A part of me was a little worried when I posted yesterday’s comic, since it ended with Alchemist making a judgement about an entire group of people who are based (albeit loosely) on real world indigenous peoples.
I hadn’t been worried in the days leading up to it now that I post completed pages ahead of time on my Patreon because those folks get to see an entire week’s arc of comics at once. Folks casually stopping by for the Monday-Wednesday-Friday updates have to wait for the next comic to post days later. So when a comic ends with a sweeping judgement by the protagonist, intentions can become understandably misunderstood.
I won’t spoil anything for Friday’s comic, but rest assured this is not the moment you discover I’m the kind of person with poor opinions of indigenous peoples. I’m not that guy. Just getting that out of the way.
But I will say that a protagonist has to make a mistake in order to learn from it. A protagonist is not always the author’s avatar in their world, nor are they the vessel for all the author’s real-world values. Sometimes a protagonist has to say or do something that makes you, the reader, hope they will realize their mistake or have their perceptions corrected. How that gets resolved not only affects your relationship to the character, but to the author.
It also touches upon a modern trend with reading comprehension. Many folks online jump to equate the author with whatever bad behavior they showcase for the sake of their story. It usually goes to the tune of “This author wrote about this awful thing happening to this character so this author must be an advocate for it!” It’s a dangerous assumption to make and, in my opinion, poor reading comprehension. The act of writing a bad thing or giving a character a disagreeable trait doesn’t mean the author enjoys it.
In the case of webcomics, when something like this happens and you’re not sure where a creator you enjoy is going with it, I recommend just giving it a day. If a story comic ends on a weird note or with a statement that makes you feel uncomfortable, just give it a day to see how it follows up. As I said above, how it gets resolved will affect your relationship with them going forward.