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GlassMouse89 β Redemption
Published: 2011-12-17 01:10:39 +0000 UTC; Views: 989; Favourites: 18; Downloads: 3
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Description
FINALLY got around to drawing something DA-worthy again!This is Miko from Order of the Stick by Rich Burlew, from this particular comic, [link] , because it was an awesome moment, and because Miko doesn't get much fanart these days.
Comments and crits are - as always - very appreciated!
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Comments: 27
Awesome piece! So much depth here. The lighting really gives a feel for the significance of the moment, and Miko looks great! But I still think the foul shrew deserves an Explosive Runes to the face.
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Whoa, thanks a lot for the detailed comment <3
Not sure who "the foul shrew" is in this context, but I agree... A few people could use that, haha.
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V refers to Miko as "foul shrew" waaay early on. [link]
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Obviously, I'm not well-versed enough in OoTS quotes
I don't really subscribe to the Miko love/hate thing. But I agree that she needed a wake-up call of some form other than "I screw up, NOW I see the light". Because that was a pretty inconvenient way to go about it.
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That's what her final encounter with Soon is. Remember what she says to Roy about a paladin compromising? Her last words are a compromise.
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i personally find miko a bit too.....bigot and i have played a PALADIN myself!! anyway that moment was epic but a bit too harsh, i mean they were about to kill xykon for good....
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Haha, yeah she's every group's worst paladin nightmare. I've played with a very Miko-ish guy myself, and it was... let's just say I feel for the order.
As a character, though, I liked her a lot. She was interesting
Thanks a lot for both the fave and the comment!
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u r welcome and btw "SMITE EVIL!!" XD
god i loved when she tried to "scan" belkar XD
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"Stop oppressing my culture!"
He really does get the best lines
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after all, he's a sexy shoeless god of war XD
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"YOU KILLED THE WACKY OLD DUDE WITH THE CAT ?!?!?!?
I love this pic, fantastic moment well captured
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Haha! I LIKED that guy! He made fun of Roy right to his face!
Thanks for the kind words, and the fave. I'm glad I could do it some justice :3
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I never really liked Miko...she was funny to read, but I didn't really feel her character was that well fleshed out. a lot of people have told me otherwise, I should read her arc again
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Essentially, Miko's the inverse to Redcloak: while Redcloak did horrible things (killing family members, executing innocents, that whole business with Lirian or the Resistance), he does it for seemingly good reasons: justice for his dead tribe and equality for the goblins. Miko, on the other hand, was generally doing good things (helping peasants, hunting down dangerous fugitives, battling liches and evil clerics), but her motive for doing so was entirely to protect her own ego. In the absence of any real friends or role models, her worldview became almost entirely self-centered. She upheld the Code because she thought it made her better than other people, not because it was the right thing to do.
(Truth be told, I've always had a theory that Redcloak's ending is getting killed, and then waking up in the afterlife to see Miko, riding Windstriker and holding a sword to his throat. Bad for good reasons and good for bad reasons can't be that far from each other.)
And that was fine, or at least workable, until Shojo's under-the-table deals were revealed. From then on, she stopped caring about the Guard and the Code, because they now intersected with that personal image she had of herself as infallable. If Shojo made a mistake, Miko reasons, then Shojo must be evil. If Shojo is evil, then the Guard must be evil. I am not evil. Therefore, I am not in the Guard.
From then on, her fall accelerates: Hinjo denies her, he's evil, because she's good and she can't be wrong. The Gods deny her, and her assumption is that it's a test, because it would mean denting her all-important ego with a failure. She gets put in prison - look, a tiny crack in one bar! The Gods must favor her!
Pre-Fall Miko is also a bit like Belkar, ironically. Why does the Order tolerate Belkar? Because he hasn't done anything THAT bad, yet, and if they keep him pointed the right way, he'll do more good than harm. Miko was that to a factor of ten: while Belkar's merely a good extra body, Miko was their strongest fighter by far, and a blackguard Miko was about the worst possible outcome.
And like her nemesis, Miko was never really a good person. She was just anti-bad, which, to keep herself from admitting an error, became anti-chaos, which became anti-Belkar, which became anti-Order of the Stick, which became anti-Shojo, which became anti-Sapphire Guard. By the end of that slippery slope, she's long past fallen.
It's only her final encounter with Soon that lets her finally accept that she was an awful person, and that she doomed the entire world through her reckless egotism. And when it does happen, her only response is to hope for a decent afterlife.
And it's her response that really gets to me, because it's not her usual deluded ranting about murdering everyone who ever slighted her. What did she say to Roy, all that time ago, "A paladin never compromises?" Her last words are a compromise: "I can live with that."
She finally figured it out - nobody's perfect, and sometimes you need to take the good with the bad. It was just too late, and now, having burned all her bridges and destroyed her body, she's never coming back. There's the tragedy in Miko: someone who tried to be exceptional her whole life, but couldn't manage it because she never learned to be decent.
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A lot of Miko's motivations and feelings need to be found in certain small segments of her angry rants. Especially here: [link]
When rereading, try to hear the delusion of "I'm special, I'm chosen!" all the way through, and mix it with the loyalty and affection she feels for Shojo, the only family she knows.
I imagine her as a scared and unpopular little girl who latched on to both Shojo and the delusion early on to cope, which made her harder to deal with and more lonely, which made her escape further, which made her harder to... you get the idea. The delusion is pretty well established, while the affection for Shojo can be seen in the above link, and in the smaller things, like her buying him a Dwarven souvenir earlier.
I can respect if that doesn't make her interesting to you, but to me, those realizations gave her character an element of depth and heartbreak that made her really interesting... and more than the "houlier-than-thou" bully that she presents to the world (and that the Order sees her as).
And I'm sorry if you've heard all this a thousand times before
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nope I haven't that was very interesting.
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Yesss en af mine yndlingsscener <3 Jeg kan godt lide designet af hendes rustning, og effekten hvor safiren gΓ₯r i stykker er enormt flot.
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Tusind tak, isΓ¦r for de meget specifikke ting. Altid dejligt at fΓ₯ noget konkret peget ud :3
Og jeg tænkte nok, det var blandt dine yndlings! Kan man lide Miko, er det obligatorisk
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Poor Miko, I wonder if we'll ever see her again.
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Oh, and thanks for the comment and fave :3 (got a little carried away there, haha)
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I hope we will. I love her as a character (I'm pretty apathetic towards the whole "she's evil incarnate!"/"she's a poor, misunderstood angel" argument, though. Her ambigiouty is what makes her interesting ^^ ).
But Rich mentioned in the book that she'll show up on-and-off through the series' run, so... One can hope?
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that is really cool!
one of my fav scenes from one of my fav webcomics.
what other webcomics do you follow?
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Um... Somewhere around 40 different ones, but my current favourites are Gunnerkrigg Court, Drowtales, GWS, Pictures of You, Widdershins, Delilah Dirk and... well, it changes all the time. Strangely, I'm not too big on non-OoTS D&D comics because at some point I felt I'd heard all the jokes, and my interest kind of petered out.
Do you have any webcomics to recommend?
And thanks for the nice words :3
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you have a lot of comics i like in there!
um. you know what, i am just going to give you a massive dump of links.[link]
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here are a few
i use google reader to keep track of them
.....
if you want more just ask, bc i got more
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Hahaha, wow! I'm gonna start trawling through those now that I'm on Holiday vacation. There ought to be something that catches my interest
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