Kickstarter Discussion Thread - How the Paladin Got His Scar (SPOILERS!)

[Lacuna Caster]

Taken lessons from Miko in Jumping to Conclusions? When Dorukans castle blew up all the creatures therein got out safe. There's author confirmation of that. Sure, it came much later when asked about this and he decided he didn't want all those creatures on Elan's conscience.

Yeah, that's like saying Belkar shouldn't feel bad about killing dozens of people in a barroom brawl, because one can imagine some generous stranger off-panel raised them all from the dead.

(A reasonable argument would be "look, the early strip was mostly just a silly gag-a-day exercise, don't take it too seriously". But that apparently does not stop people taking everything that came out of Miko's mouth in deadly earnest in highly selective ways.)

The people who got "How the Paladin Got His Scar" backed the Kickstarter and read the book knowing it was going to be about O-Chul.

You think Miko is good and should have redeemed herself? Bully for you, even if the latter is simply beyond her displayed capabilities. Nothing stops you from writing that story, in your head or on paper. But since this story is NOT the story of Miko, the idea that the actual story should have been put on hold and told the Miko story you wanted would somehow "saved [Rich Burlew] a certain amount of stress and overhead" is ludicrous.

I'm not saying that the O-Chul .pdf should specifically have been replaced with one about Miko's redemption- clearly, by the time of the kickstarter, that ship had pretty much sailed. Nor am I saying that the main plotline should've been centred on her, and I'll freely admit that the hypothetical alt-version of the character I'm talking about is essentially a different person.

I'm just saying- at whatever indeterminate point between strips 150 and ~400 the author actually sat down and decided to make Miko going nuts the lynchpin of his subsequent storyline... that might have been a good time to reflect on how that was going to be really hard to write convincingly and would probably result in massive fan backlash and possibly sends a really awkward message when you contrast with other paladins in the same setting.

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