I dont agree with Rich.

[David Argall]

That isn't the definition of a failed character.

So what is the definition?
A problem here may be that you are confusing a sign of a failed character with the definition. A change to the character, or story, can be a sign something was wrong. But an unchanged character is fully capable of being a failure too.

Or are all authors failed storytellers because a book is NEVER one original version: the original vision has NEVER been realised (apart from such weighty classics as "The Hungry Caterpillar" and "The Cat In The Hat" or "See Spot Run").

Well, except in the sense that nothing mortal can ever be perfect, the original vision has been realized a great many times. [Not having that much access to the original vision, I can't say how successful the examples are in achieving it, but "See Spot Run" drew widespread criticism, and can be judged a failure under many definitions, the notable exception being selling books to schoolboards.]
One quite famous example of a failed successful book would be Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which is still required reading [possibly for the standard reason that nobody would read it otherwise], but about which the author lamented "I aimed for the heart and hit the stomach."
A tale we would be hard put to call a failure would be "The Lady or the Tiger", which can still inspire debate, and which allowed the author to dine out for the rest of his life as he refused to reveal the ending.

Essentially, the text you are using as your source for why Miko was a failed character only includes half the story, on purpose, because he couldn't reveal more at the time. The author has come here and told you that you are interpreting this incorrectly, and yet still, you argue it!

No, I have merely corrected a misunderstanding of the definition of a failed character, not challenged or corrected the writer on any point.

Is it so difficult to admit, in this one situation, that you didn't have all the facts and therefore came to the wrong conclusion?

I prefer not to take such an out if I can avoid it.
To a minor extent I can. The writer does not deny his admission of failure with Miko. He merely classifies it as a minor failing on a minor part of her, getting an A instead of that A+ [tho it is worth arguing that as a result of the failing, he finds a better continuation and thus changes from A to A+.] It's a position with considerable justice. Once we posit the affair was to be brief, it is hard to assign much weight to it.
So why was I wrong about the intent of the length of the liason? One reason would be that brief romantic episodes are generally the province of characters who are only briefly there. The girl usually vanishes with the breakup. When she doesn't, it is often a sign she will be part of a continuing romance, which is very frequently a quite rocky one, and which can be very good comedy. [Note here that we had a great deal more fun with Haley-Elan than with Roy-Celia and precisely because it was more difficult for the characters to get into bed. Roy-Miko, we can thus see, had the potential to be fantastic.]
The use of "recurring" didn't help. While that includes characters that merely appear in a later scene, it is easy to think this means a later book, which fits in nicely with a continuing romance.
But I suppose it comes down to that I would have liked such a romance, and still deem it the superior continuation. But given the rather limited finances I supply to the strip, I suspect that is not a very powerful argument.

[neriana]

The writer does not deny his admission of failure with Miko.

What? Rich didn't fail with Miko. He did not admit he failed with Miko, because he didn't fail with Miko. He did what he always intended to do with her. If he'd wanted a romance between Roy and Miko, he would have written one. Characters don't actually have wills of their own, you know.

[Remirach]

But I suppose it comes down to that I would have liked such a romance, and still deem it the superior continuation.

Which is again the argument of Harry/Hermione shippers.

[David Argall]

What? Rich didn't fail with Miko. He did not admit he failed with Miko, because he didn't fail with Miko. He did what he always intended to do with her. If he'd wanted a romance between Roy and Miko, he would have written one. Characters don't actually have wills of their own, you know.

But he did want a romance, or rather a romance scene, and was unable to produce it. Definite failure. His explanation is that the failure was a minor one, of little importance in the total view of the character [and it quite possibly improved the character and story as a result.]

Which is again the argument of Harry/Hermione shippers.

It also seems to be, in reverse, the argument of the anti-Miko/Roy shippers.

[Remirach]

It also seems to be, in reverse, the argument of the anti-Miko/Roy shippers.

Not really, they aren't arguing that their interpretation of things would have been the "superior continuation." I brought up H and H in part because it's an area in which I tend to empathize with you, and you're basically making the same kind of spectacle of yourself that I saw fans of the H/Hr pairing do back when book 6 came out. It was a pretty damn embarrassing time to be a shipper, let me tell you. Your comment about the limited finances you provide to the comic smacks heavily of the people who actually tried to petition the author to change what she'd been intending to do from day one. It's quite one thing to wish something had happened and another to go on about how things are a "failure" because something you specifically wanted didn't happen.

[Eric]

So you believed Rich when he said "This was meant to be a romance" in a note in the cartoon but insist he's lying when he says that Miko was always supposed to fall because of her irrational zeal?

You're only reason for connecting "dialogue came out ruder than I expected" to "we were supposed to laugh at her pratfalls not hate her and wish her harm" was "well, it wasn't said it WASN'T that way".

[Scrubbed]

[Selene]

Thor's Lightning would come in handy about now.

Also, I thought this was fun: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0313.html

[David Argall]

Not really, they aren't arguing that their interpretation of things would have been the "superior continuation."

I'm too lazy to look examples up, but do you really want to contend that the anti-Miko crowd was not using all sorts of terms, such as dumb, silly, etc, that amount to saying "superior continuation"? [or more technically saying that any continuation that implied a long term relationship was inferior?]

It's quite one thing to wish something had happened and another to go on about how things are a "failure" because something you specifically wanted didn't happen.

No such claim has been made. My claims of failure have been based on author intent [not always correctly understood of course], not on my preferences.

So you believed Rich when he said "This was meant to be a romance" in a note in the cartoon but insist he's lying when he says that Miko was always supposed to fall because of her irrational zeal?

Now where do I say that?
[On a somewhat different point, where is that definition of "failed character", I asked you to supply?]

You're only reason for connecting "dialogue came out ruder than I expected" to "we were supposed to laugh at her pratfalls not hate her and wish her harm" was "well, it wasn't said it WASN'T that way".

Please supply some supporting arguments for your logic[?]. While one can argue that there is not a tight fit between A & B and thus there is room for alternate conclusions, A does support B here, and thus is a good deal more than merely saying there is nothing against it.
But to add something for it, consider 464. That is to be a tragic moment. We are to feel sorry for Miko. She is even given a silly "see my horse" line to invoke sympathy.
Now consider how much harder it is to invoke that sympathy if we don't enter the scene with sympathy. It just works so much better if we go in saying "Maybe she deserved it, but it's still too bad."
Now our story is heavily scripted, and so Miko should be written for sympathy right from the start. And this was what was attempted.

[lord of kobolds]

Okay, I think we should get back to the original topic here.
I agree with Rich that he should not be in the same category as Alan Moore, but only to the extent that the categories are flawed. There should be seperate awards for comedy, action, and drama. There is really no way to compare OotS with The Black Dossier. They are both trying to entertain the reader, but in drastically different ways. That is like comparing Shakespeare to a Broadway Musical.

[David Argall]

That is like comparing Shakespeare to a Broadway Musical.

A substantial amount of Shakespeare was the 1600 equivalent of a Broadway musical.

[Teron]

But he did want a romance, or rather a romance scene, and was unable to produce it. Definite failure. His explanation is that the failure was a minor one, of little importance in the total view of the character [and it quite possibly improved the character and story as a result.]

You're just making **** up. Mr. Burlew said, and I quote:

There was never an intention for there to be a relationship with Roy, merely a few clumsy attempts on Roy's part to start one, followed by a rebuff and the Order's capture.

Emphasis mine, in an attempt to overcome your selective reading skills.

[The Boyce]

There is no such thing as a failed character. This whole argument seems to stem from you saying: "Our writer is unable to make Miko really work as a character."

This statement, while I can not say it is wrong as it is an opinion not a fact, it seems as close to wrong as an opinion can be. Your arguments for this appear to have two main basis-in-plural-form.

1. That people both loved and hated Miko while she was supposed to be generally liked.

2. The whole no romantic comedy thing.

2 has been dealt with by the Giant himself so I think needs no further consideration. Instead we must look at 1.

If we assume that if anyone views a character in a light different than what may be the author's intention then almost all characters ever written could be considered to have failed. Because there will always be people who look at things differently than the author expected.

For instance let's take the movie Bambi. I think it's generally accepted that the hunter who shot Bambi's mother is a bad person. I'm sure there are plenty of hunters who find nothing wrong with the shooter. Does this make him a failed character? No.

Let's consider Draco Malfoy next, because why not. He appears as an antagonist throughout most of the series and as such it can be assumed that he is supposed to be disliked, however given the number of people who were fan(all-inclusive gender term)s that such was not the case.Does this mean he failed as a character. I submit to you the hypothesis of no.

[David Argall]

There is no such thing as a failed character.

Flatly nonsense. We can debate whether and how much Miko was a failed character, but the category quite obviously exists.

A character in a work of fiction is a message(s) to the viewer, and like any other type of message can fail to get thru for any number of reasons. The author might be wanting to say "X is not a crime", but if his readers end up cheering the execution of the hero for doing that crime, the character has clearly failed to convey the message in a convincing manner. There are all sorts of ways a character can fail, but fail they do and literature is full of cases.

1. That people both loved and hated Miko while she was supposed to be generally liked.

If we assume that if anyone views a character in a light different than what may be the author's intention then almost all characters ever written could be considered to have failed. Because there will always be people who look at things differently than the author expected.

Such is the routine burden of mortality. But it does not prevent us from saying, with reasonable accuracy, that X fails and Y succeeds.
And since the character is a message, disagreement about what that message was is a sign of a failed character. The more bitter and wide the disagreement, the more we speak of a failed character.

For instance let's take the movie Bambi. I think it's generally accepted that the hunter who shot Bambi's mother is a bad person.

It's been a good 50 years since I saw it, but I don't believe we ever see that person, or any other humans. In effect, he is not a person at all, but simply a threat or menace. To call him evil is to call a storm or flood evil.

I'm sure there are plenty of hunters who find nothing wrong with the shooter. Does this make him a failed character? No.

He is not a failed character because he delivers his message, of being a threat that must be evaded.

Let's consider Draco Malfoy next, because why not. He appears as an antagonist throughout most of the series and as such it can be assumed that he is supposed to be disliked, however given the number of people who were fan(all-inclusive gender term)s that such was not the case.Does this mean he failed as a character. I submit to you the hypothesis of no.

A hypothesis needs proof. It may not be stated and left there. So how is Draco a successful character? And why would he not be deemed more successful if people were not arguing over him?

Now my knowledge of the Harry Potter books is 2nd or 3rd hand, and limited, but there are several grounds for deeming Draco a failure. Notably the very fact that some people like him, despite the author's intent to make him entirely unlikable. [She blames the movie star for this.] And I have run into a couple of reviews that labeled him her least successful major character.

Quote:
Originally Posted by David Argall
But he did want a romance, or rather a romance scene, and was unable to produce it. Definite failure. His explanation is that the failure was a minor one, of little importance in the total view of the character [and it quite possibly improved the character and story as a result.]

You're just making **** up. Mr. Burlew said, and I quote:

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Giant
There was never an intention for there to be a relationship with Roy, merely a few clumsy attempts on Roy's part to start one, followed by a rebuff and the Order's capture.

Emphasis mine, in an attempt to overcome your selective reading skills.

You might want to make some effort to overcome my limited understanding of your claim.
Now it would seem that you have in mind something like because there was to be no relationship, there was no romance. But this is clearly false. The romance was to have been nipped in the bud and a total failure, but the plan was that there was to be a romance scene. It just would not come to a longer term relationship.
I see no inconsistency between the writer's statement and mine.

[VanBuren]

For the record, I loved reading the Great Gatsby.

[NerfTW]

Why do I keep taking Mr. Argall off my ignore list?

[PaladinFreak]

You might want to make some effort to overcome my limited understanding of your claim.
Now it would seem that you have in mind something like because there was to be no relationship, there was no romance. But this is clearly false. The romance was to have been nipped in the bud and a total failure, but the plan was that there was to be a romance scene. It just would not come to a longer term relationship.
I see no inconsistency between the writer's statement and mine.

No. As I read the authors qoute, there was no intention of there being, as you put it, "A romance scene." As I read it, Mr. Burlew was categorically denying that there had ever been any intention for any sort of actual romance.

Everything from the point where Miko drags the Order to Azure City in chains in #251 is more-or-less exactly what was always going to happen, with only some tone changed. ... ... There was never an intention for there to be a relationship with Roy, merely a few clumsy attempts on Roy's part to start one, followed by a rebuff and the Order's capture.

To me, this does not imply any romantic scenes intended. And on top of this, arguing that the character is a failure because the tone of the original sequence was intended to be slightly different is blatently irrational.

You seem to be misunderstanding what a failed character is. It is not one that has merely changed from what was originally planned, but by failing to achieve the purposes the character has in mind for the character. Thus we can talk of a failure of Miko when our writer is unable to get the desired tone.

This does not make sense to me. You repeatedly ask another person to define "Failed Character" when you define it yourself not a page earlier.

On another note, under the definition of "Failed Character" you gave, Miko is not a failed character at all. Miko was not even changed from her original purpose.
I guess you could argue that the author failed to get the originally desired tone, but the author himself has specifically stated that the "Failure" (if you wish to describe it as such) was insignificant even to the development of Miko herself.
I guess that if you consider that to be the failure of a character, then yes, Miko is a failed character. However, if that is indeed what defines a failed character, than most every character ever created is a failure.

If you, in the light of these statements by the author (and your own definitions of failure) still consider Miko as such, then this argument has passed the point of usefulness.

[David Argall]

No. As I read the authors qoute, there was no intention of there being, as you put it, "A romance scene." As I read it, Mr. Burlew was categorically denying that there had ever been any intention for any sort of actual romance.

NCPB

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"Originally the inn sequence was conceived as light romantic comedy." "So instead of the inn sequence being the story of how Roy tried to woo Miko and failed..." Etc. So yes, the plan was for a romantic scene. The recent posting merely tells us the planned outcome of that scene, which was the failure of Roy's attempt at romance.

arguing that the character is a failure because the tone of the original sequence was intended to be slightly different is blatently irrational.

Now the fact that Miko was planned to exit at 464 does make it hard to call her a complete failure. However, there are still points to criticize her about. A small change of tone can be a major difference. Such we can see with Miko. We see her as annoying, but sympathetic, her death becomes tragic. We see her as annoying and not sympathetic, her death is "good riddance". So that small difference in tone clearly hurts the character. Since a number of people still saw it as tragic, we can argue it is not serious enough to deem her a failure, but it is clearly hard to see her as sympathetic and so calling her a failure is hardly blatently irrational. Arguable, but not irrational.

You repeatedly ask another person to define "Failed Character" when you define it yourself not a page earlier.

And my [incomplete] definition was challenged as incorrect, so of course I ask the challenger to provide a better definition.

On another note, under the definition of "Failed Character" you gave, Miko is not a failed character at all. Miko was not even changed from her original purpose.

As I mentioned, there are several ways a character can be a failure. In the case of Miko, one way would be NCPB

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"I ended up often alienating the very people who most agreed with my actual views."

I guess you could argue that the author failed to get the originally desired tone, but the author himself has specifically stated that the "Failure" (if you wish to describe it as such) was insignificant even to the development of Miko herself.

Our author is the best source of information about what he was intending, but he is not necessarily the best judge of the result. One less subjective standard is the disagreement over Miko. A character is supposed to be a picture, a message to us. So if there is disagreement over the character, the message is not getting thru and the character is flawed.

I guess that if you consider that to be the failure of a character, then yes, Miko is a failed character. However, if that is indeed what defines a failed character, than most every character ever created is a failure.

Given I have not called any other character failed, that is rather obviously rhetorical exaggeration.

[factotum]

A character is supposed to be a picture, a message to us. So if there is disagreement over the character, the message is not getting thru and the character is flawed.

I don't follow that logic at all. Characters can be created to inspire debate among the readership, after all. Additionally, much of the Miko debate stems from overly-narrow readings of what Lawful and Good are supposed to represent...

[Selene]

Disagreement and controversy don't denote failure. They sell books. Just ask Dan Brown.

David, could you please provide some context for your second spoiler? I'm having trouble understanding the intent behind that sentence on its own. (Can't check it myself, as I only own the prequel books.)

[Eric]

Argyll asks:

On a somewhat different point, where is that definition of "failed character", I asked you to supply?]

I quote:

"Quote:
> Originally Posted by Eric
> That isn't the definition of a failed character.
So what is the definition? "

Well, that's odd. 'cos theentire quote that would be expected here is:

> That isn't the definition of a failed character.
> It may be YOUR definition.

You've made up a definition that cannot apply unless all characters are a failure. But nowhere did you cite why your idea is the definition. You are the one making a claim. Support it.


You also say:

> Quote:
> Originally Posted by Eric
> So you believed Rich when he said "This was meant to be a romance" in a > note in the cartoon but insist he's lying when he says that Miko was
> always supposed to fall because of her irrational zeal?
Now where do I say that?


And I quote:

"You seem to be misunderstanding what a failed character is. It is not one that has merely changed from what was originally planned, but by failing to achieve the purposes the character has in mind for the character. Thus we can talk of a failure of Miko when our writer is unable to get the desired tone."


cf (from the giant)

"This mythological notion that Miko was originally intended to be the indefinite romantic interest for Roy is pure fantasy and unfounded speculation. Everything from the point where Miko drags the Order to Azure City in chains in #251 is more-or-less exactly what was always going to happen, with only some tone changed."

So your point about failure is, by author statement incorrect. Yet you still refuse to let the bone alone. Why? You believed him when he said "Whenever I wrote her lines of dialogue, they came out far ruder and harsher than I had expected...There was no way to undo..." but don't listen to him here.

And you again,

"People were supposed to cheer when she took a pratfall, but still not want anything serious to happen to her.
> Quote: Originally Posted by Eric
> b) Can you read minds? How do you know this was what was supposed to
> happen?
Because we are told this. "Whenever I wrote her lines of dialogue, they came out far ruder and harsher than I had expected...There was no way to undo..."

"> Quote: Originally Posted by Eric How'd you make the connection?
I am inclined to answer "how do you don't?""

your first point of "proof" does not follow from the defense of it. Your restatement of asking how you made the connection is "how do I not". This is not an answer.

Yet you still harp on:

"But he did want a romance, or rather a romance scene, and was unable to produce it. "

This does not make a failure. Except by your uncited definition of "fail" that would place all the works in the world as a failure. A definition this wide is no definition.

Instead you use non-sequitors, partial quotes and restatement to make your "case". If this is your definition of logic, I'll stick with the "logic" that you seem to be unable to find.

[David Argall]

Argyll asks:

On a somewhat different point, where is that definition of "failed character", I asked you to supply?]

I quote:

"Quote:
> Originally Posted by Eric
> That isn't the definition of a failed character.
So what is the definition? "

Well, that's odd. 'cos theentire quote that would be expected here is:

> That isn't the definition of a failed character.
> It may be YOUR definition.

You've made up a definition that cannot apply unless all characters are a failure. But nowhere did you cite why your idea is the definition. You are the one making a claim. Support it.

You still are not answering the question.
If the definition I used was incorrect, what is the correct definition?

cf (from the giant)

"This mythological notion that Miko was originally intended to be the indefinite romantic interest for Roy is pure fantasy and unfounded speculation. Everything from the point where Miko drags the Order to Azure City in chains in #251 is more-or-less exactly what was always going to happen, with only some tone changed."

So your point about failure is, by author statement incorrect.

You confuse what is said and what is not said.
The writer says that the romance is to be confined to one scene and nothing much was changed thereafter. Thus there were no hundred future romance scenes that had to be scrapped.
This still allows at least two ways the character might be described as a failure.

1. Those hundred scenes should have been on the boards. The shoving of a woman into the story for the hero to chase may be a much derided cliche, but there are reasons for cliches. They become so because they so well speak to our needs and desires. "Shakespeare? Aw, he's not much. All he did was string together a whole bunch of cliches."
Compared to the actual Roy-Celia, a Roy-Miko relationship has got to be way superior comedy material. An unsympathetic Miko makes this distinctly harder to pull off. But Roy-Celia was not one of the high points of the strip.
NCPB

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"My original concept...was that Miko would be a sexy female paladin who roy wanted, but wanted nothing to do with Roy...I think she's a lot more interesting as she is, even if the original plan might have been more popular. Actually I'm reasonably certain posting pages from the phone book might have been more popular."

However, such romance is much a matter of audience demand, and with a harsh Miko, there wasn't all that much demand. Which in turn tends to shield Miko from any charge of character failure on this line of thought.

2. Purely as written, Miko does not work as desired. I have mentioned
464, which requires we be sympathetic to Miko. And we have the basic disagreements among the audience about her, a sign of the message not getting thru.

You believed him when he said "Whenever I wrote her lines of dialogue, they came out far ruder and harsher than I had expected...There was no way to undo..." but don't listen to him here.

I listen, and hear no inconsistency. Can you explain what you think is inconsistent instead of just claiming there is an inconsistency?

"People were supposed to cheer when she took a pratfall, but still not want anything serious to happen to her.
> Quote: Originally Posted by Eric
> b) Can you read minds? How do you know this was what was supposed to
> happen?
Because we are told this. "Whenever I wrote her lines of dialogue, they came out far ruder and harsher than I had expected...There was no way to undo..."

"> Quote: Originally Posted by Eric How'd you make the connection?
I am inclined to answer "how do you don't?""

your first point of "proof" does not follow from the defense of it. Your restatement of asking how you made the connection is "how do I not". This is not an answer.

I gave 23 more lines of explanation, which you ignore to attack a casual comment. Would you care to explain what was wrong with my more substantial points?

Yet you still harp on:

"But he did want a romance, or rather a romance scene, and was unable to produce it. "

This does not make a failure.

That would seem to be flatly a failure. He wanted something and could not get it. You can argue it is a trivial or irrelevant failure, but failure it most definitely is.

Disagreement and controversy don't denote failure. They sell books.

Which is true if your goal is to sell books. But I have already mentioned The Jungle, a massive best seller of its day, and which its author deemed a failure. While our writer wants to sell books, Miko was not designed to do that.

could you please provide some context for your second spoiler? I'm having trouble understanding the intent behind that sentence on its own. (Can't check it myself, as I only own the prequel books.)

It seems self-explanatory, but NSPB

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what would you think of a play if, instead of laughing at the villain's antics, the audience started throwing fruit at the villain for those antics? We can say the audience is taking things way too seriously, but it is some flaw in the actor/writer that is causing that. And in NSPB, our writer is bemoaning that those who ought to be pounding him on the back and saying what a good job of nailing those irritating paladin types he had done were instead yelling and screaming as if she were real.

And if, like me, you end up posting much on these boards, you will likely have to shell out for the strip books in order to handle points like this.

Characters can be created to inspire debate among the readership, after all.

Of course, but that is their message when that is intended. More important here, Miko wasn't intended to inspire debate, at least of the types she did.

Additionally, much of the Miko debate stems from overly-narrow readings of what Lawful and Good are supposed to represent...

You seem to be confusing cause and effect.
People did not make poor readings of Lawful and Good and decide Miko was wrong. They decided Moko was wrong and then made the poor readings.
I went back and read the original postings about her appearance. There was no "Wait, no paladin would Kill Samantha, or attack the party like this. Something is wrong." Instead there were comments about awesome, etc. It was only after people started saying "I hate Miko" that there were claims her behavior was unpaladinlike.

[Selene]

I am fully aware that The Jungle did not fulfill its author's intent, and instead shone an unintentional spotlight on the meat industry, leading to stricter regulations and tighter controls. IMO it is not an appropriate analogy. The author of The Jungle was disappointed with the reception of his book. Going by what Rich has said in this very thread, the thing he is disappointed with is the misinterpretation of his intentions. So (IMO) it was his comments on Miko that were a failure, and not the character herself.

Also, that was interpretation, rather than context. I wanted to know what else Rich actually said. Apparently "could you please provide some context" was an ambiguous request, and I apologize. And yes, in all likelihood, I will buy the two books I don't own yet in order to support Rich and his work.

[Trazoi]

Also, that was interpretation, rather than context. I wanted to know what else Rich actually said. Apparently "could you please provide some context" was an ambiguous request, and I apologize. And yes, in all likelihood, I will buy the two books I don't own yet in order to support Rich and his work.

If you mean you want to know what Rich wrote about Miko in No Cure for the Paladin Blues, I can summarise for you. This is all paraphrased from Rich's commentary:

(Spoilered in case you haven't read up to Strip 300 or so and for some reason are viewing the forum!)

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• Miko was planned from near the very beginning of OotS, in part at least to tell a bunch of great paladin and Lawful Good jokes and observations.
• The original idea for Miko was a sexy female paladin that Roy wanted but had nothing to do with Roy, but obviously this Miko wasn't the one made it into the comic.
• ...and Rich prefers the Miko we got to the one he originally planned, even if fandom would have preferred the original
• The Miko we did get was improved in not being just a romantic foil but also a direct callenge to his authority as leader of the OOTS (challenging his "manhood" on multiple levels.
• The inn sequence was originally conceived as light romantic comedy, with Roy using the belt of gender changing to learn more about Miko with "girl talk". However Rich decided that "light romantic comedy" was not what Miko was about. Roy and Miko were clearly incompatible and her dialogue came out ruder and harsher than Rich expected; he saw Miko evolve into a far harsher person.
• Since Rich couldn't undo the rudeness apparent in Miko's character, he changed the story to one we got where instead of Roy failing to woo Miko, we got one where Roy realised Miko wasn't worth pursuing

Personally I don't see any of this as evidence of "failure". I don't know of any significant creative project that didn't go under some revision while in draft form, and I regard the inn sequence we did get to be superior to the draft one described in the book.

(Spoiled again if for some reason you haven't read the inn sequence yet...)

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In fact, if Rich did go with the original sequence, we wouldn't have had the whole assassin's plot, and Roy wouldn't have put on the belt as an act to save Elan. I felt that this act of personal sacrifice was a big part of the improvement of Roy's character, and is a better result than potential light romantic comedy.

[Mauve Shirt]

Why is she "failed" just because she changed? If that's the case, then most of the characters I've written about are "failed". Dammit.

[The Extinguisher]

Compared to the actual Roy-Celia, a Roy-Miko relationship has got to be way superior comedy material. An unsympathetic Miko makes this distinctly harder to pull off. But Roy-Celia was not one of the high points of the strip.

In your opinion.

The way I see it, you think she is a failed character because the Giant didn't put together who you shipped.

[David Argall]

Why is she "failed" just because she changed? If that's the case, then most of the characters I've written about are "failed". Dammit.

You are confusing cause and effect. She changed [or more precisely our writer couldn't change her in the way needed and so the inn scene had to change from romance to action] because she had failed.
Now in a number of cases, we as outsiders deduct from the change that a failure had happened. That is a suspicion that may or may not be well founded. However, here the fact of failure is confessed. What is not is that the failure was more than trivial, or that it had negative consequences for the strip.

[Calamity]

. A character is supposed to be a picture, a message to us. So if there is disagreement over the character, the message is not getting thru and the character is flawed.

What? How is that true? People are complex. Fact. The reason we all have different friends and enemies is because there is disagreement over a person (e.g. one person thinks that another person interesting and another thinks the same person is boring).

So are you trying to tell me that creating a complex character makes that character a failure?

[David Argall]

What? How is that true?

How is it not?

People are complex. Fact. The reason we all have different friends and enemies is because there is disagreement over a person (e.g. one person thinks that another person interesting and another thinks the same person is boring).

Which is irrelevant to our fictional story. When you make friends, or enemies, you are not trying to tell a story, or create "interesting" situations. In fact you are likely trying to avoid both. There is no moral to your "story".
By contrast, our fictional character is a story. The moral[s] of the story can vary widely. They can even be things like the truth is uncertain, or that all is meaningless chance and fate, rather than our choice. They are rarely stated directly. But it/they are there. Our story is not a set of random events with no connection. Rather there is a theme, a moral.
The author is trying to tell you something by presenting the character. When you don't get the message [or don't agree with it], the author, and the character, has failed, perhaps seriously, perhaps trivially. But he has failed.
So when we have vigorous disagreement over a character, we have default proof of character failure.

So are you trying to tell me that creating a complex character makes that character a failure?

No.
It is simply easier to do so, just as it is easier to knock down a high house of cards than a low one.

[The Extinguisher]

No. That is the dumbest thing I have ever seen in regard to literary analysis. And I've read "Death of the Author".

Any good character should inspire debate.

[Mauve Shirt]

Yeah, Rich's message from Miko was "Don't play a paladin like this."