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Nipponophile posted:Got to make sure everyone knows Luna never had a single good person in her life except for her savior Dominic. I might be misremembering Amelia appearing in some later flashbacks WRT the Alterist arc when it's revealed that she has the equivalent of magical breast implants, but doesn't Luna have another sister who is still slut shamed and I think showed up in said flashbacks (I think she had a nosejob? I, again, may be misremembering) and is said to be kinda a jerk, but kind of just the whole sort of 'bitchy sister I didn't get along with' rather than 'actively a murderer and terrible person.'
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Sep 13, 2020 14:02
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Ague Proof posted:Is this some sick foreshadowing? Really, the better question is 'is this what Mookie thinks sex noises sound like'
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Sep 13, 2020 14:57
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:I might be misremembering Amelia appearing in some later flashbacks WRT the Alterist arc when it's revealed that she has the equivalent of magical breast implants, but doesn't Luna have another sister who is still slut shamed and I think showed up in said flashbacks (I think she had a nosejob? I, again, may be misremembering) and is said to be kinda a jerk, but kind of just the whole sort of 'bitchy sister I didn't get along with' rather than 'actively a murderer and terrible person.' Funny, I think the third Travoria sister is an assassin or bounty hunter or something like that. Don't really remember it, though. Mors Rattus posted:Really, the better question is 'is this what Mookie thinks sex noises sound like' It's no Wilhelm schlorp, that's for sure. 
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Sep 13, 2020 15:03
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Zerilan posted:Also, since someone asked about visions vs second sight and if the difference is talked about : Second sight is a branch of magic that anyone can learn, and a seer is a person who can use it. Being able to passively receive visions is an innate ability, and someone with that power is an Oracle. Celesto doesn't receive visions, so he is a seer and not an oracle. It's only really elaborated on as a means of stating another way in that Celesto is inferior to Dominic. But Celesto got the dream vision and presumedly the random vision that led him to Erossus in the first place, didn't he? This whole arc is disgusting and I hate it. The whole thing reeks of Mookie's barely veiled fetishes and ignorance, I never knew that Bumper played an extended role as this white woman's boy toy and that Mookie has her literally say "Aaah, a black man who steals? Pinning a murder on him will be easy!" Zerilan posted:
It was just established that Szark thinks his duels are with consenting opponents and legal under Callan law. Then he and Dominic watch as Stunt is forced into a duel to the death against his will and haven't a drat thing to say about it. THEN Dominic learns all the duels to the death are with people who were forced into it against their will! Oh no! The memory of the previous strip crumbles into dust as soon as Mookie starts the next one.
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Sep 13, 2020 15:22
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Ague Proof posted:Is this some sick foreshadowing?
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Sep 13, 2020 15:25
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Skimming, I read the dialog in the first panel as: “Where are you going? We’re badly drawn.” And I was like, “You got that right Luna.”
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Sep 13, 2020 15:50
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Spookyelectric posted:Skimming, I read the dialog in the first panel as: “Where are you going? We’re badly drawn.” Oh good, I thought I was the only one that kept doing that.
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Sep 13, 2020 15:56
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Sep 13, 2020 16:11
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I honestly glazed over a lot of that last post because drat this arc is lovely.
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Sep 13, 2020 16:37
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H’okay, I remembered that Bumper was fantasy black, but... Somehow the whole thing about Amelia explicitly saying that she was going to pin it on the black guy completely slipped my mind. And him being raped via mind control. What the gently caress, Mookie?!
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Sep 13, 2020 17:36
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The best part is that we know he doesn't plan ahead at all so one day he might've just drawn Bumper in that room and the next remembered that he was black and decided on this plotline- Mookie's version of a "happy coincidence".
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Sep 13, 2020 18:02
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Bumper probably wasn't even black until that moment.
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Sep 13, 2020 18:04
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He absolutely decided racism would make his story edgy and deep in this moment, but probably a bit before that page. Stunt and Bumper had no good reason to go to Erossus but twisted themselves into knots to justify it cause Mookie needed Bumper to get mind controlled. Why would Stunt even think his cousin likes him since he'd know that Stunt murdered his aunt.
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Sep 13, 2020 18:33
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TheHan posted:He absolutely decided racism would make his story edgy and deep in this moment, but probably a bit before that page. Stunt and Bumper had no good reason to go to Erossus but twisted themselves into knots to justify it cause Mookie needed Bumper to get mind controlled. Why would Stunt even think his cousin likes him since he'd know that Stunt murdered his aunt. Stunt isn't will have murdered his aunt yet.
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Sep 13, 2020 18:45
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Oh right Stunt just has an absurd hatred of women right now, Mookie doesn’t try to “justify” it for years. With every new chapter and page I step on the “Mookie doesn’t think ahead” rake, I just can’t wrap my head around the way he thinks. Edit: and y’now it wouldn’t even be that bad. Dragonball Z and Red vs Blue will at least try and tie retcons to previous events in the series (with varying degrees of success), and they do it in a way that fans can see patterns where originally there were none and rationalize new developments. The way Mookie retcons it’s like he’s never even read Dominic Deegan. TheHan fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Sep 13, 2020 |
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Sep 13, 2020 19:02
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It's not super clear at this moment though you can infer from Semashi but, Bumper isn't black. He's fantasy non-specific Not!Middle Eastern. Which in no way makes it better but there ya go. 
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Sep 13, 2020 19:47
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I forget, is he also the only character that’s explicitly said/shown to be a POC in the strip for a long, long time? Because hoo boy, making the only non-white character a thief and raging misogynist has a load of unfortunate implications in and of itself.
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Sep 13, 2020 19:56
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Regalingualius posted:I forget, is he also the only character that’s explicitly said/shown to be a POC in the strip for a long, long time? Because hoo boy, making the only non-white character a thief and raging misogynist has a load of unfortunate implications in and of itself. The misogynist is the other guy, Stunt. But yeah, I think Bumper is the only POC for a while. I can't actually remember if there are any others off the top of my head.
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Sep 13, 2020 19:58
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TheHan posted:Oh right Stunt just has an absurd hatred of women right now, Mookie doesn’t try to “justify” it for years. With every new chapter and page I step on the “Mookie doesn’t think ahead” rake, I just can’t wrap my head around the way he thinks. Mors Rattus posted:Stunt isn't will have murdered his aunt yet. Zerilan posted:Also, since someone asked about visions vs second sight and if the difference is talked about : Second sight is a branch of magic that anyone can learn, and a seer is a person who can use it. Being able to passively receive visions is an innate ability, and someone with that power is an Oracle. Celesto doesn't receive visions, so he is a seer and not an oracle. It's only really elaborated on as a means of stating another way in that Celesto is inferior to Dominic. TheHan posted:But Celesto got the dream vision and presumedly the random vision that led him to Erossus in the first place, didn't he? Mors Rattus posted:Really, the better question is 'is this what Mookie thinks sex noises sound like' RoboChrist 9000 posted:I might be misremembering Amelia appearing in some later flashbacks WRT the Alterist arc when it's revealed that she has the equivalent of magical breast implants, but doesn't Luna have another sister who is still slut shamed and I think showed up in said flashbacks (I think she had a nosejob? I, again, may be misremembering) and is said to be kinda a jerk, but kind of just the whole sort of 'bitchy sister I didn't get along with' rather than 'actively a murderer and terrible person.' GrossMurpel posted:
Pyrotoad posted:Seconding that Touga guess, if only to point out that if it is Touga that Szark is based off of then he has either only watched the first couple episodes, or severely misunderstood Touga, and I genuinely hope it's the former because if Szark was his interpretation of Touga's character after watching the whole series then Captain Oblivious posted:It's not super clear at this moment though you can infer from Semashi but, Bumper isn't black. He's fantasy non-specific Not!Middle Eastern. Heliotrope posted:The misogynist is the other guy, Stunt. But yeah, I think Bumper is the only POC for a while. I can't actually remember if there are any others off the top of my head. Invisible Clergy fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Sep 13, 2020 |
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Sep 13, 2020 20:29
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Invisible Clergy posted:This is only introduced far later. They have middle eastern architecture and clothing but Italian names and names for social roles so are a dumping ground for all nonwhite traits. From time to time I'm reminded Americans do not consider Italians and Spanish people to be white.
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Sep 13, 2020 20:40
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Cat Mattress posted:From time to time I'm reminded Americans do not consider Italians and Spanish people to be white. Conditionally white, whiteness in America has gradations.
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Sep 13, 2020 20:47
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Cat Mattress posted:From time to time I'm reminded Americans do not consider Italians and Spanish people to be white. Spain and Italy being liminally white is not a uniquely American phenomenon friend. That poo poo, especially for Spain, is hundreds of years old and pre-dates America.
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Sep 13, 2020 21:15
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Captain Oblivious posted:Spain and Italy being liminally white is not a uniquely American phenomenon friend. That poo poo, especially for Spain, is hundreds of years old and pre-dates America. This is the truth. Race is an unstable social construct and whiteness, especially, traces back through weird Christian identity stuff in the Middle Ages, and wasn’t a consistent or monolithic category until more recently when it was necessary to explain why European Empires = good, despite their actions being transparently bad. Like slavery! And the borders of whiteness have fluctuated; whiteness is a bullshit category even more than most other racial categories, because it’s always been defined as the top of a hierarchy.
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Sep 13, 2020 21:39
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Invisible Clergy posted:Bumper is the only one in the whole comic I remember who isn't white. Orcs are green
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Sep 13, 2020 22:06
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Joe Slowboat posted:This is the truth. Race is an unstable social construct and whiteness, especially, traces back through weird Christian identity stuff in the Middle Ages, and wasn’t a consistent or monolithic category There was no concept of whiteness at all in the Middle Ages. There was just Christendom and Heathens. The modern concept of racial identity was created by the Spanish after they discovered America, and then appropriated by the English who decided that white people were defined by being either Anglo or Saxon, while everyone else from Sweden to Italy and from Ireland to Russia was of a swarthy complexion.
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Sep 13, 2020 22:56
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Cat Mattress posted:There was no concept of whiteness at all in the Middle Ages. There was just Christendom and Heathens. There are Middle English texts that attempt to construct a unified European identity (out of a sense of inferiority, since Christian texts referenced the holy land, but not Europe) that can be seen as the ancestor of whiteness; that divide between Christian and heathen took on racialized qualities at times, especially since you left out the core third term: Jewish, who were othered in a way that was not only religious, though the religious element was most prominent. Basically, whiteness was like most historically constructed categories built out of a combination of pre-existing parts, some of which are quite old and some of which were newly invented. All of which were bad. E: the point being that the origins of the category show that it wasn’t just a result of colonial empires but a predicate for them.
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Sep 13, 2020 23:03
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Cat Mattress posted:There was no concept of whiteness at all in the Middle Ages. There was just Christendom and Heathens. You should probably read up on the black legend of Spanish colonialism and how English/Dutch propaganda more or less drummed Spain out of the white club in the 17th/18th century as a rhetorical tool of convenience. Spain and southern Italy have long had connotations of being liminally white due to ~moor blood~ for central Europeans and for the English in particular.
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Sep 13, 2020 23:14
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Roleplaying Larry posted:Orcs are green Yeah, it's either Bumper, or the orcs. Otherwise everyone else is Lily white. And while yes, the Semashi are sort of an abstract mishmash of orientalist and racist tropes, I do think that Mookie thought of Bumper as black at this point. For reasons you will see below, and later when we get to the arc on thievery and find he used to run with a gang with a leader named Urban Eddie. I'm glad people got time to discuss because I wanted everyone in the right mood for this next drop. Chapter 10: Escatasy and Evil Part 6  Dominic is thrown into prison with Stunt.   So jokyness and heavyhanded foreshadowing ensue.   Dominic is instantly able to convince Stunt to help by using Stunt's generic misoginy against him. i hate Stunt's misoginy. It's so formless and generic, and like others have said years away from having a retconned justification, which means it plays out like an adult man thinking girls are dumb and have cooties.  Again, dominic is the stupid mastermind in all of this, even after he failed to predict Celesto.  Again, this was Mookie's way out of the problem. Dumb and anticlimactic. OK SO HERE IT COMES  We cut to Amelia torturing (?) Luna. Actions are so poorly conveyed hard to tell what this get up is for. Probably a bondage joke now that I think about it.  Everybody knows what a sadsack punching bag Luna is! So they all try to break her the same way. But look, character growth! Self-confidence! I mean, not really, because it won't last, and she only expressed confidence in Dominic.  Amelia is stumped though, her magic inexplicable now requiring "breaking the will" to work. I guess all those dudes were just simps. She spies a mind-controlled bumper, to solve her problems.  She has Bumper move a now UNCONCIOUS Luna somewhere as part of her plan. Again last panel twist harharhar. Mookie has his formulas  Stunt abandons Dominic. Dominic then goes into an unguarded room...... . . .  And walks in on the only PoC character, already having been coded as a criminal and as discriminated against for his skin colour, preparing to rape an unconcious white woman. Ok, so I remember at the time that people tried to justify this by saying "well, it was mind control" or "it makes sense in the story". I hope everybody realizes that those are bullshit justifications and aren't actuall a defense of anything. Characters aren't people, no matter how many writers say they get a life of their own. Mookie chose to create a scenario where he drew the one character of color he deliberatly included, who has already been fetishized in this arc, as playing out a horrendous racial stereotype. And that's the thing too, is that Mookie chose in this arc to invent or reveal that Bumper was black. As much as ommiting people of colour from you fantasy world is indicative of some things, including them only to write them into the role of criminal and rapist is, I would say, much worse. Again, this is the first colorization of Bumper we are seeing, and it's for this strip. This visual. On top of that, it's obvious that Mookie likes Bumper more that Stunt. Bumper is not the butt of many jokes going forward, and he gets an arc centered around him much sooner than stunt. Here he is, also enacting a rape with a plausible moral reason that it's not his fault. Given that Mookie would later try to write an arc with a heroic rape, I wonder how much of Mookie's fetish is "rape, but it's not your fault". Just some contrivance of why you can't blame the rapist, it was outside of his control. I don't want to dig to deep into this, but reading this again post Stonewater made connections I didn't the first time. Also, this whole sequence is going to be used as justification for when Amelia is killed later. Keep that in mind   Anyway, turns out that roofying people is just a thing in "Sin City". What is this city? What sort of culture does it have? It makes no sense. It's just kinky sex town, with rape on top now. See this is where Mookie's sex negativity comes in. This is the 3rd major arc of his comic, after 2 of just generic fantasy hijinx and he writes a story centered prominantly around non-monogamous, non-heteronormative sex, but lumps it in with rape and fantasy date-rape drugs. It's impossible not to read into this. And again, dominic gets to be the white knight who saves his waifu from all the evil sexhaving monsters.  Anyway, the solution to this arc is going to be that Szark's Dad and Dominic's parents come in to disapprove of his lifestyle before saving the day. Again, hard not to read into this.   Here they are folks. The deegan clan is complete, and given who they are, it's hard to see Dominic as a dude slumming it for the sake of not selling out. Like Mark in Rent. Someone who has all the options in the world but chooses not to live better because his suffering justifies his misanthropy. Please also keep in mind that Mookie is a failed actor, and did that before starting DD, when it comes to Donovan's character. Also, just to spoil it a little, because it's hilarious. That title "archmage of the fifth circle" which makes it sound like she's a part of some magic hierarchy of mages? What that actually means is that she is the sole occupier of the 5th circle, which is a metaphysical guardian type role. The other circles are literally occupied by a bunch of extradimensional monsters. Dominic is the son of the only human to ever occupy that role. That is the absurdity of the marysue-ness of the Deegan clan. So yes, we still have some ground to cover in this arc, but this right here is one of the reasons I think DD stands out among the other terrible early 00's webcomics. He dove immediately into this, this R-rated murder/rape fantasy with weird racial elements. Yeah. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Sep 13, 2020 |
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Sep 13, 2020 23:21
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Ahahaha oh my lord I forgot about Urban Eddie 
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Sep 13, 2020 23:38
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Plus I don't trust that hairweave joke from the beginning of this arc either.
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Sep 13, 2020 23:45
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It's simultaneously like a child's idea of people and the fetishes of a gross uncle...nothing is right here...The Little Death posted:Plus I don't trust that hairweave joke from the beginning of this arc either. That was absolutely Mookie making a black joke, nothing about that sequence made sense beyond setting it up.
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Sep 13, 2020 23:48
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how the gently caress did I forget this And isn’t that the second EVER colored strip?
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Sep 13, 2020 23:53
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TheHan posted:It's simultaneously like a child's idea of people and the fetishes of a gross uncle...nothing is right here... I'd like to think Mookie has dealt with at least some of his unhealthy sexual hangups by now because the idea of someone being married with children but still being this deeply ashamed of/attracted by taboo to any kind of non-standard sexuality scares me. What the gently caress happened to him growing up to make him this way? What warped his development so much?
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Sep 14, 2020 00:01
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loving yikes.
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Sep 14, 2020 00:03
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Kavak posted:I'd like to think Mookie has dealt with at least some of his unhealthy sexual hangups by now because the idea of someone being married with children but still being this deeply ashamed of/attracted by taboo to any kind of non-standard sexuality scares me. What the gently caress happened to him growing up to make him this way? What warped his development so much? Sorry for uncorking discussion on which races are and aren't white. As The Little Death said, I meant the Semashi are the dumping ground for all exotifying/racialized/orientalist tropes in the Deeganverse and that aspects drawn from real-world cultures overall are thrown under that umbrella. The Little Death posted:Given that Mookie would later try to write an arc with a heroic rape, I wonder how much of Mookie's fetish is "rape, but it's not your fault". Just some contrivance of why you can't blame the rapist, it was outside of his control. I don't want to dig to deep into this, but reading this again post Stonewater made connections I didn't the first time. quote:Anyway, turns out that roofying people is just a thing in "Sin City". What is this city? What sort of culture does it have? It makes no sense. It's just kinky sex town, with rape on top now. See this is where Mookie's sex negativity comes in. This is the 3rd major arc of his comic, after 2 of just generic fantasy hijinx and he writes a story centered prominantly around non-monogamous, non-heteronormative sex, but lumps it in with rape and fantasy date-rape drugs. It's impossible not to read into this. And again, dominic gets to be the white knight who saves his waifu from all the evil sexhaving monsters. Regalingualius posted:how the gently caress did I forget this
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Sep 14, 2020 00:07
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Regalingualius posted:how the gently caress did I forget this I checked! It was his third! #1  June 4th, 2002 I think to show Spark's fur colour.  May 21, 2003 To celebrate the 1 year anniversary of the strip and also to show the gross icky goo of Dejah And the one above, posted on February 17, 2004 for...... now what reason could there possibly be? Why would he choose this strip to require colour emphasis? I'm not posting it again because it's gross and only needs to be seen once in this thread. Kavak posted:I'd like to think Mookie has dealt with at least some of his unhealthy sexual hangups by now because the idea of someone being married with children but still being this deeply ashamed of/attracted by taboo to any kind of non-standard sexuality scares me. What the gently caress happened to him growing up to make him this way? What warped his development so much? I'm going to say an uncritical nature and catholic guilt. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Sep 14, 2020 |
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Sep 14, 2020 00:07
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The Little Death posted:And the one above, posted on February 17, 2004 for...... now what reason could there possibly be? Why would he choose this strip to require colour emphasis? Has anyone ever asked Mookie about this? Because I really want to hear his answer. Invisible Clergy posted:I can understand why it's more palatable to think that, but I see no evidence that it's true. I don't think anything was done to him, just pretty standard nerd misogyny/toxic masculinity/etc. I don't think it's more palatable, it's just more interesting than him just being a creep. Maybe he's just so arrested developmentally that he has no filter for what he shows to the world in his art and no self-awareness about it so he just stands out from other people. Kavak fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Sep 14, 2020 |
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Sep 14, 2020 00:20
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Kavak posted:Has anyone ever asked Mookie about this? Actually I went back and realized I skipped something.  That was posted along with the strip above. I thought it was a banner ad the first time. So I guess charitably, his story coincidentatlly lined up with this anniversarry. If you assume he planned each strip out in advance, and didn't choose this visual to do when he decided to do a colour strip.
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Sep 14, 2020 00:23
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It's the 500th Episode! We're celebrating with RAPE! It's fun to overanalyze but past his creepy hangups and fetishes we have to remember Mookie is really, really stupid.
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Sep 14, 2020 00:25
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Kavak posted:I'd like to think Mookie has dealt with at least some of his unhealthy sexual hangups by now because the idea of someone being married with children but still being this deeply ashamed of/attracted by taboo to any kind of non-standard sexuality scares me. What the gently caress happened to him growing up to make him this way? What warped his development so much? I think if he has grown as person he'd be massively ashamed by Dominic Deegan. Too ashamed to return to it for the Legacy, and maybe even too ashamed to look it in the eye. The way he talks about the satyr porn, it sounds like Mookie's growing a sex positive attitude, but personally I think he's just riding the coattails of a more sex positive culture to be more openly horny on main. The way he treated marginalized groups in Star Power, and how the Ink Witch was another helpless momwife (who despite all her power was emotionally and physically dependent on the useless sludge of a protagonist that was Snout), doesn't give me a ton of confidence in him.
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Sep 14, 2020 00:28
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