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Partly because he mostly writes by either loving up established tropes or poorly copying story beats from better works of fiction, lots of ideas in Dominic Deegan work on paper. Other than some of the truly abhorrent stuff like ~heroic rapist~ most of the basic story ideas and character concepts (in their broadest senses, anyway) in the original comic and to an extent even Legacy work in theory. It's just the lazy and id-unleashed execution that turns Mookie's writing from 'boring cargo cult' into 'glorious trainwreck.' Because, I mean, I think I and other have said it in this very thread, Dominic is a fun and interesting character; in theory. 'A surly seer who's misanthropy hides considerable compassion finds himself being constantly pulled into adventure' is a fine and fun concept. It's not even that dissimilar from Geralt; the Witcher 3 in particular is basically just a surly old man who's so loving done with all this nonsense being constantly roped into dealing with other people's problems and along the way the audience getting to understand that beneath the cynicism and weariness is a truly compassionate and thoughtful soul. The idea of a character with the power of foresight constantly doing weird poo poo because it will somehow work out in the end is great! It was arguably the basis for a lot of the humor in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. And you can milk it for pathos, too, by going the puppetmaster route. But like, here's the thing again about the execution and all that. The idea of a seer protagonist who does immoral things for the greater good is a compelling one, and even in the hands of a good writer there are good chances it would carry unintended meaning and glorify tough men making tough decisions. But the thing is, in most versions of that character you or I can imagine, the author would be emotionally and morally mature enough to recognize that while they may feel 'the ends justify the means' is a valid moral sentiment, they still understand that doing bad things makes people feel bad and look bad. In the hands of basically any author besides Mookie, Dominic might still be a puppetmaster who manipulates his friends, family, and basically everyone he comes into contact with, but he'd at least, you know, feel bad about it. And understand why people dislike him for it. It would be problematic in other ways and have issues, but it would at least betray the fact the author understands that treating people like objects is a bad thing, even if they feel it can sometimes be the lesser of two evils. Like I kind of lost the plot a bit here, but I suppose my TL;DR points are 1. Most of Mookie's basic ideas are good or even great but that's because they're not original and all the insanity comes from his bizarre executions. 2. The bar for executing these tropes and cliches in a satisfying, or at least average/standard, way is very low. Mookie still fails to clear it every single time.
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Jul 9, 2021 14:48
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I think in a vacuum it'd work but I feel like there's a few glaring issues here. For one thing, Dominic founded that random library in the rear end end of nowhere so it feels weird that it's in the middle of nowhere and sucks rear end. I guess you could assume Dominic built the Wild Edge Library for the sole purpose of getting Snout started and that's why it's built near his house instead of Mongreltown, but then it robs Snout of even more agency and makes him just a vacant soft boi for Dominic to play with. The other thing that's a spoiler for the OG comic is that Dominic lost his vision powers to the Door of Truth, so how could he even begin to plan this far ahead.
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Jul 9, 2021 14:51
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People are underestimating how long original Deegan was. Around The World is also a huge slog.
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Jul 9, 2021 15:01
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I'm just going to watch the time Mr Bean went to a library archive. Much more satisfying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vx3lWoDJXY
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Jul 9, 2021 15:38
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Invisible Clergy posted:So Mookie just forgot Snout doesn't have his library card. I don't know why I expected anything different.
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Jul 9, 2021 15:40
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Ague Proof posted:People are underestimating how long original Deegan was. Around The World is also a huge slog. in my defence it's because i forgot most of it
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Jul 9, 2021 15:47
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TheHan posted:I think in a vacuum it'd work but I feel like there's a few glaring issues here. For one thing, Dominic founded that random library in the rear end end of nowhere so it feels weird that it's in the middle of nowhere and sucks rear end. I guess you could assume Dominic built the Wild Edge Library for the sole purpose of getting Snout started and that's why it's built near his house instead of Mongreltown, but then it robs Snout of even more agency and makes him just a vacant soft boi for Dominic to play with. The other thing that's a spoiler for the OG comic is that Dominic lost his vision powers to the Door of Truth, so how could he even begin to plan this far ahead. Still wouldn't explain why that library doesn't have a loving roof
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Jul 9, 2021 16:18
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Invisible Clergy posted:(who practices some more conservative religion to make Luanians look better. It was never mentioned prior to this and is never mentioned again) It cannot be emphasized enough how much Mookie's story-telling is hampered by a complete unwillingness to plan anything out or set anything up. There is never foreshadowing, there is never any groundwork laid to allow character actions to be understandable or relatable, only post-facto explanations by know-it-alls; there is never a natural extrapolation of ideas, any thought to how multiple concepts separately established would interact and conflict and naturally evoke stories and plots; there is only the immediate plot based on whatever he is most recently inspired by - anime, superheroes, Twitter comments - and the world elements that are immediately conjured up and then immediately discarded to support that plot. Contemplate this: that Mookie wrote a multi-year comic about a man whose major advertised ability was having visions of the future, and Mookie refused to think more than a few strips in advance for any of it.
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Jul 9, 2021 16:45
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skeleton warrior posted:Contemplate this: that Mookie wrote a multi-year comic about a man whose major advertised ability was having visions of the future, and Mookie refused to think more than a few strips in advance for any of it. Always in motion is the future. Sometimes the Force is just the Force.
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Jul 9, 2021 16:57
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I want to point out since we've been seeing Prento's name as an author in books: Dominic really hosed his former students over by doing whatever altered magic and made it stop working the way it used to, and causing the end of visions. We've seen him just before Snowsong work as a teacher for divination magic and that's gone. Dominic put Prento out of a job.
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Jul 9, 2021 17:00
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People more eloquent than me have already commented on this page so all I can say is  Invisible Clergy posted:I think Stunt went out the window to escape before the dad came back, but I don't remember anyone being thrown out a window. iirc It was Lizzy who went out the window, because as soon as the woman she was with gets stabbed she decides she wants to be nowhere near the scene of a murder and flees while everyone is screaming. This of course makes her a Bad Woman and she also joins Jayden in the convent where Bad Women go to repent. I think the end of Stunt's character arc is going to talk with her off-screen, because like with Jayden women's backstories exist only for men's development. MiracleFlare fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Jul 9, 2021 |
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Jul 9, 2021 17:39
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Rotten Red Rod posted:Still wouldn't explain why that library doesn't have a loving roof actually this brings up a problem I have with the mongrel folk in general. When they were joking cartoony people living in memespeak land, it was fine that the library was just a bunch of stacks in the middle of an open field. But now that Mookie has developed them into a separate nation, one that Dominic condescendingly wanted to "share knowledge" with, it actually starts to become an almost problematic representation by accident. Because the joke with the mongrel folk is that they're mentally abnormal in some way. They speak in a way that is supposed to represent that, and when Snout went to mongrel town the only bookstore was for sex perverts. The tone of the presentation was jokey, that was okay, but now we are supposed to take those elements we were introduced to previously as serious parts of world building, which makes the mongrel folk seems stupid and infantile. It just feels wrong, especially when combined with orc professor's little eugenics screed. It's like the mongrel folk are inherently inferior species, and especially with the name mongrel folk, it just feels that his gesturing toward some sort of racial storyline that I don't think Mookie is aware of. The fact that our only mongrel folk character of note is also disabled, and so far the only disabled character, is also sort of weird. The fact that all the good characters are doting on the otherwise clueless and powerless Snout, and that the mean or villanous characters are denigrating him for being disabled, is setting up this imagery where the mongrel folk are like a race of people defined by disability, which Mookie's Mary Sue's all behave extremely charitably to the point of infantilization. I don't think Mookie intended this, but it's just his writing has naturally tended towards this direction. Like I can't think of a more insulting depiction of deaf people than snout, who has so far been able to do literally nothing on his own, and sits in the corner cluelessly as the plot happens around him. What a disempowering figure to make the centrepiece of your story prominently featuring disability. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Jul 9, 2021 |
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Jul 9, 2021 17:47
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I wonder if this library has a copy of The Beginner's Guide to Lucid Dreaming. Because Snout and Mookie don't seem to care, so someone has to.
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Jul 9, 2021 19:28
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Will Snout use his new powers of lucid dreams to dream gently caress everyone he knows?
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Jul 9, 2021 19:31
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Beelzebufo posted:actually this brings up a problem I have with the mongrel folk in general. When they were joking cartooning people living in memespeak land, it was fine that the library was just a bunch of stacks in the middle of an open field. But now that Mookie has developed them into a separate nation, one that Dominic condescendingly wanted to "share knowledge" with, it actually starts to become an almost problematic representation by accident. Because the joke with the mongrel folk is that they're mentally abnormal in some way. They speak in a way that is supposed to represent that, and when Snout went to mongrel town the only bookstore was for sex perverts. The tone of the presentation was jokey, that was okay, but now we are supposed to take those elements we were introduced to previously as serious parts of world building, which makes the mongrel folk seems stupid and infantile. It just feels wrong, especially when combined with orc professor's little eugenics screed. It's like the mongrel folk are inherently inferior species, and especially with in a mongrel folk, it just feels that his gesturing toward some sort of racial storyline that I don't think Mookie is aware of. It's an inherent and known problem in cartoons/books/sitcoms where the original premise for something was very jokey, and over time you have a tone shift, and suddenly all of your jokey "just there for the comedy bit" gags have to somehow fit into the new, serious atmosphere. Cerebus, for example, got hit hard by that when Sim made the successful leap from comedy parody to serious drama but still had a character who dressed like Groucho Marx and one who talked like Foghorn Leghorn. (This was before Sim got divorced and went full incel crazy.) Mookie could avoid this if he actually had a plan and an idea about what he wanted to do, but it's Mookie.
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Jul 9, 2021 20:05
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The lack of planning is why the library in an orc town has a message saying "If a mongrel folk comes to learn, let them have access to all the best books," rather than the Wild Edge (where mongrel folk actually live) having an enormously grand library. Mookie didn't think far enough ahead as to where he wanted the story to go aside from "Snout needs a book that his local library doesn't have" so now there's a weird deus ex machina that's either "Dominic foresaw Snout's journey 200 years ago!" or Dominic is just kinda dumb and didn't think to make the library for mongrel folk a better library and that it'd be better for them to have to go to a bigger library instead.
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Jul 9, 2021 20:28
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And all these libraries have the same library card system inexplicably despite being in totally different countries with different primary languages (not that that seems to matter aside from like 2 books Snout couldn't read and a sign about dinner).
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Jul 9, 2021 20:32
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TheHan posted:I guess you could assume Dominic built the Wild Edge Library for the sole purpose of getting Snout started and that's why it's built near his house instead of Mongreltown, but then it robs Snout of even more agency and makes him just a vacant soft boi for Dominic to play with.
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Jul 9, 2021 20:55
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I mean, Dominic is just Mookie Prime. They're all just soft bois and girls for 'Dominic' to play with.
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Jul 9, 2021 21:17
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Zerilan posted:Eldariat To Die is a long long way away. It's chapter 37, we're currently in chapter 20, and some of those chapters are stupidly long. Maltak was an entire year. My mistake. I didn't check because I like to be surprised. MiracleFlare posted:People more eloquent than me have already commented on this page so all I can say is That definitely sounds right. I think he writes her a letter once he retires from the comic to be a park ranger. We'll see eventually.
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Jul 10, 2021 01:40
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No dialogue in this comic.
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Jul 12, 2021 05:40
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Robot Style posted:No dialogue in this comic. Did you post a new page or something? My eyes just keep sliding to the task bar
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Jul 12, 2021 05:51
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I know I'm not one to speak on typos. But "the knowledge he gleamed", lol. Mookie has a talent in taking the poetry out of moments with his explanations. Jumping ahead in the comic, this strip is referencing this moment:  Which has a sweet little bit of pathos to it despite it being part of DD. Bulgak has transcended his sins and is reborn, as the land he loves is reborn. The last of the lost orcish souls to come home. Like I said, there's a nice bit of poetic imagery to it, a nice symbolic rebirth. Instead, we now know that it's canon that that flower turns into a sentient sunflower person, because that very specific bit of ground is now magically birhting sentient plants because Bulgak (and I guess only Bulgak?) got reborn into the land. Never mind the countless other orcs that died, they don't generate sunflower people for some reason. Whatever poetic imagery was present is swallowed up by nonsense magibabble. Also, this feels like a direct rebutall to this post: YF-23 posted:I want to point out since we've been seeing Prento's name as an author in books: Dominic really hosed his former students over by doing whatever altered magic and made it stop working the way it used to, and causing the end of visions. We've seen him just before Snowsong work as a teacher for divination magic and that's gone. Dominic put Prento out of a job. See, it was the student who actually did it! Not Dominic screwing them at all! In fact, in a book presumably written years after the fact, Prento still takes time to directly thank Dominic deegan in the main text, not even in a dedication or anything.
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Jul 12, 2021 05:52
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Robot Style posted:No dialogue in this comic. Something special to spend a page on a character who doesn't appear in this comic fellating another character who won't appear in this comic. Hell to just slap that much text, formatted that way on a page and think it's interesting to the reader. You couldn't think of a way of conveying that info in a visual medium? Perhaps with characters actually doing something?
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Jul 12, 2021 06:15
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loving hell I'm not reading that well ok I probably will Honestly at this point I'd respect him more if he pulled a Poppy O'Possum and just went full text.
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Jul 12, 2021 06:25
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I think I'm at a loss for words because they are all on that page
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Jul 12, 2021 06:32
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Beelzebufo posted:Also, this feels like a direct rebutall to this post: It's really funny to have mookie give a direct response to my post I have to admit. There is a part of me that appreciates the idea of a teacher's legacy being their students, but I can't give credit for it given how masturbatory mookie's treatment of Dominic has been throughout both comics.
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Jul 12, 2021 08:42
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Robot Style posted:No dialogue in this comic.
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Jul 12, 2021 09:04
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And here we get a better view of the hollow core of the story. Something Mookie has failed time and time again to establish is why should we care? There are no stakes. Nobody is in danger. Nothing is about to change. All they are looking at has already happened. There are no villains- well okay there are those two folks I guess who we haven't seen for a while and haven't actually done anything yet- there's no prize, the mystery isn't even that big of a mystery, it's just... So there's no divination anymore. So what?
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Jul 12, 2021 09:06
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Okay, finished catching up to Beelzebufo's analysis. Whoever said this chapter was vile was spot-on. I've seen people mention this event ITT but knowing the full context of Mookie wanting to punish a ~vile temptress~, who is also a stand-in for his ex, makes it so much worse. There's also something misogynistic about having Jayden take all the blame of the cheating for herself while removing any agency Siggy had on the act by literally making him a voiceless and faceless goon in the story. I know some people work through their issues using their comic sometimes, but Mookie's hangups have always dripped into the comic. Having Milov throw a huge snarling tantrum and then punishing his cheating whore of a girlfriend by ripping her throat is seriously disturbing, especially when the Mookie stand-ins immediately reassures him that his actions were understandable. Beelzebufo posted:Also, this feels like a direct rebutall to this post: What I don't get is whether Mookie is only blaming the loss of visions on Prento and his classmates, or whether he's blaming the whole "magic has become softer now" thing on them. Either way, it's a gross retcon to make St. Dominic completely blameless for destroying people's livelihoods.
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Jul 12, 2021 11:33
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I’m not even sure what style this book is meant to be in, other than bad. Is it a biography? A history book? Why is it written this way?
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Jul 12, 2021 12:09
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Oh great, Nimmel's in this?
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Jul 12, 2021 14:09
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Yeah Dominic was so saintly and kind with his visions. He would never watch someone go to hell and then not tell his closest friends about it, or see his brother kill a woman and construct an elaborate ruse that almost kills people isn't of telling him.He definitely never found being an oracle to be a chore akin to community service. I know this is a sequel series and it's common to mythologize the protagonist of the original, but trying it with Dominic Deegan of all people by talking about him in a way that isn't supported by the text at all is bold. Almost as bold as retconning the destruction of all magic to being the dirty work of his students and not Dominic directly. Is it supposed to be better now that 8 white kids got to destroy orc culture instead of one white guy? It also completely invalidates everything in the Legacy up to this point since instead of investigating Dominic they should've been looking into one of the 8 people who actually were involved and wrote about what happened in readily available books.
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Jul 12, 2021 14:35
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It's a real deescalation that we started this out with wizards apparently fighting over handwritten writings about Dominic Deegan, and now said wizards are pals and we're in a library reading books about Dominic and his students, written by said students.
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Jul 12, 2021 16:42
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Yes, but there are other wizards that want to steal the knowledge and keep it to themselves. I think. Maybe. If Mookie ever remembers they are supposed to part of the plot. Also what knowledge are they hoarding? The only thing so far anyone's fought over are the pages which had a tiny paragraph. This publicly available library book has far more information, and Snout didn't even discover it himself, Veth led him right to it.
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Jul 12, 2021 16:46
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I could see something along the lines of “Dominic spent his last years theorycrafting about how to unfuck magic using his knowledge from his time serving as the champion of order, and now everyone’s fighting over every last scrap of his writings from that time”. Like, say the Redactor wants to hoard that knowledge so she and her cohorts can selectively power themselves up to rule over the world, while Ink Witch wants to spread it as much as she can.
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Jul 12, 2021 19:40
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Regalingualius posted:I could see something along the lines of “Dominic spent his last years theorycrafting about how to unfuck magic using his knowledge from his time serving as the champion of order, and now everyone’s fighting over every last scrap of his writings from that time”. He can’t, because he doesn’t really believe in democratization of power. Everything about original run DD was about how power should only be in the hands of the few, as long as those few are Good.
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Jul 12, 2021 19:45
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I wonder if Dominic also exploded in hell.
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Jul 12, 2021 19:59
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Mors Rattus posted:He can’t, because he doesn’t really believe in democratization of power. Everything about original run DD was about how power should only be in the hands of the few, as long as those few are Good. Mookie has a very "good people are good" "bad people are bad" world view in all of his work not just original dd
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Jul 12, 2021 20:06
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Real big “everybody should be asking ‘where’s Poochie?’” energy in this comic
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Jul 12, 2021 21:01
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