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It's mindboggling that when Mookie wrote Ink Witch out of the story because someone called him out on writing her as a terrible abuser, he managed to somehow bumble into making a female character that's just as problematic. How can you even write something while putting so little thought into what you're doing? 
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Mar 23, 2021 15:25
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amigolupus posted:It's mindboggling that when Mookie wrote Ink Witch out of the story because someone called him out on writing her as a terrible abuser, he managed to somehow bumble into making a female character that's just as problematic. How can you even write something while putting so little thought into what you're doing? It's like he writes problematic setups by instinct. Totally riffing and making it up as he goes, he has managed to create an abusive momwife character, and a black feral child daughterwife character for his dog-faced self-insert to cuddle naked with.
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Mar 23, 2021 15:28
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Maxwell Lord posted:He just keeps walking into this stuff. I'm not sure whether I prefer the parts of the strip that are boring or the parts that are vaguely offensive. IT'S BORING TIME  hey look, more repeated information the audience already knows Rotten Red Rod fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Mar 23, 2021 |
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Mar 23, 2021 15:39
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The heart of magic? What could it mean?! What dense symbolism lies behind that esoteric phrase?
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Mar 23, 2021 16:21
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Something special about how even simple things like books are rendered shittily and unconvincing.
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Mar 23, 2021 17:23
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What is new with this page? Isn't this literally a previous comic?
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Mar 23, 2021 17:26
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amigolupus posted:It's mindboggling that when Mookie wrote Ink Witch out of the story because someone called him out on writing her as a terrible abuser I don't think this is actually true, it was just speculation on this thread's part.
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Mar 23, 2021 17:36
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Seems likely though, as it was addressed in the comic ("I would never enter your dreams without your consent", she says, moments after once again entering his dreams without consent and cuddling naked while he was sleeping) not long after that Twitter exchange.
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Mar 23, 2021 17:41
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Billy Gnosis posted:What is new with this page? Isn't this literally a previous comic? This week on Dragonball Z, we're having a clip show episode.
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Mar 23, 2021 17:45
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Oh thank god, it'd been at least 8 strips without a complete recap of the plot, and with a plot this dense it's real hard to keep track, thanks Mooks
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Mar 23, 2021 18:08
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Going back to the book fetish thing, I do love how Mookie's idea of research is just pulling a lot of books at random, even if you literally can't read them. You can tell Mookie actually hasn't done any research projects before lol.
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Mar 23, 2021 18:13
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Beelzebufo posted:Going back to the book fetish thing, I do love how Mookie's idea of research is just pulling a lot of books at random, even if you literally can't read them. Or original thinking. See also the way "math" and magic was portrayed in the original comic
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Mar 23, 2021 18:16
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Also really enjoying this "mysticism language" he's using. It is not the gate. It is the first step. Seek the threefold self. It's like he read a geocities website made by someone who read an angelfire website of someone who overhead a discussion about mysticism once. He heard someone quote the 36 lessons of vivec ten years ago and he assumes that faint memory is basically how all esoteric texts work. he's ironically done no research on the topic his character is researching to make the topic actually be presented how the topic is actually presented in real life
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Mar 23, 2021 18:24
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Given how he visually illustrates text and the written word in the comic, I'm not convinced he's actually opened a real book before. No book not written for infants uses giant text and rock stupid phrasing like that. In particular, these are presumably meant to be academic texts, which sure as hell are the opposite of these. I sure wish the summer I spent digging through an archive for all references to a specific topic could have been condensed into a single page of large font info with no effort on my part. Alternately, all current characters are morons and just wrapped up in some surface deep new age crystal bullshit and Snout is too dim to realize.
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Mar 23, 2021 18:46
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FlocksOfMice posted:Also really enjoying this "mysticism language" he's using. It is not the gate. It is the first step. Seek the threefold self. It's like he read a geocities website made by someone who read an angelfire website of someone who overhead a discussion about mysticism once. He heard someone quote the 36 lessons of vivec ten years ago and he assumes that faint memory is basically how all esoteric texts work. Yeah, I actually work with esoterica sometimes as an academic thing and it actually loving loves to explain itself. Like nested definitions and cross references and trying to desperately communicate to you what, in fact, the word “truth” means in this context. Sure, it may assume you’ve already put in decades of study on a specific moral philosophy and legal theory, but it does that so it can reference all that information in explaining the new stuff. E: actually, I’m just gonna post what an actual image trying to explain the esoteric structure of the mind and soul in the middle images looks like. 
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Mar 23, 2021 19:07
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I guarantee he read or became aware of Kill Six Billion Demons (which was inspired by the 36 Lessons of Vivec) and that's why he's doing it like this. K6BD has inspired a lot of 'if I use a cryptic phrase that means my writing is interesting and textured' copycats, when K6BD itself has a fun mythos, loads of style, and actually wants to say something with its setting and mysticism.
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Mar 23, 2021 19:09
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Having fully left behind the "re-introduction" of Arudak and the Ink Witch, it seems like the chances of any explanation for the events following Snout's KO back in mongreltown has officially moved from 1% to 0%. It was bizarre and disjointed to begin with, but in hindsight, it's even worse. So, Angry-Bald knocks snout unconscious in the middle of town and then he wakes up. We don't even know if he was actually injured. It didn't look fun, but he's apparently woke up with nothing more than smelling salts. We must assume this was only a few minutes later, given he was still in the middle of the street. At which point, we are told that after being knocked out, everyone else "disappeared". Does that mean they just left? Or literally, as in teleported away? Arudak has kind of demonstrated an ability like that, but Ink Witch Prime seems to rely on her ship. Maybe the Redactor can? We never actually see her arrive...to all appearances she and Bald Guy were just standing outside of Snout and Ink Witch Prime's room, waiting for them to walk outside for a dramatic scene. Given that Arudak would presumably not have left without Snout, the only thing that really makes sense is the Redactor and Bald Guy forcing them to accompany them elsewhere. Which, you'd think would be something that snout might ask about, or they might explain without prompting, but apparently not. Now, despite this the two of them are both fine and together in a completely different country. All indication is that there's only been a few days between Snout being KO'd and reaching the gate. Which means, Redactor shows up, erases the diary, kidnaps Arudak and IWP, holds them for ??? days with nothing commentworthy happening (and indeed, both are in a great mood when they meet snout again, so...literally nothing happened except to snout?). One of the first thing IWP mentions is that Snout is lucky to be able to *walk* after being hit by Mohrg, so you'd think their very first priority would be returning to mongreltown to check on how he's doing. Both IWP and Arudak are demonstrably capable of traveling to the wild edge, despite the supposed magical problems which never do much more than make a mess. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, they did so and found snout left already. At which point they travel to maltak, rather than making any attempt to search for him. Instead, they apparently start using magic to contact him in dreams...the wild edge presumably being the reason that this took so long. However, that doesn't seem to have caused that much interference, given that they're apparently able to establish his position with enough precision that they can just tell him to travel "east" and reach the magic portal which apparently leads directly to arudak's home, so presumably he used it to get to the wild edge...but he expects snout to make his own way rather than just popping over himself to make sure snout arrives safe? There certainly seems to be nothing keeping him from doing so.
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Mar 23, 2021 19:30
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Joe Slowboat posted:I guarantee he read or became aware of Kill Six Billion Demons (which was inspired by the 36 Lessons of Vivec) and that's why he's doing it like this. K6BD has inspired a lot of 'if I use a cryptic phrase that means my writing is interesting and textured' copycats, when K6BD itself has a fun mythos, loads of style, and actually wants to say something with its setting and mysticism. If so the key thing he missed is that nearly all the mythos ends with "and also, this doesn't matter and isn't the important thing you should be taking away right now" Well, that and anything interesting
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Mar 23, 2021 19:41
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RBA Starblade posted:If so the key thing he missed is that nearly all the mythos ends with "and also, this doesn't matter and isn't the important thing you should be taking away right now" Also the thematic parallels in K6BD are incredibly clear - the mythos is commenting on the main plot, and providing a perspective on the setting. There's a lot of useful stuff there but it's marginalia to the main story. Secondly, there are actual themes and ideas being communicated. Unsurprisingly, esoteric stuff tends to want to communicate something to you, the reader, about the universe and the nature of life! The Legacy of Dominic Deegan doesn't seem to want to invest any of this with real meaning, just with the empty phrases that make it look like it might have meaning.
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Mar 23, 2021 20:48
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Fister Roboto posted:mommy inkies Missed a good chance to go for "big mommy inkers"
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Mar 23, 2021 21:25
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Mors Rattus posted:Yeah, I actually work with esoterica sometimes as an academic thing and it actually loving loves to explain itself. Like nested definitions and cross references and trying to desperately communicate to you what, in fact, the word “truth” means in this context. Sure, it may assume you’ve already put in decades of study on a specific moral philosophy and legal theory, but it does that so it can reference all that information in explaining the new stuff. It was a billion years ago but my graduate degree was mostly focused on studying christian mysticism myself so like this is something I've gotten very used to seeing and reading and it's SO OBVIOUS when someone's doing it and has no idea what they're actually doing. There's like, maybe zen koans have that kind of self-contained looping contradiction "this is the gate. it is not a gate." but most mysticism is meant to be instructive and at WORST it yeah uses coded language but coded language doesn't look like baby's first zen koan. He wanted to do a story about mysticism and instead of learning anything about it he did what all his protagonists are supposed to do. Do zero work and effort, because hard work and effort are EVIL. Instead, assume you're already the best most gifted person in the world, and just go out there and DO it. And you will succeed, because you're the chosen one. Which sits so bizarrely at odds with his book fetishism, but he's made it clear he mostly reads caped superhero comic books and considers those books and so his book fetishism is mostly honestly just him signaling that he wore glasses in highschool and books are his highschool team's deity, as opposed to the football. If, in Dominic Deegan, he ever encountered his true opposite, it would be a muscleomancer who would torment Deegan by raining footballs on his town, which would cause Dominic as much distress as the book rain did to those awful idiots of his hometown. Ironically doing a story about mysticism and the search for greater truths, and doing it by staring at incomprehensible books and being confused why you aren't enlightened, he's like, so close to pulling off some kind of self-aware parody and he just drove right by it
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Mar 23, 2021 21:36
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Yeah there's all the potential for fantasy works that actually delve into weird occultist texts and obscure mysticism. The Call of Cthulhu RPG has a few asides about how, even though mechanically reading the Necronomicon is just a question of having X time and losing Y SAN, it's interesting to think about the reality of books written by madmen about forbidden things that are probably incomplete and inaccurately translated and don't have professional editors and layout artists trying to make things accessible. Snout should be looking at walls of text that's obviously describing something but he can't quite find the link, or a lot of dry-to-the-point-of-unreadable academic blathering ("We can see from the writings of Grench the Elder that the gate is depicted without fixed shape (Asinotaph 24), but this does mean that the shapes written are without symbolic value per se. Deeper analysis of each shape is rare but the Manden Concordance gives us a few clues, to the extent that it is considered reliable...") Like you can find Castaneda at your local used bookstore, the occult section's likely full of weirdness, even the stuff that's too credulous and New Agey to take seriously is more interesting than this.
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Mar 23, 2021 22:31
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The writing on those symbols makes sense if you assume it's written from the perspective of someone who just had their mind blown by finding out some sort of cosmic truth, and it's stream of consciousness writing, like they just grabbed the nearest piece of paper and wrote the first stuff that came to mind. They wanted to get their thoughts down as fast as possible and aren't thinking quite logically and so they say a lot of stuff that sounds confusing but makes sense to them, and they kind of feel they'll try and explain better later. It absolutely doesn't work for a textbook that's supposed to be teaching people about this sort of thing, though.
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Mar 23, 2021 23:51
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I think the comparison to koans is instructive, in that yeah, he's clearly trying to do that. But with no understanding of the known theoretical purpose of koans - he's just stating contradictions, rather than doing what koans are supposed to do and create surprising moments that might spark enlightenment by breaking our preconceived categories. "This is the gate. This is not the gate." is what happens when you talk to two guards, one of whom always lies, and the other of whom always tells the truth.
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Mar 23, 2021 23:51
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From the current stickied thread on GBS. Not sorry. Actually, I am a bit.
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Mar 24, 2021 10:20
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This is the song that doesn't end, It just goes on and on my friend, Some people started singing it not knowing what it was, And they'll just keep on singing it forever just because,
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Mar 24, 2021 11:17
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Mors Rattus posted:Yeah, I actually work with esoterica sometimes as an academic thing and it actually loving loves to explain itself. Like nested definitions and cross references and trying to desperately communicate to you what, in fact, the word “truth” means in this context. Sure, it may assume you’ve already put in decades of study on a specific moral philosophy and legal theory, but it does that so it can reference all that information in explaining the new stuff. tag yourself, i'm DEVS
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Mar 24, 2021 23:15
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Fister Roboto posted:tag yourself, i'm DEVS I'm the bubble next to it that I misread as POTATOES
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Mar 24, 2021 23:18
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Fister Roboto posted:tag yourself, i'm DEVS I’m the virginator.
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Mar 25, 2021 00:55
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Fister Roboto posted:tag yourself, i'm DEVS Or maybe the Dominions that appear to have gotten a promotion, or the Thrones and Virtues that got demoted.
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Mar 25, 2021 01:22
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He's spent so long rereading the comic, he grew 6 inches of arm hair between panel 1 and panel 2.
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Mar 25, 2021 03:03
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Fister Roboto posted:tag yourself, i'm DEVS I'm AER GROSSUS Kavak posted:I'm the bubble next to it that I misread as POTATOES Yeah, it clearly says POTATES.
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Mar 25, 2021 10:23
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Twelve by Pies posted:I'm AER GROSSUS TOWN AER GROSSUS
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Mar 25, 2021 10:31
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PROBLEM: can't read orc TIME SPENT LEARNING TO READ ORC: 1 panel
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Mar 25, 2021 15:05
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Snout is looking more and more like a cat.
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Mar 25, 2021 16:28
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Is Watercaller Stonewater or Luna. I really don't like trying to remember what happened in that dreadful arc.
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Mar 25, 2021 16:29
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Sleeping in a bed : Multiple pages Learning a new language : half a page.
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Mar 25, 2021 16:36
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It's a villain trait to expend effort.
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Mar 25, 2021 16:43
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Well, I'm glad we got that out of the way.
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Mar 25, 2021 17:12
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Ague Proof posted:Is Watercaller Stonewater or Luna. It's Luna.
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Mar 25, 2021 17:41
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