OOTS #1189 - The Discussion Thread

[Grey Watcher]

Indeed. That was always my guess until that strip came out, at which point a started to wonder.

I still think Arcadia. "The needs of the many..." caption is a readily identifiable pop-culture quote that fits closely with that planes ethos, but it's not like it's the only way to manifest the "rides the line between Lawful Good and Lawful Neutral" thing that is Arcadia.

And if nothing else, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" is essentially "there is only one right path," with some more specifics added on. It's utilitarianism in a nutshell, including the attendant assumptions that A) more people is more important than fewer people and B) beneficial outcomes are more desirable than detrimental ones. In other words, there's only one right path, defined as the course of action which provides the largest net benefit, with quantity of people given the most weight.

Plus, for all of Miko's strident unpleasantness, her dogged opposition to the protagonists, and her spectacularly poor judgement in the last day or two of her life, she was always striving to do the right thing. Even her biggest failure, which prompted the gods themselves to strike her with a literal bolt of judgement from the heavens, was an attempt to protect her homeland from nefarious influence. Her intentions were noble and righteous, but in her haste and arrogance, she appointed herself judge, jury, and executioner and thus blinded herself to the wrongness of her actions.

Based on everything I've ever read regarding Planescape, Arcadia seems to run on the idea "if you set up the rules properly, beneficence will arise naturally from obedience, so the key thing is to create the right rules and enforce them properly." Which is Miko to a T.[SIZE=1] (Bytopia, by contrast, says that if you can persuade everyone to act with good intentions and empathy, order will naturally arise. Celestia takes the view that the two reinforce each other and therefore must both be actively attended to.)

(And as a final aside, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" is not a concept that the Great Wheel handles terribly well, since the Evil planes are more of the mustache-twirling, fully-aware-of-their-own-wickedness types. So someone like Miko, characterized by lofty aims ruined via terrible execution (no pun intended), doesn't fit anywhere very neatly.)

I ship it.

If a pairing comes along, you must ship it.