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Invisible Clergy
Sep 25, 2015

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

Malachi 2:3

SardonicTyrant posted:

I remember when one of Dominic's students in a later arc realized "Hey, so if we convert the dates of all of these cultures, it turns out each culture had its first oracular vision at the same time"

And then nothing came of this revelation.
Yeah, and it also implies that no one had ever done this before, despite all the cultures Prento mentions while talking about this having a long history of interrelation (plus they all speak common.) You'd think someone would notice, since the information on the dates was available in the textbooks he looked at and he didn't need to do any original research or use any oracular powers while at wizard college studying divination.

This is one of my least favorite things about flavor-blasted Deegan. Mookie's fundamental lack of interest in even the things that, from the comic, you'd think he'd be interested in from the framing.

I know that's a little vague so I"ll be more specific. Mookie doesn't seem to have much of an interest in say, languages or economics, for example, so neither factor plays much of a factor in his fantasy comic about different cultures fighting wars. Okay, fine, lots of fantasy authors are like this.

But after he spends a bunch of time making it so that Dominic secures a sinecure position at the college his mommy runs, for the purpose of teaching other wizards about the history of divination and the practice of divination, you'd think that we the audience would learn something about divination.

But we don't. And that's weird. No one "made" Mookie include this aspect in the setting the way that some inevitabilities like farming or whatever must exist in a setting like this. He spends all this time setting up a bunch of crap and then just blows past it when he gets bored because he doesn't plan anything. It owns.

Regalingualius posted:

...how did I never realize that plot hole?

I mean, that could have made for a decent gag where she’s still disowned, but is informed that she’s still technically owed survivor’s compensation... and that winds up being more than enough to buy out her mother’s holdings (or at least someplace that’s just as good as her old house) as a way of finally getting one over on her mother after all of the crap she put her through.

That would've been fine, and it wouldn't even really have changed anything. Its omission is very funny.

HellOnEarth posted:

God help me that I remember this, but I'm pretty sure that because Sigfried executed Croona, Luna isn't entitled to the money. Like, it comes up at some point.

I think you may be right, but even if that's at play, it's clearly something Mookie made up after the fact.

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Evrart Claire
Jan 11, 2008

Invisible Clergy posted:

Yeah, and it also implies that no one had ever done this before

Except for Dominic, who had done it before as a student, but his teacher only reacted by calling him a huge nerd, so Prento should feel grateful that he has a great teacher like Dominic.

Beelzebufo
Mar 5, 2015

Frog puns are toadally awesome


I feel like a lot of people forget how terrible the next arc of the comic is. I stand by my "Luna was the worst things to happen to fiction ever" statement.

This chapter is shorter than the last one, but so much terrible poo poo is contained within that I might be uploading every strip. So splitting it up again

Chapter 3: Luna [Part 1]


Last chapter's Luna jumping off a bridge segs directly into Dominic going fishing for Spark, now that the curse no longer provides




Thankfully Luna jumped in a river that went right by Dominic's house..

Sea Monster Hijinx ensue, and a pretty good cat joke.




Lune wakes up and gets scared, it's another gag.



And then we get the very first Luna Sadsack moping monologue



Afterwards, they come out of the water and Luna recounts her tale of woe.



I agree with spark. This is extremly maudlin for a comic strip that was just jokey 2 strips ago.



Doesn't keep her from being entitles and dumb though



Next we get some strips praising Dominic for basic human decency. Oh how he sacrifices, oh how noble is he.







Joke break! Terrible Pun alert. Also the first mention of Greg.



It's actually not the worst pun. I'll allow it.

Luna starts having mood swings





ANIMU

THen this whole sequence happens






starts out a little awkward and problematic....







But gets way worse

I'm willing to chock this up to just general early 2000s cultural transphobia, but it still is intersting to note. Mookie does seem to have that nerd trait where he eschews many of the claassical masculine traits, especially physical ones, but still feels repulsed by gender non-conformity. It's like how every brony would always talk about how they could like a cartoon for little girls and that didn't make them gay, as if being gay was the worst thing in the world.

I know it's not dominic doing the judging here, but the comic never walks back this idea of cross-dressing as a hallmark of sexual deviancy. Again, just interesting to note that the punchline here is gender-variance = pervert. Just because as far as I know Mookie has never gone back to acknowledge this. He just at some point gained acceptance for trans people as that idea filtered through liberal circles, and then it was like he was always that way.

more creepy poo poo to come in part 2, including this classic gem.

Invisible Clergy
Sep 25, 2015

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

Malachi 2:3
Ah, that's the stuff. Thanks for the update, The Little Death.

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
&



Le Petite Bort

Edit: Sorry, sorry, I was in a punny mood.

Samovar
Jun 4, 2011

I'm 😤 not a 🦸🏻‍♂️hero...🧜🏻




I wish I was experiencing the big death.

(In all seriousness, thank you for this... Heavy, heavy task. May God save your sanity.)

Cat Mattress
Jul 14, 2012

by Cyrano4747

The Little Death posted:

Joke break! Terrible Pun alert. Also the first mention of Greg.



It's actually not the worst pun. I'll allow it.

Dominic never contacts his old friend Mosly.

At some point years later Mookie made filler pages announcing future arcs and one of them was about Dominic's old friend Mosly who looked like he had become a psycho villain (probably because Dominic never returned his see-mails), but he never followed up on it.

Pyrotoad
Oct 24, 2010


Illegal Hen

The Little Death posted:

I feel like a lot of people forget how terrible the next arc of the comic is. I stand by my "Luna was the worst things to happen to fiction ever" statement.

Blaming everything bad on the actions of one woman feels appropriate for Dominic Deegan.

(:v:)

Although having said that I genuinely have seen worse than Luna, at least at this point in the story and pretending I don't know what's coming. As dumb as the specific details around her backstory are, a character who grew up tormented and abused by pretty much her entire family her whole childhood (and let's not forget there are some lovely parents out there who've done worse IRL) is probably not going to have the best self esteem in the world fresh off the chain. It'd be weirder if she instantly moved on with her life with no signs of trauma whatsoever, which actually is different to Mookie's usual schtick of how we just need to get rid of the one bad person that's ruining everything and everything will be fine.

Having said that however, like always Luna's trauma isn't actually about Luna, it's all about how Dominic responds to it. Specifically what a good and nice and caring person he is putting up with her annoying weeping and general hysteria. Ain't he just the best?

Pyrotoad fucked around with this message at 10:53 on Aug 27, 2020

Skypie
Sep 28, 2008
Part of me wonders if he lost the plot to Legacy because someone said Ink Witch was abusive and to prove that person wrong, Mookie introduced two characters who beat up Snout and take his things.

Elysiume
Aug 13, 2009

Alone, she fights.
Seeing DD strips with a decade of hindsight feels especially sad because you can appreciate the relevance to the era while recognizing how pathetically it failed to capitalize on anything.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

I do wonder why Dominic is living in a weird seamless mud hut when everyone else has, like, normal houses in a European style.

I will forgive the fact that he is apparently poor because his parents had not yet been introduced and therefore he was not yet son of a rich and famous musician and the world’s most powerful wizard. Dealing with the weird retcons that result from Mookir development of plot requires this.

Beelzebufo
Mar 5, 2015

Frog puns are toadally awesome


Pyrotoad posted:

Blaming everything bad on the actions of one woman feels appropriate for Dominic Deegan.

(:v:)

Although having said that I genuinely have seen worse than Luna, at least at this point in the story and pretending I don't know what's coming. As dumb as the specific details around her backstory are, a character who grew up tormented and abused by pretty much her entire family her whole childhood (and let's not forget there are some lovely parents out there who've done worse IRL) is probably not going to have the best self esteem in the world fresh off the chain. It'd be weirder if she instantly moved on with her life with no signs of trauma whatsoever, which actually is different to Mookie's usual schtick of how we just need to get rid of the one bad person that's ruining everything and everything will be fine.

Having said that however, like always Luna's trauma isn't actually about Luna, it's all about how Dominic responds to it. Specifically what a good and nice and caring person he is putting up with her annoying weeping and general hysteria. Ain't he just the best?

Hold that thought, given how the rest of this chapter goes :v:. But Luna's lack of self-esteem is only terrible in conjunction with the insane hypercompetence she will show with magic, and the fact that she is in many ways a better person than Dominic, and the fact that she can only heal through Dominic. I'm going to tag this stuff into the summaries as it comes up, but I think it might be good to lay out an analysis here in advance.


I'm going to paraphrase an argument I saw here by a writer I really like. Bones was a corny show in many ways, it was not high art, but I actually loved it. But, by the end of the show, Bones the character, who had started as a brilliant, financially independent and sexually empowered character, ended with an arc where she loses he unique skill and realizes that what really matters is her dumbass husband and babies. It was terrible, awful regressive writing, and I think I see something similar in Mookie's writing.

In spite of the in universe explanation that seems to be that she was abused and isolated since birth, Luna displays what is in universe called a genius level understanding of magic theory (though later Dominic says that she was only abused for a year, more on that later). When the narrative allows her to be, she is extremly powerful. She is also much less of an insane rear end in a top hat than dominic, though this is partially her fulfilling the nurturing archetype mookie applies to all good female characters. She gets a job at a magic university, gains friends and colleges, and yet never, ever moves past needing her emotional support crutch in Dominic, or focusing her entire life around him. Hell, despite how important her magic was to her, the peak of her arc, whe she is at her lowest, isn't losing her magic (which might have been poignant) but the stereotypical Woman Tragedy of being barren, after a dragon steals her uterus. I can't confirm this for sure but I swear that every interaction she has with other female characters would fail the bechdel test, because they always involved a dude, either Dominic, or Stonewater, or Donovan, etc. Luna, despite everything in comic saying otherwise, isn't her own person. She exists solely for Dominic, and it honestly makes her a disgusting character because of it. She speaks to a worldview that the author carries around with him.

Luna isn't actually a bad person, in universe, but the way her trauma and damage is used makes her an awful character. She is more awful for having been as good as she is in universe, because it points out that ultimately, at this point in Mookie's writing anyway, women existed as supporting props to the male character protagonists. You will also see basically this same dynamic with nurse pam.

I guess in this way, starpower was sort of a move forward, thought only in that Mookie could make his self-insert a woman now. Which it still progress!

Good for you Mookie, you did change a little.

Evrart Claire
Jan 11, 2008
Luna's also a package deal, because anytime Mookie suffered writer's block he'd just introduce another evil sister.

Beelzebufo
Mar 5, 2015

Frog puns are toadally awesome


Zerilan posted:

Luna's also a package deal, because anytime Mookie suffered writer's block he'd just introduce another evil sister.

Yeah the Travorias are an amazon clan of highly competent enchanters and assassins and every one of them is brough down to where they deserve to be by our saintly Dominic. How's that for feminism :v:

Evrart Claire
Jan 11, 2008

The Little Death posted:

Yeah the Travorias are an amazon clan of highly competent enchanters and assassins and every one of them is brough down to where they deserve to be by our saintly Dominic. How's that for feminism :v:

It's hard to not want to start discussing a couple of those arcs early because the imagery in those, especially at the end of Snowsong sure is uh, something.

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
&



Zerilan posted:

It's hard to not want to start discussing a couple of those arcs early because the imagery in those, especially at the end of Snowsong sure is uh, something.
Please, no one in the thread spoil this part until we get to it in the recap. Trust me, it's worth the wait.

Invisible Clergy
Sep 25, 2015

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

Malachi 2:3
Good analysis as always, The Little Death. That's a solid primer on some of the main reasons Luna is a terrible misogynistic cliche of a character, though many more will suggest themselves as you go forward.

SardonicTyrant posted:

Please, no one in the thread spoil this part until we get to it in the recap. Trust me, it's worth the wait.

Oh, poo poo, that's right! There are people in the thread who haven't read the Snowsong arc. It absolutely is. I'll try to contain myself. While it's got stiff competition, I still hold it up as the most ridiculous arc in double stuff deegan.

the yeti
Mar 29, 2008

memento disco



I’m glad I never finished Bones :sigh:

Invisible Clergy
Sep 25, 2015

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

Malachi 2:3
Same. That was a really interesting article that, like The Little Death's posts, gave voice to many feelings I had about the show but hadn't articulated in that fashion before. Thanks for sharing.

RoboChrist 9000
Dec 14, 2006

Mater Dolorosa

SardonicTyrant posted:

I remember when one of Dominic's students in a later arc realized "Hey, so if we convert the dates of all of these cultures, it turns out each culture had its first oracular vision at the same time"

And then nothing came of this revelation.

I remember Dominic constantly slut-shaming one of his students. She also resorted to sex work to raise money for him to go on vacation. It ultimately turned out if he didn't go on vacation he might have had a psychotic breakdown and destroyed the world.

Invisible Clergy
Sep 25, 2015

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

Malachi 2:3
The mindbreak arc was definitely high on the list of crazy poo poo in this comic. Mookie perfectly recreates the "it's a good life" ep of "twilight zone." All f Dominic's friends and family are walking on eggshells trying to keep him happy and heap him with praise and gifts and paid time off from his sinecure position at the college his mommy owns (so a normal day for them really.) If they don't, he will hulk out and kill all of them.

And Mookie doesn't understand why this is bad. It's framed as like a "funny" thing. "Oh, haha, Dominic's under a lot of stress. Better keep him happy or else he'll kill our families. Mondays, amirite?" I wonder if Mookie mentioned mindbreak before he hosed off to go camping.

Evrart Claire
Jan 11, 2008
it did lead to the best panel in the comic though

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
&



Invisible Clergy posted:

The mindbreak arc was definitely high on the list of crazy poo poo in this comic. Mookie perfectly recreates the "it's a good life" ep of "twilight zone." All f Dominic's friends and family are walking on eggshells trying to keep him happy and heap him with praise and gifts and paid time off from his sinecure position at the college his mommy owns (so a normal day for them really.) If they don't, he will hulk out and kill all of them.

And Mookie doesn't understand why this is bad. It's framed as like a "funny" thing. "Oh, haha, Dominic's under a lot of stress. Better keep him happy or else he'll kill our families. Mondays, amirite?" I wonder if Mookie mentioned mindbreak before he hosed off to go camping.
If the comic up to this point was like the early strips (puns and slapstick) the whole mindbreak might have been ok. But by this point the comic has become a lot more serious, with magic battles and murder and the eternal clash between order and chaos. You can't just go back from that to wacky hijinks. I think Mookie watched too much anime in this period.

RoboChrist 9000
Dec 14, 2006

Mater Dolorosa

SardonicTyrant posted:

I think Mookie watched too much anime in this period.

By 'this period' you mean 'his life' right?

TheHan
Oct 29, 2011

Grind, you poor fool!
Grind straight for the stars!
I kinda get the feeling Mookie knew he hosed up writing Luna, so he tried to fix it by heaping tons of power and status on her. But there's no escaping Dominic's orbit so she's simultaneously this nigh unstoppable sorcerer and a blubbering jellyfish of a human being.

Invisible Clergy
Sep 25, 2015

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

Malachi 2:3

TheHan posted:

I kinda get the feeling Mookie knew he hosed up writing Luna, so he tried to fix it by heaping tons of power and status on her. But there's no escaping Dominic's orbit so she's simultaneously this nigh unstoppable sorcerer and a blubbering jellyfish of a human being.
I can understand why you think that, but I disagree. The Dunning-Kruger effect is in full force with Mookie. In his "writing memorable heroes and villains" panel, he decries writing characters exactly like Luna, so he just does not see that there are any problems with her at all. He genuinely thinks she has some kind of internality beyond being an appendage of Dominic's.

SardonicTyrant posted:

If the comic up to this point was like the early strips (puns and slapstick) the whole mindbreak might have been ok. But by this point the comic has become a lot more serious, with magic battles and murder and the eternal clash between order and chaos. You can't just go back from that to wacky hijinks. I think Mookie watched too much anime in this period.
As FuegoFish says, he pulled the drama tag.

Even like 20 comics in though, there's all this head chopping and throat slitting and suicide though so I mean, all this nonsense was present from the very beginning.


RoboChrist 9000 posted:

By 'this period' you mean 'his life' right?
Yeah, it's embarrassing how nakedly he rips off "slayers" in the early stuff and then moves on to ripping off other things when he runs out of material (dbz, final fantasy, full metal alchemist, etc)

RoboChrist 9000
Dec 14, 2006

Mater Dolorosa
Lots of anime is very schizoid in tone and blends ultraviolence and melodrama with slapstick and sex comedy. It's bad. FMA gets it right but FMA is loving transcendentally brilliant and something I'll go to bat for and rave about at all and every times.
Point is, I feel like the tonal problems are sort of one of the things I'm a bit willing to be lax with Mookie on, except when it gets really egregious, since largely they are part of the genre he's working in. We know by virtue of Star Power that they are also fundamental problems he has a writer and present even outside DD, but yeah. Within DD they generally are as bad as they are in lots of other - better - anime and manga.

Of course they do get egregiously bad even by that low bar at times, absolutely. I just don't think we've necessarily reached that point yet. In terms of tone and some of the basic content stuff - including the suicide stuff - it's all very much in line with the anime inspiration and tropes and the general cultural miasma of the early aughts, especially early aughts internet.

I mean, consider how often the threat of rape - or even the actual act of rape - is something that is played for laughs in anime.

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
&



I should really watch Full Metal Alchemist at some point. I've heard nothing but praise for it.

Toalpaz
Mar 20, 2012

Peace through overwhelming determination

RoboChrist 9000 posted:

Lots of anime is very schizoid in tone and blends ultraviolence and melodrama with slapstick and sex comedy. It's bad. FMA gets it right but FMA is loving transcendentally brilliant and something I'll go to bat for and rave about at all and every times.

I mean, consider how often the threat of rape - or even the actual act of rape - is something that is played for laughs in anime.

All anime except the one you watched and liked is bad, epic take. :jerkbag:

Invisible Clergy
Sep 25, 2015

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

Malachi 2:3

SardonicTyrant posted:

I should really watch Full Metal Alchemist at some point. I've heard nothing but praise for it.

Watch brotherhood. It's on netflix. It's incredible. It was done after the manga was completed so was able to adhere more fully to the story than the original, which had to go its own way and write filler when it ran out of buffer, so is universally preferred. It also means you'll be able to fully appreciate the final arc of super size deegan.

Regalingualius
Jan 7, 2012

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




SardonicTyrant posted:

I should really watch Full Metal Alchemist at some point. I've heard nothing but praise for it.

Just do be aware that the first anime gets way darker than the manga and the second series (which was a lot more faithful to the manga)... and those already have some pretty serious themes about war, genocide, and more.

Plus it has a boatload of filler at the start. :v:

Cat Mattress
Jul 14, 2012

by Cyrano4747

The Little Death posted:

I'm going to paraphrase an argument I saw here by a writer I really like. Bones was a corny show in many ways, it was not high art, but I actually loved it. But, by the end of the show, Bones the character, who had started as a brilliant, financially independent and sexually empowered character, ended with an arc where she loses he unique skill and realizes that what really matters is her dumbass husband and babies. It was terrible, awful regressive writing, and I think I see something similar in Mookie's writing.

???

I had never heard of that show before but after reading a good chunk of that article out of confusion, I find the author's thesis that it's the 2008 crisis that caused the change in the show and in how the main character is portrayed quite interesting.

RoboChrist 9000
Dec 14, 2006

Mater Dolorosa

Toalpaz posted:

All anime except the one you watched and liked is bad, epic take. :jerkbag:

Um, do you not understand that 'lots' and 'all' are not the same word? I never said or even implied all anime was bad. And, uh, I've watched and liked other anime besides FMA. I'm just saying FMA is the best example of that sort of tonal stuff that doesn't get schizoid. I even enjoy some of the schlocky poo poo that does get schizoid. But hey, good thing we have you here to defend anime from me.

EDIT: Skip the first episode of Brotherhood, by the way. It's filler and has unnecessary and ham-handed foreshadowing that messes with a lot of the actual good foreshadowing and reveals.

RoboChrist 9000 fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Aug 27, 2020

Invisible Clergy
Sep 25, 2015

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

Malachi 2:3
Also skip ep 27, "interlude party," because it's a clip show.

RoboChrist 9000
Dec 14, 2006

Mater Dolorosa
If that's the one I'm thinking of, though, doesn't it have MAJOR SPOILERS Some good character bits with Hohenheim? Like hints and stuff WRT his guilt and him conversing with some of the souls in his stone?

TheHan
Oct 29, 2011

Grind, you poor fool!
Grind straight for the stars!

Invisible Clergy posted:

I can understand why you think that, but I disagree. The Dunning-Kruger effect is in full force with Mookie. In his "writing memorable heroes and villains" panel, he decries writing characters exactly like Luna, so he just does not see that there are any problems with her at all. He genuinely thinks she has some kind of internality beyond being an appendage of Dominic's.

That's a good point, actually. It's so hard to know when Mookie's course correcting vs. when he's just being a bad writer since it doesn't seem like he's ever once even gone "I wish I had done..." even with the Legacy he's smugly dismissing criticism from his fans while very clearly being influenced by it. The idea of him trying to fix Luna by throwing all this power at her doesn't square with her already being a powerful mage. She doesn't even work towards any of her accomplishments they just sort of...happen? Like her character arc was building towards getting with Dominic.

Pyrotoad
Oct 24, 2010


Illegal Hen
You should also stick to the sub for both FMA and FMA:B because Edward's dub VA is legally a piece of poo poo.

Also watch both, the quality might vary wildly but the different character interpretations are fun to notice. IIRC they took a minor filler character from FMA and transferred them into FMA:B because they ended up really popular.

Beelzebufo
Mar 5, 2015

Frog puns are toadally awesome


The best anime is called Mushishi and it's all just weird japanese fairy tales. As the new defacto king of this thread, having deposed SardonicTyrant, I demand only Mushishi relate anime talk from this point. :colbert:

Or talk about this

Chapter 3: Luna [Part 2]

Dominic comes home, and Luna reveals that she spent the time going through his personal documents. Dominic is initially offput by this, but it turns out Luna did it to shower praise on him so it's all good. I guess Dominic only writes magic theory into his journal like a nerd, and never about that one time at summer camp with Szark.




Also, mookie's dumbsmart characterizations are on full display here. Much like how Danica is presented, we're meant to be impressed by Dominic's mental faculties, but because mookie isn't very creative or smart, we get stuff like this about mixing magic and math. How is that impressive? what does it mean? who cases. We're supposed to be impressed.

Dominic is also here demonstrating again the nerd fallacy that as long as you find a women sexy for her intelligence (used for praising you), then you aren't a jerk jock and are a enlightened progressive nerd.

Having discovered she's not a vapid slut like all the other women, Dominic instantly begins nerd-fantasizing about her.



OOHHH intelligent conversations, not like those other bimbos. Sorry but this line is gross. "She's not like other girls". gently caress off Mookie

Again, traumatized and emotionally vulnerable woman, possibly suicidal. But she's his waifu, so he starts ignoring boundaries right away.



The Bed Sniffing Scene. Iconic Deegan strip#1

He then immediately, and totally inappropriately, offers her a job, taking advantge of her desperation to bring her into his orbit, while secretly hiding sexual feelings for her. Basically textbook sexual harrasment.





Luna's sad mental state basically disappears for the time being.




I don't know what Mookie was going for by making the strip look lovely to represent indecision. And like every charater can see it? Makes no sense to me. and disappears instantly.



Instantly Luna shows she is a better person than Dominic, wanting to help people with the gifts she and he possess. Dominic of course just rages at the dumb normies who don't get his genius.



Yeah, how dare these yokels come to the town fortuneteller to ask about love, or losing their hair. They need to be asking important things like "will a chaos magicians murder me and my family?". Here again we see the standard nerd contempt for romance and girly things, since it meantions wanting to know if someone likes you. gently caress that dumb love stuff, I'm a hardcore metal nerd.

Also lower back boob joke again. Hahaha, such a classic. stupid boobs, they're the worst



Luna is an optimist, and dominic is a condescending prick

Here's where we get into some terrible Luna Characterization



Luna is a perfect saint, she sees the best in everyone, except herself. She is gifted in magic and selfless, and Dominic is totally aghast that this perfect creature could possibly be insecure. This is such an awful nerd fantasy it actually makes my skin crawl. Only dominic can make her see she is brilliant and beautiful, and he needs to show her that, so she'll love him forever.



Strange little retcon here. Why "for a full year"? So Luna's mom only hatched this plan a year ago and wasn't mean until then? Again, unclear why Mookie would do this, not sure what he was going for.



And again, Luna's damage manifests as a total focus on this dude she just met, and how inconvenient she must be for him. How incovenient her year(?) of abuse is. The only internal monologues we see of her is poo poo like this, for basically the entire comic. And it's never actually directly about her, just how her sadness and brokeness is terrible for dominic.



Again dominic is a creep. Here Luna shows she is versed in magic theory, or maybe some sort of savant on it given that it's not clear she's had schooling or training. Again the brilliant woman who just needed Dominic to unlock her talent



Extremely dumb page retreading the last strip, but with nonsense instead or dialogue. Love the formulas:

Lore*Fact/Knowledge

Time/Sanity

Extremly dumb and DnD, and not actually that visually engaging either.

Finishing us out, we get to focus on how Luna is coping with this change to her life, and how she will beging here heali..... NAH let's talk about how Dominic is horny for her again, instead



No really? You're developing a crush on her after you sniffed her bed sheets.

Dominic is a disgusting sex pest.



Case in point. I guess Mookie things the above is funny, but it actually reads more as huge violation of boundaries.

And that's where Chapter 3 ends. We won't really revisit Luna's mental health until after the next plot arc which is a bunch of mindless anime action and Gregory Deegan.

I actually think that even for the time period, this poo poo was pretty gross. It's really creepy reading it again, especially since he was a grown man at that point.

Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Aug 27, 2020

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
&



The Little Death posted:

The best anime is called Mushishi and it's all just weird japanese fairy tales. As the new defacto king of this thread, having deposed SardonicTyrant, I demand only Mushishi relate anime talk from this point. :colbert:
Curses, I guess I have to relinquish my title as King of Dominic Deegan. Woe is me.

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Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



FMA:B is really really good, just coming in to agree.

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