders... so what? Disobeying orders isn't evil behaviour, just chaotic, and not particularly hard to justify if the superior in question has successfully convinced you of his own insanity. Whether attacking the Order was good or evil depends strictly on the evidence of their crimes available to Miko at the time.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

(And in general, I find it highly problematic that the Sapphire Guard didn't take steps to remove him as soon as they came to believe their leader was insane.)

I doubt this will ever be explored in the comic, so all we have is speculation and headcanon, which in my case is: there was a push to do so from whatever was left of the old Paladins (the nobility scions we see in Scar), and Hinjo quickly put an end to any such talk, to the best of his ability, because he did not think he was ready for the position, and he certainly wasn't about to let any of the old guard take his uncle's place.

As long as "the cat's" orders where in line with previous expectations, they went along with it. And given that "the cat" was likely ordering perfectly rational orders like "bring the prisoners alive for trial", they were concerned but not alarmed.

Grey Wolf

[Fyraltari]

But didn’t Mr. Scruffy order O-Chul to put three people to secret detention without a trial? Wouldn’t that be a cause for alarm?

[hroþila]

But didn’t Mr. Scruffy order O-Chul to put three people to secret detention without a trial? Wouldn’t that be a cause for alarm?
Undoubtedly. Would it be cause for a "Stage a coup"-level of alarm, though? Because they weren't going to get Hinjo on board – Hinjo wanted to believe Shojo would get better.

Ultimately, rulers that are incapacitated to a greater or lesser extent are an unavoidable fact of life under absolute monarchies. When it happens, their ministers usually just try to limit the harm the monarch can do, unless it gets REALLY bad.

[Lacuna Caster]

I think Shojo deserves a share of the blame for telling Miko that the orders to bring the Order back alive came from his cat. (And in general, I find it highly problematic that the Sapphire Guard didn't take steps to remove him as soon as they came to believe their leader was insane.)

But this "that panel never happened, 'cause Miko wouldn't disobey orders" stuff is...
A reasonable extrapolation from her actually obeying orders (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0285.html)?

And again, never mind that Shojo said that his cat wanted them alive. The larger problem is that Shojo is sitting on top of a vast amount of intelligence on the Order, the Linear Guild and Xykon/RC that he never sees fit to divulge, even when there's no reason to conceal it. Then he sends the wrong person with zero backup to do a job, very very slowly, that could have been accomplished with a sending spell. This is only the tip of the iceberg of crazy that is Shojo's plan.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

But didn’t Mr. Scruffy order O-Chul to put three people to secret detention without a trial? Wouldn’t that be a cause for alarm?

Remind me when was that? Literally the only O-Chul - Mr. Scruffy interaction I can think of is when O-Chul was introduced (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0403.html).

Grey Wolf

[Lacuna Caster]

Remind me when was that? Literally the only O-Chul - Mr. Scruffy interaction I can think of is when O-Chul was introduced (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0403.html).
O-Chul explicitly raises concerns about the illegal detention of prisoners without trial in the very next strip (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0404.html). And then... goes along with it.

[Vinyadan]

(And in general, I find it highly problematic that the Sapphire Guard didn't take steps to remove him as soon as they came to believe their leader was insane.)


Historically, mad kings existed. There are two problems: one is that of having a legal framework to depose them or deprive them of power, and another to have this happen without causing a civil war, or being killed in the process.

In theory, the SG itself could have separated the role of "Master of the Guard" from Lord of the City, and devolved the authority of the Master of the Guard to a deputy until Shojo got well or the City had a fit ruler. The question is whether the right person existed, and whether they could do so: Shojo didn't really go insane, and, before he started playing mad, he probably devised some lawyering trick to force the paladin to keep accepting his orders .

[Peelee]

I can just as easily imagine that the scene went down like this:

Shojo: "Actually, Mr Scruffy says you should try hard to bring them back alive."
Miko: "*sigh* As your cat wishes, master. If it is possible."
Shojo: "FOR IMMEDIATE EXECUTION"

You can if you ignore that she knew they were supposed to be tried, and didn't know what the punishment would be (she claimed there could be only one, which speaks to not having complete knowledge, and also speaks to how she thinks it should work).

[Kish]

Undoubtedly. Would it be cause for a "Stage a coup"-level of alarm, though? Because they weren't going to get Hinjo on board – Hinjo wanted to believe Shojo would get better.

Ultimately, rulers that are incapacitated to a greater or lesser extent are an unavoidable fact of life under absolute monarchies. When it happens, their ministers usually just try to limit the harm the monarch can do, unless it gets REALLY bad.
Real-world monarchs don't have holy warriors who will literally lose their magic powers if they ever do something evil.

(And it also reflects badly on Shojo that he played off something as extreme as "my most powerful paladin casually disregarded orders to bring people back alive in favor of attacking to kill," but that's 1) the opposite of a plot hole, being an early demonstration of the fatal flaw that got Shojo killed, and 2) something Lacuna will never engage with because "more people should have treated Miko like a dangerous loose cannon" is the opposite of the narrative he wants.)

[Prinygod]

A paladin whose response to "Bring in criminals for justice" is "My blades will be bathed in the blood of those responsible", and and employs weasel words such as "if it is possible" when accepting orders to give themselves an out to NOT have to bring people alive if they don't immediately surrender is already well on their way to falling.

Grey Wolf

Any paladin can fall, based on the description of attonement they can fall accedently. I have no doubt had miko successfully killed Roy, she would have fell. Even then paladin has a built in checks and balance, they can fall easily, but attone if they have the will. I am talking about a falling from good, that was the original discussion.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

O-Chul explicitly raises concerns about the illegal detention of prisoners without trial in the very next strip (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0404.html). And then... goes along with it.

OK, so as I suspected that order didn't come from Mr. Scruffy. So it does not apply to Kish's concerns.


Any paladin can fall, based on the description of attonement they can fall accedently. I have no doubt had miko successfully killed Roy, she would have fell. Even then paladin has a built in checks and balance, they can fall easily, but attone if they have the will. I am talking about a falling from good, that was the original discussion.

...

I'm not sure what you are getting at. A Paladin whose first instinct is to murder their quarry is clearly on its way to fall from good. My original answer still applies.

Grey Wolf

[hroþila]

Real-world monarchs don't have holy warriors who will literally lose their magic powers if they ever do something evil.
Granted, but it would seem no paladins were forced to do anything that would result in their fall during Shojo's senility charade, or at least no such incidents are shown or referenced in the comic. It would seem they managed well enough to not give any serious thought to a coup.

[Lacuna Caster]

You can if you ignore that she knew they were supposed to be tried, and didn't know what the punishment would be (she claimed there could be only one, which speaks to not having complete knowledge, and also speaks to how she thinks it should work).
If you're talking about "charged with crimes for which the only possible sentence is death", then she could be referring to the various atrocities committed by the Linear Guild (and, well, Belkar.) But look, this is not complicated: She says out loud that her master wants them executed. There's no way to wriggle around that.


(And it also reflects badly on Shojo that he played off something as extreme as "my most powerful paladin casually disregarded orders to bring people back alive in favor of attacking to kill," but that's 1) the opposite of a plot hole, being an early demonstration of the fatal flaw that got Shojo killed, and 2) something Lacuna will never engage with because "more people should have treated Miko like a dangerous loose cannon" is the opposite of the narrative he wants.)
Miko doesn't have to be a rabid sociopath to be a poor choice for a diplomatic mission, she just has to lack ranks in the diplomacy skill. Which... she does. And you're just... going to ignore everything else I pointed out as problematic about Shojo's plan? Really? Is that what we're doing?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Real-world monarchs don't have holy warriors who will literally lose their magic powers if they ever do something evil.

As has been well established, the pre-O-Chul paladins could get away with a lot of Evil before they fell even before Shojo faked senility. Again: as long as the cat's orders are not substantially different from Shojo's orders, or prior leadership orders (in Scar's days), I'm not sure that the paladins would consider it a serious enough development to go through with a coup, which after all could also cause them to fall.

Grey Wolf

[Lacuna Caster]

As has been well established, the pre-O-Chul paladins could get away with a lot of Evil before they fell even before Shojo faked senility.
It's hard to imagine exactly what kind of atrocity Shojo would have to order that was worse than what the Twelve gave permission for, sure, but at the same time... they could just be taking their orders directly from the Twelve. There's no inherent reason why Shojo would have had to be left in charge if the Gods wanted some other arrangement.


OK, so as I suspected that order didn't come from Mr. Scruffy. So it does not apply to Kish's concerns.
I'm sorry, but how does this make the paladins going along with Shojo's orders less problematic?


I'm not sure what you are getting at. A Paladin whose first instinct is to murder their quarry is clearly on its way to fall from good...
Leaving aside that "blowing up a pillar of reality" is kind of a serious crime, what is the standard for comparison here? A certain LG fighter whose first instinct is to ambush his quarry unawares and slit their throats in their sleep?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

snip

Lacuna, let me be perfectly clear:

I have absolutely no interest in ever talking to you about any topic in which Miko is involved.

Yours,

Grey Wolf

[Ruck]

So, wait, you think "protect my homeland" is completely distinct from "protect the innocent" or "save lives," and that the latter are equivalent to "good for Good's sake"?
The way I see it, "good for Good's sake" is doing whatever is Good, because it is Good and for no other reason—Good as an ideology of its own. Meanwhile, protecting the innocent, saving lives, comforting the needy, etc are focused on achieving desired ends which are good, but not because they're trying to be Good. (There's a reason I've been capitalizing half of my Good's.)

(And as an aside, do you really think a Good motivation, e.g. "protect my family," become not-Good if one of the steps in your plan involves getting money? Or do you not think that "protect my family" is a Good motivation? Neither of those seems right.)

I'm starting to think you think Good is an arbitrary label and not a set of principles.

[Peelee]

If you're talking about "charged with crimes for which the only possible sentence is death", then she could be referring to the various atrocities committed by the Linear Guild (and, well, Belkar.)

Those were things she heard in passing, but certainly not charges. Unless, of course, you would like to say that she was unstable enough even early on to the point of hearing what she wanted to hear and disregarding reality. The flip side, of course, is hearing what she wanted to hear and disregarding reality from Shojo instead of from random people she talked to.

So, ya know, six in one.

[hamishspence]

She says out loud that her master wants them executed.


Which implies strongly that "crimes for which the only possible sentence is death": consists of Destroying The Gate.

Since, contrary to:


If you're talking about "charged with crimes for which the only possible sentence is death", then she could be referring to the various atrocities committed by the Linear Guild (and, well, Belkar.)

Shojo knows nothing about the Linear Guild's actions.

It's also clear that she doesn't quite get the possibility of "trial and possible acquittal". Hence her modified description of of Shojo's orders into "Shojo has decreed their execution".

[Peelee]

Shojo knows nothing about the Linear Guild's actions.
LC is referring to things Miko heard along the way. Which, as I noted, were not charges in any way she should have carried out under her own justification for universal jurisdiction.

[Ruck]

I feel some pity for Miko when I read her story again. Trouble is, I don't feel enough, because she blinds herself to any possibility that she might be wrong, and that leads directly to her fall. O-Chul shows us that a Paladin's greatest strength is humility. She has none.
I feel some pity for Miko because it's possible that under a different set of circumstances, she would have turned out differently. However, she's fully responsible for her own actions, and it's also possible that her trigger-happiness would have always come out, even if she hadn't been orphaned and taken in by Shojo.


Only because you're not willing to entertain the possibility that Miko was at fault there by virtue of being so eager to kill that she distorted her orders, either consciously or subconsciously.


There's a super simple way to reconcile all that info, Lacuna, it just reflects badly on Miko so you don't want to accept it. The canon is not the problem here.

No wonder Lacuna is always exhausted by these conversations he just winds up responding to, when he has to keep inventing explanations that explicitly contradict the text to justify his view of Miko.

[hamishspence]

LC is referring to things Miko heard along the way.

The point I'm trying to make is that Miko's claiming their execution has already been decreed by Shojo.

Thus it doesn't make sense for "charged with crimes for which the only possible sentence is death" to be things she picked up along the way -

unless she was in constant contact with Shojo and she told him about the "Order's actions" (actually Linear Guild's actions) and he told her "they are now sentenced to death"

Which does not fit at all with the existing narrative.

As for


Miko has never lied, to the best of our ability to tell.

it should be said that this statement was made long before we saw Shojo and found out what his actual orders were.

[Prinygod]

Lacuna, let me be perfectly clear:

I have absolutely no interest in ever talking to you about any topic in which Miko is involved.

Yours,

Grey Wolf

"Leaving aside that "blowing up a pillar of reality" is kind of a serious crime, what is the standard for comparison here? A certain LG fighter whose first instinct is to ambush his quarry unawares and slit their throats in their sleep? "

You only don't want to respond becuase they have a point, you already set Roy as a contrast to miko. Is Roy not also on the path to falling from good? Oh wait you already said you don't want to talk to me either, yet you came back all the same. Just admit you have no principals in debate, declaring nonpersonhood as you please.

[Fyraltari]

OK, so as I suspected that order didn't come from Mr. Scruffy. So it does not apply to Kish's concerns
Okay, I misremembered the scene a bit, but that doesn’t affect the underlying point. If the paladins are only tolerating Shojo’s madness because it hasn’t gone far enough to cause him to give orders that they would object to, then him ordering something they object to should be a bigger deal.

[The Aboleth]

"Leaving aside that "blowing up a pillar of reality" is kind of a serious crime, what is the standard for comparison here? A certain LG fighter whose first instinct is to ambush his quarry unawares and slit their throats in their sleep? "

You only don't want to respond becuase they have a point, you already set Roy as a contrast to miko. Is Roy not also on the path to falling from good? Oh wait you already said you don't want to talk to me either, yet you came back all the same. Just admit you have no principals in debate, declaring nonpersonhood as you please.

I think GWc no longer wishes to engage with LC because the latter has admitted to disregarding entire sections of canon. Hard to have a discussion with someone when that person essentially covers their ears and goes "LALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU" whenever they are confronted with in-comic evidence that paints Miko in a bad light.

I might be wrong, though, so GWc feel free to correct me if I have mistaken your intent.

[Ruck]

lYou only don't want to respond becuase they have a point ... Just admit you have no principals in debate, declaring nonpersonhood as you please.

Did you just sign up for this forum yesterday? Because it's incredibly rich, not to mention wildly insulting, to suggest that someone who doesn't want to engage Lacuna on the topic of Miko only chooses so for those reasons.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Okay, I misremembered the scene a bit, but that doesn’t affect the underlying point. If the paladins are only tolerating Shojo’s madness because it hasn’t gone far enough to cause him to give orders that they would object to, then him ordering something they object to should be a bigger deal.

Which is why I explicitly mentioned "out of line with previous orders". O-Chul is trying to reform the paladins from the inside, but that usually requires picking one's battles. If the Paladins do have the legal right to jail people without informing the city authorities (and I can perfectly believe that is a power they'd be granted), from O-Chul's perspective this is just another thing he needs to work on fixing, but it is not an immediate concern that he needs to chose as the hill he'll die on, not when there are bigger issues like the recent collapse of one of the gates.

(There is also quite a bit of early installment weirdness going on, I have to say)


I think GWc no longer wishes to engage with LC because the latter has admitted to disregarding entire sections of canon. Hard to have a discussion with someone when that person essentially covers their ears and goes "LALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU" whenever they are confronted with in-comic evidence that paints Miko in a bad light.

I might be wrong, though, so GWc feel free to correct me if I have mistaken your intent.

Correct

Grey Wolf

[Fyraltari]

Ah, I didn't quite get your meaning.

[Prinygod]

Did you just sign up for this forum yesterday? Because it's incredibly rich, not to mention wildly insulting, to suggest that someone who doesn't want to engage Lacuna on the topic of Miko only chooses so for those reasons.

No I am aware of their stance, I find it shocking, but I am not personally offended by them. I am aware of yours as well, you are on a personal crusade to remind everyone that they are a non-person. Just because others don't comment on it does not mean they didn't see threads. The fact that miko keeps coming up is not their fault, and I think they have a right to participate, despite any disagreements I might have with them. If don't want to engage them or who ever you wish, fine, but don't expect everyone to follow suit.

[Ruck]

No I am aware of their stance, I find it shocking, but I am not personally offended by them. I am aware of yours as well, you are on a personal crusade to remind everyone that they are a non-person.

Maybe you should stop insultingly mischaracterizing people's positions when you respond to them. (You and Lacuna have that in common, anyway.)

[Prinygod]

I think GWc no longer wishes to engage with LC because the latter has admitted to disregarding entire sections of canon. Hard to have a discussion with someone when that person essentially covers their ears and goes "LALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU" whenever they are confronted with in-comic evidence that paints Miko in a bad light.

I might be wrong, though, so GWc feel free to correct me if I have mistaken your intent.

And what does that have to do with this thread? He likes to throw out Ad hominem this or that, like their red cards. But he just did the classic, "I don't have to respond do your point because you are illegitimate" ad hominem attack.

[Prinygod]

Maybe you should stop insultingly mischaracterizing people's positions when you respond to them. (You and Lacuna have that in common, anyway.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_non_grata

[Keltest]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_non_grata

Lacuna has been sufficiently dishonest in previous discussions involving Miko that trying to engage with them on the subject is a waste of time. Presumably, Grey Wolf has better things to do than get pointlessly frustrated trying to have an honest discussion with somebody who isn't interested.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_non_grata

non-person.

You didn't say "persona non grata", you used an antisemtic slur (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonperson#Prison_camps), and claimed I had used it.

Which, by the way, is a much better reason never to talk to you specifically than anything Lacuna has ever done.

Grey Wolf

[The Aboleth]

And what does that have to do with this thread?

Technically very little, but this thread went off the rails a long time ago. I was specifically responding to this (emphasis mine):



You only don't want to respond becuase they have a point, you already set Roy as a contrast to miko. Is Roy not also on the path to falling from good? Oh wait you already said you don't want to talk to me either, yet you came back all the same. Just admit you have no principals in debate, declaring nonpersonhood as you please.

Simply put: I was debunking the bolded assertion, because the assertion was wrong.

[Fyraltari]

You didn't say "persona non grata", you used an antisemtic slur (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonperson#Prison_camps), and claimed I had used it.
Is it really used antisemtically? I only hear it when talking about Stalin's idea of managing human ressources.

[Mightymosy]

You didn't say "persona non grata", you used an antisemtic slur (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonperson#Prison_camps), and claimed I had used it.

Which, by the way, is a much better reason never to talk to you specifically than anything Lacuna has ever done.

Grey Wolf

Careful.....I just looked through the rules because of that PM thing, and I stumbled over an additional limitation: Forbidden topics are also forbidden to link to....

[Prinygod]

Careful.....I just looked through the rules because of that PM thing, and I stumbled over an additional limitation: Forbidden topics are also forbidden to link to....

It's also a smear, it's sad what he would resort too this then actually address the topic or reasonable points

Definition of nonperson

: a person who is regarded as nonexistent: such as
a : unperson
b : one having no social or legal status

per·so·na non gra·ta
/ˌpərˌsōnə ˌnän ˈɡrädə/
noun
an unacceptable or unwelcome person.

Nothing about the aforementioned forbidden topic they are interchangable when not used in legal context

[GreatWyrmGold]

They're both Law enforcement and Good enforcement!
...Alright, that was a good response, if kinda Chaotic.



That's called "Extraordinary Rendition" where I come from, buckaroos. And it's not a Good act to invade another sovereignty without provocation, even if you claim you're protecting your homeland by doing so. That's called "a flimsy excuse".
I wasn't involved in this discussion, Paul. I was talking about a hypothetical soldier in WW2 and whether Motivation X would count as "doing good for Good's sake".



I think Shojo deserves a share of the blame for telling Miko that the orders to bring the Order back alive came from his cat. (And in general, I find it highly problematic that the Sapphire Guard didn't take steps to remove him as soon as they came to believe their leader was insane.)
Soon apparently didn't think to write an "In case the lord of Azure City becomes incapable of performing their duties but has not committed any crimes which would allow him to be lawfully removed from office" clause, leaving the paladins with no steps they could take to remove him. :smalltongue:


But this "that panel never happened, 'cause Miko wouldn't disobey orders" stuff is quite unambiguously Lacuna demonstrating his chutzpah again.
And not their intelligence; Miko makes it pretty clear how she was obeying those orders and why she didn't think she could bring in somebody so obviously evil.



...

I'm not sure what you are getting at. A Paladin whose first instinct is to murder their quarry is clearly on its way to fall from good. My original answer still applies.

Grey Wolf
If I were Prinygod, I'd point out that the operative phrase there is on its way. Miko was on the path to changing alignment since at least the time she met the Order, but that doesn't mean she crossed that threshold before she died. In fact, since she didn't even cross the threshold of "losing paladin powers" until maybe a day or two before she died, and she didn't do anything especially un-Good or un-Lawful during that time (unless you count "following in O-Chul's footsteps at the wrong time"), it seems unlikely that she crossed that threshold at all. Now, if she had survived the throne room explosion, she probably would have drifted to LN sooner or later, but that doesn't mean she had crossed that line before her death.
I'll admit this argument is based on the implicit assumption that you lose your paladin powers before you drift out of LG alignment (barring sudden supernatural shifts in alignment), but that seems like an easy assumption to defend. The paladin's code is called out as being more strict than any alignment's "code" at least a few times, so it stands to reason that you'd have to stick more than a toe out of line to get near the LG/LN boundary.



I'm starting to think you think Good is an arbitrary label and not a set of principles.
It's an arbitrary label applied to a set of principles. "Doing good for Good's sake" is doing good for that label, and is distinct from "Doing good for my homeland's sake" or "Doing good for my family's sake" or even "Doing good for the world's sake". Doing good for Good's sake is, by definition, doing good for the sake of Good.
Since you're trying to avoid answering my questions to you, I can't really explain my position on this matter any better.



"Leaving aside that "blowing up a pillar of reality" is kind of a serious crime, what is the standard for comparison here? A certain LG fighter whose first instinct is to ambush his quarry unawares and slit their throats in their sleep? "

You only don't want to respond becuase they have a point, you already set Roy as a contrast to miko.
Well, aside from the fact that Roy hasn't ever thought about slitting his enemy's throats in their sleep. (As far as I can remember, the closest he's come is pointing this out as basically the only non-work-with-him option he had with Belkar, as something he knew he shouldn't have done.) And the fact that Roy's LG-ness is pretty explicitly shaky, which is why we compare him and Miko in the first place.



Lacuna has been sufficiently dishonest in previous discussions involving Miko that trying to engage with them on the subject is a waste of time. Presumably, Grey Wolf has better things to do than get pointlessly frustrated trying to have an honest discussion with somebody who isn't interested.
And I apparently don't, so...



Well, hang on a second. The verdict of the trial was 'not guilty', and while one might disagree with that verdict or point out the various other things the Order were guilty of, I would at least expect Miko to respect that verdict if she went to the trouble of bringing the defendants back alive in the first place.
How can she respect the verdict if she doesn't know the verdict? She was on the roof when it was declared, and nobody told her the verdict was "Not Guilty" until after she stopped trying to execute Belkar the moment Shojo told her to (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0285.html). And after she threatened holy retribution on the Order, for that matter; if she was ever explicitly told the result of the first trial, it was off-panel.


Well, yes. I have been arguing extensively (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?545494-Questions-about-the-early-strip-and-Sapphire-Guard) that the canon of OOTS basically goes out the window as soon as Eugene was revealed to be the BoPLaG.
I find the counterarguments in that thread far more compelling than your arguments, which seem to be based off of too many assumptions. The assumptions are not, in a vacuum, bad ones, but I don't see enough reason to make assumptions instead of ones that fit the story as told.


No, I'm just profoundly unclear on why, exactly, we're considering Shojo's word to be in any sense a reliable form of evidence here, from either the watsonian or doylist perspective.
No matter who's talking, what a character says at a given moment is excellent evidence for what a character says at that given moment.


Shojo: "Actually, Mr Scruffy says you should try hard to bring them back alive."
Miko: "*sigh* As your cat wishes, master. If it is possible."
Shojo: "FOR IMMEDIATE EXECUTION"

Would this behaviour on Shojo's part be kind of deranged and schizoid? Sure. But no more bizarre than... everything else I noted.
You're wrong on every account. It wouldn't fit with how Shojo's fake senility is portrayed in general, with how Miko treats the orders that were given in that flashback, and with what the "cinematic language" is telling us. Also with how Shojo's tone would need to abruptly change from an appropriately Shojo tone to one that Tarquin would consider too over-the-top.



If you're talking about "charged with crimes for which the only possible sentence is death", then she could be referring to the various atrocities committed by the Linear Guild (and, well, Belkar.) But look, this is not complicated: She says out loud that her master wants them executed. There's no way to wriggle around that.
When? You can't be referring to the "My blades shall be bathed in their blood" line, because that order is immediately contradicted by Shojo('s cat)'s next order.

[hamishspence]

Well, aside from the fact that Roy hasn't ever thought about slitting his enemy's throats in their sleep.

I believe this was what was being referred to:

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0011.html

[Jasdoif]

The point I'm trying to make is that Miko's claiming their execution has already been decreed by Shojo.

Thus it doesn't make sense for "charged with crimes for which the only possible sentence is death" to be things she picked up along the way....Would it make sense for her to be interpreting Shojo's intentions? I mean, if she believes he's more than a little loopy, following his exact words without question would be just as crazy....The accuracy of her interpretation is highly questionable, at best; but with Shojo actively deceiving her, I'm not sure how much of that is fair to pin on Miko.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I'd point out that the operative phrase there is on its way

Yes? That's what I am addressing.

But does this mean she was already on the path to falling?

In my posts I laid out the reasons why, IMnpHO, I think that she was indeed "on the path to falling".

Not that the conversation will go anywhere, unless you want to counter what I said as a defence that, yes, I do believe she was on the path before she met the Order.

Grey Wolf

[Kish]

Soon apparently didn't think to write an "In case the lord of Azure City becomes incapable of performing their duties but has not committed any crimes which would allow him to be lawfully removed from office" clause, leaving the paladins with no steps they could take to remove him. :smalltongue:
That would effectively hobble any order of Hellknights.

But it shouldn't have been nearly as effective against an order of paladins, who are Good first and Lawful distinctly second. And if their insane leader was truly consistently giving non-insane orders (and since his orders regularly included sending a loose cannon like Miko on missions, I think that's a "not actually" already), it would say something about their Intelligence scores that none of them ever went, "Wait a minute here..."

[Darth Paul]

Well, yes. I have been arguing extensively (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?545494-Questions-about-the-early-strip-and-Sapphire-Guard) that the canon of OOTS basically goes out the window as soon as Eugene was revealed to be the BoPLaG. So, sure, you can certainly argue that post-Eugene Miko is a violent and deluded fanatic, but she effectively occupies a different universe from pre-Eugene Miko, and I don't consider it fair to judge her by the same evidence.

A Shojo who actually wanted the Order alive after talking to Eugene would not give Miko vague directions based on his cat's random whims. He would contact Roy with a sending spell to arrange pickup, teleport O-Chul to provide an escort, and provide a complete description of both the OOTS and LG to eliminate any risk of confusion. So... yeah, I'm not buying this story.
Except that that IS the canon. Eugene WAS the "Being of Light and Good".

Shojo explained clearly to Roy that he wanted the Order alive, but wasn't sure they would come. So he needed to arrest them. He also needed to have the smallest number of people involved. The gates are supposed to be a SECRET, after all.


No, I'm just profoundly unclear on why, exactly, we're considering Shojo's word to be in any sense a reliable form of evidence here, from either the watsonian or doylist perspective. Shojo is known to be a liar. I mean, if you can get away with saying "Miko must be twisting Shojo's words", I can just as easily imagine that the scene went down like this:

Shojo: "Actually, Mr Scruffy says you should try hard to bring them back alive."
Miko: "*sigh* As your cat wishes, master. If it is possible."
Shojo: "FOR IMMEDIATE EXECUTION"

Would this behaviour on Shojo's part be kind of deranged and schizoid? Sure. But no more bizarre than... everything else I noted.
At some point, you have to take characters at their word. I take Miko at her word that she believes Shojo ordered her to execute the OotS, and I take Shojo at his word when he recounts that she heard what she wanted to hear. Imagining how the events happened, doesn't change how they happened. I can imagine the Order attacking Miko first, without provocation, but that's not how it went down. What happened there was:

:miko: You're under arrest!
:roy: What?
:miko: You question me? DIE!!!

In broad strokes, anyway.

[Keltest]

That would effectively hobble any order of Hellknights.

But it shouldn't have been nearly as effective against an order of paladins, who are Good first and Lawful distinctly second. And if their insane leader was truly consistently giving non-insane orders (and since his orders regularly included sending a loose cannon like Miko on missions, I think that's a "not actually" already), it would say something about their Intelligence scores that none of them ever went, "Wait a minute here..."

My take was that Shojo was being very careful to balance his perceived randomness with actual competence specifically to avoid being dethroned by the paladins. Had he started making decrees like "dismantle the wall around the city" or "set fire to the tavern" the Guard would almost certainly have removed him from, at the least, their own power structure. But as long as his nonsense was limited to "clean the litterbox" he was not a sufficient problem to outweigh his good leadership.

[woweedd]

Except that that IS the canon. Eugene WAS the "Being of Light and Good".

Shojo explained clearly to Roy that he wanted the Order alive, but wasn't sure they would come. So he needed to arrest them. He also needed to have the smallest number of people involved. The gates are supposed to be a SECRET, after all.


At some point, you have to take characters at their word. I take Miko at her word that she believes Shojo ordered her to execute the OotS, and I take Shojo at his word when he recounts that she heard what she wanted to hear. Imagining how the events happened, doesn't change how they happened. I can imagine the Order attacking Miko first, without provocation, but that's not how it went down. What happened there was:

:miko: You're under arrest!
:roy: What?
:miko: You question me? DIE!!!

In broad strokes, anyway.
Well, technically Lacuna's theory is as valid as any other...In that OOTS is fiction and, thus, every single thing about it is equally made up. That said, if Lacuna wants to talk about the story we have, rather then whatever weird contradictory AU they've dreamed up, they need to accept the single authority of the subject. Hint: His name isn't Lacuna.

[Prinygod]

Yes? That's what I am addressing.


In my posts I laid out the reasons why, IMnpHO, I think that she was indeed "on the path to falling".

Not that the conversation will go anywhere, unless you want to counter what I said as a defence that, yes, I do believe she was on the path before she met the Order.

Grey Wolf

Challenging your beliefs, is not a task I am interested in. So I will leave it at that.

[Darth Paul]

Well, technically Lacuna's theory is as valid as any other...In that OOTS is fiction and, thus, every single thing about it is equally made up. That said, if Lacuna wants to talk about the story we have, rather then whatever weird contradictory AU they've dreamed up, they need to accept the single authority of the subject. Hint: His name isn't Lacuna.

Right... I think I said something like that.

The first version of the scene, in which we had partial information, was Miko (an unknown figure at that time) promising to bathe her blades in the OotS's blood. We then received further information, which was the full context of the scene: Miko giving her "blood" promise, and Shojo (via his cat) instructing her to try and arrest them instead. Now, if a further flashback eventually were published which agreed with Lacuna's scenario, I'd have no choice but to accept it; but currently, canon stands as it is.

We also have in that strip the full context of why Shojo follows what Lacuna calls an obtuse plan: He can't simply enlist the Order as agents, so he can't use a Sending spell to tell them he needs to bring them to Azure City. He has to invoke charges because he's technically bound by Soon's oath not to interfere with the other Gates. But the OotS are not. They're exactly what he needed. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0290.html) And that's why he doesn't just employ them openly; doing so would violate the oath and he really would jeopardize his position. It doesn't make sense that he would lie to his own secret agents about why he needs them to preserve the secret. Is he telling Roy everything he knows about everything? Certainly not... but what he is telling him, I accept as true.

[Bacon Elemental]

All alignment threads end up as Miko alignment threads, and all Miko alignment threads end up as Miko Quibbling threads.

Didnt someone recently fish out a Giant quote that explained precisely and unambigiously why Miko responded to "the redmountain gate is rip" with "I'll destroy them!"? It was something like "Miko thought the culprit was a big evil monster when she said that, not a bunch of midlevel Goodish adventurers."

Of all the Miko things to argue about, "Why did she say she was going to kill the order" is an odd choice.

[hamishspence]

Didnt someone recently fish out a Giant quote that explained precisely and unambigiously why Miko responded to "the redmountain gate is rip" with "I'll destroy them!"? It was something like "Miko thought the culprit was a big evil monster when she said that, not a bunch of midlevel Goodish adventurers."

Of all the Miko things to argue about, "Why did she say she was going to kill the order" is an odd choice.

The quote in question, around strip 285:


In #120, she's under the impression that some clearly evil force like a giant demon or something is responsible, so the speech there is mostly grandstanding. Once she sees Durkon explains they are not evil, the bloodlust backs away. She doesn't like them, but she doesn't consider killing them and brings them back to trial. Belkar and the rest have now brought it back, and pushed it to the point of her wanting to kill Good and Neutral characters. She's been pushed beyond what had been a line she didn't cross.

For the record, by the way, Miko's final speech is not swearing revenge; it's more like promising that karma will come back and punish them, and hoping she gets to be there. As in, "I hope you all get found guilty of something and I get to be the one to execute you," not, "I'm going to kill you no matter what happens."