Comic #848: Keystone Deserter: Season 1 (Patreon)

Not gonna lie, I exorcised a lot of demons on this one.

There are a lot of people who are pugging for high keys, and then bail on the group at the slightest sign of adversity. I'm not talking about 10 wipes into the key, I'm talking about a single death, or the tank taking a less than optimized route. By doing so they end up ruining the entire run, as the keystone is no longer completable.

Originally this comic was going to be a continuation of #847, with the AWW ranger introducing a different animal. In this case it was going to be a very skittish bird, who fled at the first sign of danger. The punchline was going to reveal that it was pugging and ruining people's keys.

However, late last night I ran some mythic keys, and ran into another of these keystone deserters on a +17, who gave up after a single wipe even though the key was running at good time.

I was so annoyed I felt I had to scrap and rewrite the entire comic. I felt like a cute little birdy was too nice a depiction.

I thought about using Douche as the villain in this comic, but I feel like as douchey as he is, even he has limits. So instead I created a new character. I kept redrawing him over and over until I could get his pouty expression just right. I also needed him to be more and more pouty as the comic progressed.

Usually I don't pour my angst into my work and try to be more nuanced, but I needed the catharsis.