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Tesseraction
Apr 5, 2009

Ague Proof posted:

She raped Dominic and Celesto.

I keep forgetting how much rape there was in the original comics. I blame prior choices regarding my interactions with the comic.

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Rotten Red Rod
Mar 5, 2002

Rape is every edgy D&D player's/GM's go-to device for both humor and "maturity". I'm really glad people have gotten loving sick of it in recent years.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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In this case, though, it wasn't even treated as rape because I'm fairly sure Mookie did not believe at the time that women could rape men, and may still believe this.

SardonicTyrant
Feb 26, 2016

BTICH IM A NEWT
熱くなれ夢みた明日を
必ずいつかつかまえる
走り出せ振り向くことなく
&



Tesseraction posted:

I keep forgetting how much rape there was in the original comics. I blame prior choices regarding my interactions with the comic.
There weren't any really good comics back then though. It was the era of gamers on couches and sprite comics.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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Digger.

Unlucky7
Jul 11, 2006

Fallen Rib

Ague Proof posted:

She raped Dominic and Celesto.

drat you for making me remember but I thought that Celesto was consensual.

With Dominic it arguably wasn’t, but it was basically a one panel joke; this was back in the halcyon days when men weren’t raped, they were “taken advantage of”, and was usually a punchline to a joke.

Ague Proof
Jun 5, 2014

they told me
I was everything

Elysiume
Aug 13, 2009

Alone, she fights.
Celesto was the evil diviner, right? What was his deal?

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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Something something Chaos something something Order.

Rotten Red Rod
Mar 5, 2002

Let me guess, Deegan was the champion of order, but you just KNOW that any D&D character Mookie makes is gonna be Chaotic Good because they are so miniature space hamster taco cat monkey cheese random, el oh el!

Regalingualius
Jan 7, 2012

We gazed into the eyes of madness... And all we found was horny.




From what I vaguely remember, Dominic & co. killed his evil girlfriend during one of the earlier arcs right in front of him, and he swore vengeance against them because he truly was in love with her. Wound up becoming the Champion of Chaos (or something like that) over the rest of the comic’s run.

Regalingualius
Jan 7, 2012

We gazed into the eyes of madness... And all we found was horny.




Oh yeah, and her death was when the whole... thing with women dying with their asses in the air started too, I think.

SardonicTyrant
Feb 26, 2016

BTICH IM A NEWT
熱くなれ夢みた明日を
必ずいつかつかまえる
走り出せ振り向くことなく
&



Elysiume posted:

Celesto was the evil diviner, right? What was his deal?
IIRC, Celesto was just some jerk in Eros who was sleeping with Dominic's friend's wife (and Dominic's friend) and also plotting to kill the friend. Then the wife was brutally murdered when the plot fell apart and Celesto became super bitter, then I think another bad guy said he was the Chosen of Chaos and Celesto went "Yeah, ok" and started power-tripping and killing people. Then Dominic stopped him because he was the Super-Chosen, but he didn't kill him. I think like they parted ways, but in that brooding "it's not over yet" way.

And that's as far as I remember.

Rotten Red Rod posted:

Let me guess, Deegan was the champion of order, but you just KNOW that any D&D character Mookie makes is gonna be Chaotic Good because they are so miniature space hamster taco cat monkey cheese random, el oh el!
Oh no, Dominic was the Champion of Balance, so he had both Order and Chaos powers.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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No, Dominic was the Champion of ~Balance~.

Rotten Red Rod
Mar 5, 2002

oh god somehow that's way dumber

One of these days I need to actually read the whole DD archive. I only caught the latter end of the mock thread.

Or not.

Beelzebufo
Mar 5, 2015

Frog puns are toadally awesome


Yeah order was acibek the super golem.


why do I remember that

Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Dec 11, 2019

Ague Proof
Jun 5, 2014

they told me
I was everything
The Champion of Radical Centrism.

Regalingualius
Jan 7, 2012

We gazed into the eyes of madness... And all we found was horny.




I only ever read through it once, and that was when someone was posting the entire archive of it across the first couple of incarnations of the Bad Webcomics megathreads like a year or so after it ended... So everyone else already knew about all of the worst bits ahead of time.

I just remembered that whole arc where they got married and took a honeymoon in what’s still one of the clumsiest attempts at world building that I’ve ever seen. Though that arc also gave us the overall best character of the entire comic.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
What gets me isn't the random, gratuitous dick, it's that it's gratuitous but it's also just so lazy. Like, it doesn't even look like it exists because Mookie wants to draw dicks (a noble endeavor). He wants to have a comic where dicks are drawn for Art Points. It's dick-based cargo culting.

Beelzebufo
Mar 5, 2015

Frog puns are toadally awesome


PMush Perfect posted:

What gets me isn't the random, gratuitous dick, it's that it's gratuitous but it's also just so lazy. Like, it doesn't even look like it exists because Mookie wants to draw dicks (a noble endeavor). He wants to have a comic where dicks are drawn for Art Points. It's dick-based cargo culting.

Yeah I think that's what is the most irking. If he'd gone full oglaf and just had the orc and snout go down on each other's hog's it be less annoying than these intermittently flashing the audience to be edgy

SupSuper
Apr 8, 2009

At the Heart of the city is an Alien horror, so vile and so powerful that not even death can claim it.

PMush Perfect posted:

It's dick-based cargo culting.
New thread title.

super sweet best pal
Nov 18, 2009

Mors Rattus posted:

No, Dominic was the Champion of ~Balance~.

Kind of like how the Jedi champion the balance of the force by sticking to the light side.

Sailor Cat
Aug 28, 2019

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Synthbuttrange posted:

DOGGYDICK DEEGAN

Dong n' Dick Deegan

Regalingualius
Jan 7, 2012

We gazed into the eyes of madness... And all we found was horny.




Oh, I forgot until I went looking it up on a lark just now: Celesto also wound up getting killed off forever at the very end with only the very same strip building up to it.

Drunk Theory
Aug 20, 2016


Oven Wrangler

PMush Perfect posted:

What gets me isn't the random, gratuitous dick, it's that it's gratuitous but it's also just so lazy. Like, it doesn't even look like it exists because Mookie wants to draw dicks (a noble endeavor). He wants to have a comic where dicks are drawn for Art Points. It's dick-based cargo culting.

Something just screams in my mind he’s doing this because he wants to eventually include naked ladies in this, but wants to set precedent with his male protagonist first. Maybe an odd thought, but I agree with others there. Anyway.....

Sailor Cat posted:

Dong n' Dick Deegan

Drunk Theory fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Dec 12, 2019

Invisible Clergy
Sep 25, 2015

"Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces"

Malachi 2:3

rudecyrus posted:

It's a mongrelfolk tradition.

The real answer is Mookie doesn't know how to draw an uncut dick.

Implying Mookie knows how to draw a cut dick.

What's the excuse when webcomics like "Oglaf" and "I Roved Out in Search of Truth and Love" exist? Or 70% of the world's dicks.

Tesseraction posted:

Remember that her quirky gimmick was she loved to break things. With her face.

But she didn't break them. She just hurt. Her face.


Out of frame.


Still can't decide if that or the 'assless chaps' running gag is worse.
That's my secret, captain. I remember all the quirky gimmicks.

All the running gags are equally obnoxious and unfunny. I'll have to go with "lower back pain," personally, because it brings Mookie's overt misogyny to bear in a way some of the others don't.

Ague Proof posted:

She raped Dominic and Celesto.

Oh, she absolutely did. Please don't take my earlier post as having downplayed this. I just thought with the moratorium on rapehands.jpg, the general tone of the thread right now was to keep the rape talk to a minimum, despite how futile it is when discussing Dominic Deegan.

Think of Celesto as basically Vegeta. Whenever a villain needs to be dispatched but Dominic must keep his hands clean, Celesto does the heavy lifting for him.

He was introduced as part of a polyamorous throuple with Szark (who is gay!) and one of Luna's bitch sisters. Celesto and the sister planned to kill Szark to steal money from him (money they... already had free access to since he's a pretty generous dude). In this comic's run of 3000+ strips, Celesto is the only bisexual character. (bla bla perpetuating biphobic stereotypes, Mookie is a bad writer, etc.) The sister had some convoluted plan that involved mind controlling Bumper to rape Luna in a false flag operation that would somehow advance her goals. This was a Sunday strip (so was in color) and was the first time we learned Bumper was black, while he was whipping his dick out to rape Luna, because Mookie can't do anything without being offensive to some group of people. Dominic cast gently caress YOU SEE THE TRUTH and foiled the plan. Bumper strangled the sister to death with her rear end in the air, upset at being almost used to rape his friend, and the heroes made jokes about her rear end. Celesto skulked off and swore revenge...

...but he kind of never did anything about that. He picked up the power over chaos arbitrarily essentially through a random item drop and used it to fatally explode Brett Taggarty, (a filthy wife beating JOCK who'd been a thorn in the side of the mains but they kind of forgot about through the power of their own self-centeredness and laziness) and Serk Brakkis, that corrupt politician guy with the powdered wig toupee who occasionally outwitted the mains with legal schemes and dodged consequences with diplomatic immunity like the villain in an 80s movie where the heroes are a group of break dancing kids trying to save their local rec center.

And this was the pattern Celesto stuck to through the rest of the comic. He would swan in, assassinate some tertiary antagonist, say "you don't have to thank me" to the nearest Deegan, remind them that they murdered his girlfriend and he owed them for this, but for now he would help them serve the greater good, and then use his chaos magic to teleport away. Dominic couldn't use his unbeatable scrying to track him down through the only magic more powerful than divination: terrible writing.

Celesto came back one final time and staged another false flag operation against the king of the country they live in (I can't remember his name, but it was something germanic. Johann? David, maybe?) The king from full metal alchemist, as mentioned earlier, who's doing the plot of full metal alchemist. Celesto's ingenious scheme was to use chaos magic to expose that the king's elite battlecasters (cattlebasters) were serving the beast by making them grow spaghetti out of their faces.

He did this by using his illusions to make it look like they were growing spaghetti out of their faces. No this does not make any sense now nor did it then. The cattlebasters had also just been introduced in this arc so them being traitors really didn't land as a "twist."

This was the arc at the art gallery when Dominic grooms that fencing kid with the ponytail, takes him into the astral plane naked and tells him to "not be so clothes-minded," in what is probably the proudest Mookie has ever been of one of his puns. In the astral plane, dominic butted heads with Celesto, told him his plan didn't make any sense, and learned of the comic's final boss, the beast, shumo gorath but with shittier art. Dominic purged the battlecasters of beast taint with his magic and got the newspaper from the country's apparently free press to w rite a defamatory story about the king being in league with the beast based on really nothing, which would've basically happened without Dom's intervention so as usual he does nothing important. This is when the king is basically introduced as an antagonist and what gets Deegan on his radar as a threat.

Celesto comes back in the final boss fight and sacrifices himself loosening up the boss so Dominic can cherry tap it with gently caress YOU SEEK THE TRUTH. In a comic full of completely useless and insufferable characters who never did anything, I traumatically bonded with Celesto as by far the least annoying, because at least when he showed up every couple of years, it meant someone was probably going to die, and he'd be calling everyone out on their terrible behavior until he left again.

I read the original comic in its entirety a few years ago after reading about it on FuegoFish's wonderful "your webcomic is bad and you should feel bad" blog and didn't discover the deeganmock threads til years later. They were a lot of fun.

Invisible Clergy fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Dec 12, 2019

Cat Mattress
Jul 14, 2012

by Cyrano4747

Invisible Clergy posted:

Celesto came back one final time and staged another false flag operation against the king of the country they live in (I can't remember his name, but it was something germanic. Johann? David, maybe?)

David Johann, aka King DJ.

I mean, of course the Dance Commander could only serve a DJ king. It makes sense if you think about it.

Anyway, the villainous profile of King DJ was that he was an orphan, and blind, and despite these handicaps he managed to study magic, become arch-mage, and finally become king. All through tireless personal effort, sheer strength of will, and a drive to ever improve himself.

The total antithesis of a hero like Dominic Deegan, who was the son of an arch-mage and a rock-star (because of course there were rock-stars in that setting), and who got a cushy job at his mom's university through the sheer power of nepotism, and who never did anything proactive to further his goals, merely waiting instead for the plot to drop in his lap in the form of a sudden vision or something.

Tesseraction
Apr 5, 2009

The elected king, no less.

My favourite bit about Celesto is he actually means well but he gets relentlessly owned because he isn't as Smart and Good as Dominic.

Ague Proof
Jun 5, 2014

they told me
I was everything
Dominic was punished for his only active decision, choosing to look at something (hubris)

TheHan
Oct 29, 2011

Grind, you poor fool!
Grind straight for the stars!
After revealing how loved he was by the people it was shown that in reality the King magically charmed everyone into loving him. Which makes it funny that King DJ murdered the previous king and queen, asserted his dominance with mind control and used devil magic to crush the opposition...but decided to keep the press free and open. Skipped a pretty crucial step in the Build Your Own Dictatorship guidebook.

TheHan fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Dec 12, 2019

skeleton warrior
Nov 12, 2016


Not to interrupt “how terrible was original DD” chat, because it’s hilarious, but I am still just astounded at Snout being able to write an entire paragraph and show it to orc mage in the time it takes orc mage to extend his arm, because it underlines just how completely disinterested Mookie is in changing his style or approach to match his “dialogueless” comic.

He’s going to do the “comic relief comments positively on an action only to be suddenly shown he misunderstood what was going on” gag he did all the time with Greg or the loving cat even if he has to make it clear that time and physics has no meaning. Because figuring out how to make things work in a new context would be work, and if Mookie were willing to work, his art style might have improved in the last two decades.

Calaveron
Aug 7, 2006
:negative:
Also King David did what he did because he foresaw that their country was about to lose all its magic and subsequently be destroyed and when he told the then king and queen they were like oh well

Invisible Clergy
Sep 25, 2015

"Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces"

Malachi 2:3

Cat Mattress posted:

David Johann, aka King DJ.

I mean, of course the Dance Commander could only serve a DJ king. It makes sense if you think about it.

Anyway, the villainous profile of King DJ was that he was an orphan, and blind, and despite these handicaps he managed to study magic, become arch-mage, and finally become king. All through tireless personal effort, sheer strength of will, and a drive to ever improve himself.

The total antithesis of a hero like Dominic Deegan, who was the son of an arch-mage and a rock-star (because of course there were rock-stars in that setting), and who got a cushy job at his mom's university through the sheer power of nepotism, and who never did anything proactive to further his goals, merely waiting instead for the plot to drop in his lap in the form of a sudden vision or something.

Lol got me there.

Since Mookie subscribes to the school of bad writing where his villains are the opposite of his heroes in every way and his heroes are all violent psychopaths who hold grudges for petty ridiculous reasons and have everything handed to them on a silver platter, his villains are all well-adjusted, hard working people with good values completely by accident. It's awesome.

Tesseraction posted:

The elected king, no less.

My favourite bit about Celesto is he actually means well but he gets relentlessly owned because he isn't as Smart and Good as Dominic.

An inevitable side effect of Deegan-centered morality, where an act's value is not determined by its worth on an objective or contextual scale but by how close the person performing it is to being a Deegan. This d&d setting sucks, Beavis.

Ague Proof posted:

Dominic was punished for his only active decision, choosing to look at something (hubris)

He looked into the future and read this comic.

TheHan posted:

After revealing how loved he was by the people it was shown that in reality the King magically charmed everyone into loving him. Which makes it funny that King DJ murdered the previous king and queen, asserted his dominance with mind control and used devil magic to crush the opposition...but decided to keep the press free and open. Skipped a pretty crucial step in the Build Your Own Dictatorship guidebook.

This is why I drew attention to the defamatory newspaper article. In an arc full of dumb bullshit, that was by far the most ridiculous thing. The king who ruthlessly murders or mind controls anyone who gets in his way allows a newspaper to talk poo poo about him. What is that.

Calaveron posted:

Also King David did what he did because he foresaw that their country was about to lose all its magic and subsequently be destroyed and when he told the then king and queen they were like oh well

Bla bla ambition is evil bla. And after all this, he was still right. Dominic only gave the country a jump start by casting gently caress YOU SEE THE TRUTH to turn magic back on, so his vision wasn't even wrong.

Rotten Red Rod
Mar 5, 2002

I actually tried to watch one of Mookie's "memorable heroes and villains" panels to analyze for this thread, but I got 20 minutes in and had to turn it off. He's REALLY loving intolerable to listen to, I hate hate HATE his presentation style. He'll go on several-minute long needless descriptions of things for humor, like when he was basically explaining how your hero should be intellectual instead of an action hero he went on an enthusiastic description of a stereotypical action movie, at extreme length. It was real grating.

Anyway, the only thing I took from it was Mookie's first point - don't make your main character a farm boy. I THINK he was trying to say "don't use the chosen one trope, and your hero should come from an unexpected background", but it came off more as "choose something more unexpected than a farm boy because too many stories already use farm boys" and then he went off on a long rant about how interesting guards are as heroes. But he just KEPT going back to "farm boy" over and over again, like that specific thing was the issue. A farm boy is just as unlikely to be a hero as a guard, an information broker, or a seer (the other examples he gave), Mookie...

Invisible Clergy
Sep 25, 2015

"Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces"

Malachi 2:3

Rotten Red Rod posted:

I actually tried to watch one of Mookie's "memorable heroes and villains" panels to analyze for this thread, but I got 20 minutes in and had to turn it off. He's REALLY loving intolerable to listen to, I hate hate HATE his presentation style. He'll go on several-minute long needless descriptions of things for humor, like when he was basically explaining how your hero should be intellectual instead of an action hero he went on an enthusiastic description of a stereotypical action movie, at extreme length. It was real grating.

Anyway, the only thing I took from it was Mookie's first point - don't make your main character a farm boy. I THINK he was trying to say "don't use the chosen one trope, and your hero should come from an unexpected background", but it came off more as "choose something more unexpected than a farm boy because too many stories already use farm boys" and then he went off on a long rant about how interesting guards are as heroes. But he just KEPT going back to "farm boy" over and over again, like that specific thing was the issue. A farm boy is just as unlikely to be a hero as a guard, an information broker, or a seer (the other examples he gave), Mookie...

Oh, yeah, those loving things. You got a link?

Given Mookie's unironic consistent use of chosen one as hero archetype, he is definitely just using magical thinking and assuming the reason people don't like Luke Skywalker is because he's a moisture farmer, and that he would be an interesting character if he were a horse masturbator instead.

Rotten Red Rod
Mar 5, 2002

Invisible Clergy posted:

Oh, yeah, those loving things. You got a link?

Given Mookie's unironic consistent use of chosen one as hero archetype, he is definitely just using magical thinking and assuming the reason people don't like Luke Skywalker is because he's a moisture farmer, and that he would be an interesting character if he were a horse masturbator instead.

Yeah, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuUHO1IGqWw

"Enjoy!"

Cat Mattress
Jul 14, 2012

by Cyrano4747
Traditionally, heroes were farm boys because until the late 19th century, 99% of boys were farm boys.

Drunk Theory
Aug 20, 2016


Oven Wrangler
I guess I understand the point. But the farm boy trope comes about because it's an easy starting point for your hero's journey story. You then develop your world and character from that common starting point. Your characters profession doesn't really matter.

In fact, it's probably better to start a story with a farmboy. How boring a story would be that started with your main character being say a powerful mage/seer with resources and no need to struggle?

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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I mean the real thing there is just "actually, Joseph Campbell's frame is not the only frame you can use for telling stories" but Mookie, as always, is stuck on the trappings rather than the content.

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Rotten Red Rod
Mar 5, 2002

Drunk Theory posted:

I guess I understand the point. But the farm boy trope comes about because it's an easy starting point for your hero's journey story. You then develop your world and character from that common starting point. Your characters profession doesn't really matter.

In fact, it's probably better to start a story with a farmboy. How boring a story would be that started with your main character being say a powerful mage/seer with resources and no need to struggle?

Ugh you're making me watch it again. Here, this is the part that confuses me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuUHO1IGqWw&t=490s

"Take the masks off the cannon fodder and get characters. If you put the spotlight on the usual 'unlikely heroes' like 'farm boys' *waves his hand like he's grossed out*, put it on the information brokers, the guys who build the weapons for the mercenary heroes, the seers, the squires, the working class, the guards for god's sakes! Put the spotlight on them, that is step 1 for making a hero that is REALLY unlikely."

How is a farm boy not "working class"? Why is it any worse than a squire or a guard? His argument just made no sense.

He just really hates farm boys. :shrug:

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