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Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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

The secret is D&D alignment is kinda nonsense

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Toalpaz
Mar 20, 2012

Peace through overwhelming determination
I think dnd alignment is okay for giving very new players a hint about how to roleplay if they're lost. Some structure is good for imagining how people would react 'in character'. I don't think it matters much or should matter much in normal play after people's introduction to the system and character creation, but that being said if you and your friends are into it an 'alignment matters' campaign would be fun.

What I don't get with mookie is the disconnect between 'LG has a moral good and are incorruptible and will always do good' and the implication being that rougish CG characters are corruptible. My understanding is that CG characters just do good as they see fit, not that they're especially on the fence about doing good or willing to do bad.

TheHan
Oct 29, 2011

Grind, you poor fool!
Grind straight for the stars!
Wait maybe Mookie’s issue wasn’t that he hated how people thought lawful good characters would always follow society’s laws no matter what, but that people thought that a character who always follows the law no matter what isn’t cool?

Even though I’ve played dnd a handful of times in my life I really like hearing all these different play styles since it shows what should be obvious to someone like Mookie who’s played for decades. You and your friends can interpret lawful good however you find most entertaining. You’d think a writer would understand a storytelling tool.

TheHan fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Aug 15, 2020

BattleMaster
Aug 14, 2000

Begemot posted:

Yeah, I'd say the "ACTUALLY, lawful good being right and the military/cops solving everything is subverting expectations" speaks to him being bitter over something. Like he just wanted to play his cool lawful good paladin and people kept messing with him, trying to force him to make hard choices or pointing out how it could be interpreted to support stuff that he, Mookie, found abhorrent.

There's a specific way that some rear end in a top hat players shut down when told "no" during a game. An extreme version of it is they'll say "then I won't say anything during social scenes and do nothing but run forward and attack during combat because I'm not allowed to do anything else in this game."

In this case it seems like he was told it would be out of character for a lawful good character to do something* so he just said "okay if I'm not allowed to save the world I guess we'll just call for help from the people who are allowed!!!"

*Not to defend alignment, I think alignment sucks

Invisible Clergy
Sep 25, 2015

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

Malachi 2:3

Skypie posted:

5e has a specific paladin subclass that you're supposed to get pushed into if you break your vows. It's called Oathbreaker and is flavored with Evil stuff and the DM is encouraged to make the paladin player jump through lots of hoops to get back to their original Oath.

It's less about alignment specifically and more about the tenets related to the Oath subclass you choose, but the possibility is still there
3e has two similar classes, one an overtly evil darth vader fallen type called blackguard and one an edgelord Jack Bauer torturer called grayguard if you want to not write "Evil" on your sheet.

Kavak posted:

I have no developed feelings on D&D past 3.5, but anyone using the alignment system without the larger D&D cosmology or god forbid outside D&D itself has brain worms.

We've all gone over the reasons and whys of Mookie being the way he is, but I would love to understand why someone would be a fan of him and stay a fan of him after they graduated high school or the like.
It's a fun way to waste time making funny alignment memes where all the cells are batman or whatever, but like harry potter fans, when you see people arguing about real life humans' alignments, it is indeed a 100% accurate sign of brain worms.

I can't imagine anyone being a fan of Mookie. Anyone who I see interacting with him on twitter or whatever, I just assume is someone from somewhere else touching the poop.

Hostile V posted:

Do you have stairs in your house?
I am protected

Twelve by Pies
May 4, 2012

Again a very likpatous story
Looking at Star Power going through the galaxy and punching guys in the face because "they're bad" just reminds me of how Star Trek TNG had the Prime Directive which forbid interference on planets that hadn't achieved space travel yet (and yeah I know it was in the original series too but TNG was the first one to really fully explore the ethical ramifications of it). It really helped the series mostly avoid the White Man's Burden problem of going around to enlighten these underdeveloped societies of how to be as noble and wonderful as us humans. I know it's kind of a running joke that captains broke it all the time but there were instances in TNG where it was upheld even to the detriment of things, like there was a season one episode where it turned out some aliens were selling drugs to another intelligent species on their planet claiming it was a cure for a disease, and Picard determined it was better to uphold the Prime Directive than to give away the fact that the cure was a scam.

Anyway even if it was broken constantly it at the very least prompted discussion in episodes of if breaking it was really the right thing to do, what could be the problems with doing it, why it existed in the first place, and so on. More often than not the Prime Directive was mostly treated as an obstacle, but they rarely just flat out ignored it. It made things interesting and while the Prime Directive itself may or may not have been the best rule to follow in situations, it at least existed in the first place to address the issues of spacefaring people going around imposing their will on planets that hadn't achieved that level of technological advancement yet. It's certainly better than "godlike being just lands on planets and starts beating up the native life."

Toalpaz
Mar 20, 2012

Peace through overwhelming determination

Twelve by Pies posted:

It's certainly better than "godlike being just lands on planets and starts beating up the native life."

:thunk: But what if Danica is morally superior to the natives and has no respect for sovereignty...?

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Toalpaz posted:

:thunk: But what if Danica is morally superior to the natives and has no respect for sovereignty...?

This is the Culture but like, the books don’t always buy the Culture’s rationale, and also they’re space anarchocommunists with giant city-ships and hallucinogen glands in their brains for manual self-adjustment, nobody would mistake the Culture for ‘literally just America 2004’ - and even so the Culture was explicitly a commentary on the US in 2004.

Rotten Red Rod
Mar 5, 2002

You’ve been bad little boys and girls, so you get another issue.

Chapter 5.2



Guest cover again. I like it again.



I’m gonna stop showing every single Hymn/him pun here because… Well, because.



The comic wastes 2 more pages beating into your head that Dr. Hymn is evil.



Burke decides against buzzing his hair again, and… Oh.



Oh no.



Muscle Lizard insists on a goofy shirt. Hyuk hyuk, that ham! Speaking of “ham”, remember his loving weird and ill-timed “joke” from a previous chapter?



Well it turns out it’s a Tim Conway joke, and Mookie has modeled Muscle Lizard off Tim Conway since then. Only read that linked blog if you want your brain to melt from stupidity.



Chief guy is obsessed with the cold case involving Burke and is resolved to solve it. Uh… Isn’t he, like, the head of security for this space station? Why is he doing this detective work? Is that actually in his jurisdiction?




Burke gets a cold reception from Danica when he arrives, but soon they’re talking about music, and he shares his musical tastes, and in what I assume is supposed to be a joke, he likes Lynyrd Skynyrd.



They arrive at the estate, which is actually a terraformed asteroid. Huh, some good worldbuilding for once! Neat!



Something about the case the Chief is working on involves Dr. Hymn, but he can’t contact the crew because Hymn has a communications blocker. What’s this? Stakes?



Garth gets to draw his favorite thing: cheesecake! (BTW, just a reminder to not look at his Twitter or Patreon unless you want lots of porn in your face.)

And Dr. Hymn’s minions are collecting body samples from their shower water. HMMM I WONDER WHY HE WOULD NEED THAT. AND I WONDER WHY THEY HAVE THE SAME COLOR HAIR AS HYMN! HMMM HMMM HMMMMMM

By the way, kind of a letdown that we only see the humans naked. What, we don’t get to see what Purple Lady or Octomom look like naked? Or even Muscle Lizard? Awww.



This is not at all a weird conversation that is nothing like how anyone actually talks!



… Ok? He’s in a suit. So?



Ok, this is what I was talking about. Earlier he corrected his assistant for being rude to Dr. Brightman, and now he’s doing the EXACT SAME THING himself. It’s really inconsistent. Mookie can’t decide if he’s supposed to be hyper-courteous or an aloof pompous dick.



See? Suddenly he’s all over her. What was the point of doing that earlier? Was he negging her or something?



And then we waste a page AGAIN showing that he’s collecting bodily samples from them. YES, WE KNOW THIS INFORMATION ALREADY.



Again it’s driven home that Burke should not be here and it was a stupid idea to bring him. And again Dr. Hymn is suddenly a dick after having been a perfect charming gentleman for pages. It’s just… Ugh.



New trait acquired: alcoholic. Excuse me, I mean, trait he’s always had, and wasn’t just made up at this very moment because it’s going to be important to the plot soon.



Uh oh, looks like one of Dr. Hymn’s minions has run away. Plot is beginning to happen!

The chapter ends with this MYSTERIOUS set of images. What could it mean? Can you figure it out, junior detectives?









Rotten Red Rod fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Aug 16, 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
&



Oh come on

catlord
Mar 22, 2009

What's on your mind, Axa?

Toalpaz posted:

I think dnd alignment is okay for giving very new players a hint about how to roleplay if they're lost. Some structure is good for imagining how people would react 'in character'. I don't think it matters much or should matter much in normal play after people's introduction to the system and character creation, but that being said if you and your friends are into it an 'alignment matters' campaign would be fun.

What I don't get with mookie is the disconnect between 'LG has a moral good and are incorruptible and will always do good' and the implication being that rougish CG characters are corruptible. My understanding is that CG characters just do good as they see fit, not that they're especially on the fence about doing good or willing to do bad.

Yeah, I don't have an issue with D&D alignment (I will admit, I never moved on from 3e so I am unfamiliar with how 4e and 5e handle things), because it's supposed to be a guide to help with roleplaying, and it's explicitly noted (in the 3e books at least) that there is lots of variation from within, and they had an example of a LG character who might occasionally give in to temptation and steal something small and unaccompanied, but that doesn't change their overall alignment. You can, in fact, be good and have some selfish tendencies, or lawful with a mischievous bent. This does fall apart a little with mechanical representation, such as Detect Good/Evil spells where the mechanics make a stricter reading more attractive, and frankly I'd probably change that so it's more for dealing with things like outsiders, who are explicitly semi-physical personifications of their alignments, for all the reasons stated. On occasion I find myself wondering if they shouldn't have stuck with just the law-chaos axis, but as we saw with BD&D, that tends to just end up with "lawful" meaning "good" and "chaotic" "evil".

The "paladin trap" is, I feel, more of a failure to truly understand the concept of "Lawful Good". Here we see people who focus so much on the "law" aspect (follow these rules or else, no backing down, no compromises) that they forget about, you know, the "good" aspect (kindness, understanding, and forgiveness) that's supposed to balance it out and allow for a more nuanced view of the situation. This, I feel, ends up at the root of the Lawful Stupid phenomenon, where the paladin player is primed to view things through a lens of law primarily since that's generally what the (bad) DM will wield as a club against them. Worse, many of those bad DMs will, after running a paladin trap, argue that "well, if only you played better you'd have found a secret option that was actually perfect" which is a poo poo cop-out for screwing over those players and works to put the blame on them rather than the DMs who don't truly understand what they're doing.

Naturally, we see Mookie fall into this exact trap with the Elf War. Of course Danica is good, of course she doesn't need to compromise any of her ideals, because if you're really, truly good you can find the secret dialogue option that lets you sidestep the entire issue.

It's also an indictment of Mookie's understanding of a paladin in general. He sees the paladin as a "knight in shining armour," but fails to register that a paladin is supposed to have decent charisma (Hell, 1e had them require 17 Cha!). A paladin isn't supposed to just do good by going around slaying monsters, they're supposed to also be diplomats, orators, preachers and wordsmiths. They are supposed to be uniters, who appeal to the commonality in everybody, who bring people together for a common good. When a paladin finally leaves a town, they haven't just slain a dragon or what have you, they have helped solve problems, smooth over troubles and long-standing grudges, and finally inspired the community to be better, to be more compassionate, to reach a hand out to those less fortunate and to show that together they don't need to fear the night. Danica doesn't do that, and it is absolutely why Elf Wars ends on a wet fart. She helped a handful of people, but despite us being told that she did, we can see she didn't leave the world a better place.

God, I hope this is as understandable and not stupid as I think it is.

TheHan
Oct 29, 2011

Grind, you poor fool!
Grind straight for the stars!
This kind of feels like he’s trying to write a stock horror story? Something about this arc feels weird when paired with this cosmic powered fed and her galaxy spanning army.

Rotten Red Rod
Mar 5, 2002

TheHan posted:

This kind of feels like he’s trying to write a stock horror story? Something about this arc feels weird when paired with this cosmic powered fed and her galaxy spanning army.

Yup. Mookie's upcoming issue is the only story left in the series that actually has Danica doing galactic-level hero stuff. We just get this and a noir story.

TheHan
Oct 29, 2011

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

Rotten Red Rod posted:

Yup. Mookie's upcoming issue is the only story left in the series that actually has Danica doing galactic-level hero stuff. We just get this and a noir story.

Lmao, Mookie no! What about the power upgrades? Did writing for a cosmic level hero just prove too hard?

Also just blown away by that blog post claiming Dominic Deegan couldn’t reference modern things without ruining the world. Seer’s Catalogue was like the first joke! They had superhero comics!

Rotten Red Rod
Mar 5, 2002

TheHan posted:

Lmao, Mookie no! What about the power upgrades? Did writing for a cosmic level hero just prove too hard?

Also just blown away by that blog post claiming Dominic Deegan couldn’t reference modern things without ruining the world. Seer’s Catalogue was like the first joke! They had superhero comics!

Well he probably had more stories in mind, but seeing as they spent literally two years on the last two chapters of the story, it's no surprise Garth chose to end the comic. It's Mookie's fault he decided that was what he wanted to do during that time.

It's amusing that he LOVES the Conway joke moment and thinks it's some of the best character building he's ever done... And in context it's utterly baffling, because of the joke itself (which barely makes sense), the very, VERY tone deaf timing of it, and the fact that the characters found it funny regardless. Mookie has a different definition in his head of what good writing is than we do, clearly.

Toalpaz
Mar 20, 2012

Peace through overwhelming determination

catlord posted:

Danica doesn't do that, and it is absolutely why Elf Wars ends on a wet fart. She helped a handful of people, but despite us being told that she did, we can see she didn't leave the world a better place.

God, I hope this is as understandable and not stupid as I think it is.

No I get it, that was an interesting point and I appreciate it! :)

Rotten Red Rod
Mar 5, 2002

Yep I also read all of it, and have nothing to say because i agree!

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

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

This isn’t a superhero comic, which may be the funniest, most pathetic thing about it.

TheHan
Oct 29, 2011

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

Rotten Red Rod posted:

Well he probably had more stories in mind, but seeing as they spent literally two years on the last two chapters of the story, it's no surprise Garth chose to end the comic. It's Mookie's fault he decided that was what he wanted to do during that time.

Yeah I think a sudden genre shift can be interesting to see how our protagonists react to something new, but the majority of Danica’s adventures have nothing to do with being a superhero and even less with being a faster than light cosmic force. You’re already telling bad stories why give your fans less reason to stick around. This comic never stood a chance.

Beelzebufo
Mar 5, 2015

Frog puns are toadally awesome


Mors Rattus posted:

This isn’t a superhero comic, which may be the funniest, most pathetic thing about it.

Yes! Even think about what Star power has done so far. Threatened a blue lady, beat up some mercs with her friends, gone on an indiana jones themed cruise, Once did some debatably superhero things with the elves, even there again the military saved the day, and now some horror shenanigans with this dude. This is 5 chapters into what would turn out to be the canon 7 total. She does some stuff of screen, but it's literally just punching priminitive savages in the face with her god powers. She is the most underwhelming hero ever, having been given near limitless force as far as we can see, and she uses it for nothing.

I also found this going through Mookie's blog:


quote:

A Political Post. Sort of.

I try not to talk politics here. This is a sci-fi superhero adventure and you likely come here for a pleasant escape. I like to escape to the world we created, too. The Millennium Federation sure seems like a nice place to live these days, where humanity got its act together and soars among the stars alongside the peoples of over a thousand distant worlds...

Which given the timeframe and wording of the rest of the post seems to have related to the migrant caravans.


Again, just a little tidbit that I think bolsters my claim that this comic isn't about a superhero, it's about Mookie's personal version of the federation, representing an idealized US political system. It is an escape into a liberal phantasia, like a intergalactic West Wing.

Rotten Red Rod
Mar 5, 2002

Honestly I'm not even bothered by the variety of the stories. A "Superhero story" doesn't have to always mean going on an adventure that uses your powers in a certain way. It can be pretty much anything, and some of the best are the ones that break convention. What bugs me (well, amuses me more than anything) is how much stuff is set up and then just left hanging because the direction Mookie took completely ignores them. (Or directly contradicts + nullifies, as we'll see in the final chapter. HOO BOY.)

This comic moves SO SLOWLY (in terms of the release schedule - when reading it now it doesn't have that issue) and there's so much filler (I've cut out a LOT of pages from the last 2 issues that don't progress the story or just reiterate things we already know, over and over) that the story moved in a snails' pace for YEARS. Each chapter (5 issues) ended up taking a year, and who knows how many more side stories Mookie had in mind before getting back to Danica's main mission of seeking out the missing Sentinels and exploring other planets.

The Little Death posted:

Again, just a little tidbit that I think bolsters my claim that this comic isn't about a superhero, it's about Mookie's personal version of the federation, representing an idealized US political system. It is an escape into a liberal phantasia, like a intergalactic West Wing.

He honestly does seem more interested in the federation as a concept than the Star Powered Sentinels, yeah.

Beelzebufo
Mar 5, 2015

Frog puns are toadally awesome


Rotten Red Rod posted:

Honestly I'm not even bothered by the variety of the stories. A "Superhero story" doesn't have to always mean going on an adventure that uses your powers in a certain way. It can be pretty much anything, and some of the best are the ones that break convention. What bugs me (well, amuses me more than anything) is how much stuff is set up and then just left hanging because the direction Mookie took completely ignores them. (Or directly contradicts + nullifies, as we'll see in the final chapter. HOO BOY.)

This comic moves SO SLOWLY (in terms of the release schedule - when reading it now it doesn't have that issue) and there's so much filler (I've cut out a LOT of pages from the last 2 issues that don't progress the story or just reiterate things we already know, over and over) that the story moved in a snails' pace for YEARS. Each chapter (5 issues) ended up taking a year, and who knows how many more side stories Mookie had in mind before getting back to Danica's main mission of seeking out the missing Sentinels and exploring other planets.


He honestly does seem more interested in the federation as a concept than the Star Powered Sentinels, yeah.

I think the undermining of the stories is the point people are getting at though. It's not saying superheros have to be one thing, but Danica's presense in these stories isn't really necessary. She's more of a plot contrivance to get the interest of her friends and the space force she serves focused somewhere. But ultimately there's nothing that Starpower did that no-else could do.

TheHan
Oct 29, 2011

Grind, you poor fool!
Grind straight for the stars!
Yeah that’s mainly my issue. Immortal Hulk is a great horror series AND it uses a ton of pre-established elements and history that makes it feel like a Hulk Horror story and not a horror story with the Hulk. The clumsy communication jammer scene sticks out to me as a sign that even Mookie couldn’t think of a natural way to fit Star Power into this horror story, cause calling on the full military might of the feds to finish the job is such a big part of her character.

Plus yeah, there’s that issue with webcomic pacing. Not only is Mookie bad at it but story arcs online go on WAY longer in real time than they would in floppies. Going on multiple year long tangents that don’t feel like they should even involve the main character is a weird choice when readers know there are better things to focus on. There were a bunch of interesting stories* happening in the background of this arc even!

*I don’t know how many chapters of “Danica pummels the natives” you could realistically do, though.

YF-23
Feb 17, 2011

My god, it's full of cat!


Rotten Red Rod posted:



Ok, this is what I was talking about. Earlier he corrected his assistant for being rude to Dr. Brightman, and now he’s doing the EXACT SAME THING himself. It’s really inconsistent. Mookie can’t decide if he’s supposed to be hyper-courteous or an aloof pompous dick.



See? Suddenly he’s all over her. What was the point of doing that earlier? Was he negging her or something?

The point is to remind you that Hymn cares for Star Power only, because you, the reader, might have stupidly forgotten the base premise of this story.

TheHan posted:

The clumsy communication jammer scene sticks out to me as a sign that even Mookie couldn’t think of a natural way to fit Star Power into this horror story, cause calling on the full military might of the feds to finish the job is such a big part of her character.

Oh yeah, there's no way this doesn't end with the chief getting worried and sending in the troops to save Danica & co at the last moment.

Cat Mattress
Jul 14, 2012

by Cyrano4747

Rotten Red Rod posted:

He honestly does seem more interested in the federation as a concept than the Star Powered Sentinels, yeah.

But on the other hand, he has nothing to say about it.

So we know they have 1015 races (well now 1018 thanks to Danica rallying the Zicuri and the Evebenebevenenians), that they have a competent military force that also serves as the police force and that they have psychology operatives (nicknamed psi cops) who investigate people deemed a potential risk. We know they rely on star gates for interstellar travel. We also know that they have relatively lawless areas where space biker gangs and mercenary clans thrive.

But that's loving all. He goes on and on about how the federation is a utopia where everybody is happy and prosperous and where the many races mostly get along, but that doesn't say us how it works. What's the political system (besides a federation). What is federated? Planets, people, nations, all at once? (I mean, to take a real world example, Belgium is politically divided in three regions and three communities, with six governments.) What are the competences of the federal government? How are conflicts arbitrated? We know they have prisons and criminals, so how about the justice system?

All that stuff remains abstract. We just get told "trust me, it's good". Of course, that may be for the better; because I don't see Mookie having enough political awareness to design an apparently-good system that wouldn't actually be horrible if you give it more thought than he did. (You know the saying about good intentions paving the road to Hell.) So if we're just told everything is as close to perfect as can be achieved without ever getting into details, we can keep the suspension of disbelief on that point more easily.

Rotten Red Rod
Mar 5, 2002

Yep. It's explicitly a fantasy on Mookie's part. I kind of understand the compulsion - things are pretty hosed in the real world right now, and wanting that kind of escapism is a natural response. But of course he hasn't considered the implications of what he's created at all.

It again reminds me of Scott McCloud's Zot!, which also takes place in a utopia - but one that explicitly is meant to be an unrealisticly better fantasy world that is tempting to the female lead when compared to the drab, mean real world. It's pretty much the main theme of the comic.

the yeti
Mar 29, 2008

memento disco



Rotten Red Rod posted:

This comic moves SO SLOWLY (in terms of the release schedule

In minute fairness to mookie, garth’s gaiman rip-off comic was really slow/inconsistent too so that might not be on mookster.

Rotten Red Rod
Mar 5, 2002

the yeti posted:

In minute fairness to mookie, garth’s gaiman rip-off comic was really slow/inconsistent too so that might not be on mookster.

Then the story needs to move faster! Try reading these 2 issues without my cuts and commentary. They have the same scenes over and over again teaching you the same information. Like how many times we learn Hymn is evil, or how many times we learn his music is good, or how many times we learn he's collecting their body fluids. This entire story could have been one, two issues tops, and lost practically nothing.

super sweet best pal
Nov 18, 2009

Rotten Red Rod posted:

They have the same scenes over and over again teaching you the same information.

But enough about Legacy of Dominic Deegan.

Spending too much time catching characters up on things the audience already knew is a huge writing pitfall. I was really bored watching Project Metalbeast because while the movie started strong, it spent a huge bulk of its time having the main characters try to solve the mystery of what the viewer had witnessed in the opening scenes of the movie and far too little of a rampaging werewolf with metal grafted onto it.

TheHan
Oct 29, 2011

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

Rotten Red Rod posted:

Then the story needs to move faster! Try reading these 2 issues without my cuts and commentary. They have the same scenes over and over again teaching you the same information. Like how many times we learn Hymn is evil, or how many times we learn his music is good, or how many times we learn he's collecting their body fluids. This entire story could have been one, two issues tops, and lost practically nothing.

Y'now I bet being suddenly expected to write a script and hit a page count is hard as hell for Mookie, so he keeps spinning his wheels until he's burned enough pages to get to the good stuff. But...you could just use those pages to raise tension and develop characters...so maybe repeating things constantly is his idea of tension and character building?

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



TheHan posted:

Y'now I bet being suddenly expected to write a script and hit a page count is hard as hell for Mookie, so he keeps spinning his wheels until he's burned enough pages to get to the good stuff. But...you could just use those pages to raise tension and develop characters...so maybe repeating things constantly is his idea of tension and character building?
I... Think he's trying to give subtle hints, and then more explicit hints, except he's bad so the first ones weren't subtle at all and it was blatantly obvious they were harvesting DNA samples from the very first time he showed them doing it, for example

Rotten Red Rod
Mar 5, 2002

Zereth posted:

I... Think he's trying to give subtle hints, and then more explicit hints, except he's bad so the first ones weren't subtle at all and it was blatantly obvious they were harvesting DNA samples from the very first time he showed them doing it, for example

Keep this in mind, it'll make a post-comic moment in 5.4 very, very funny.

Regalingualius
Jan 7, 2012

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




Wait, so... I just realized: we’re most of the way through critically analyzing his last series.

And in that time, we’ve only gotten a couple of strips of the comic that this thread is ostensibly about.

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


I think he dumped Wednesday to Friday at once, so it's been close to a week since we had a new comic to "discuss"

TheHan
Oct 29, 2011

Grind, you poor fool!
Grind straight for the stars!
The Star Power dive also started during the week he took off from updating the Legacy. And there’s so little to talk about with the legacy that people just get in a joke or two then break until next update.

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



Rotten Red Rod posted:

Keep this in mind, it'll make a post-comic moment in 5.4 very, very funny.
I'm not entirely sure what he's DOING with the dna samples though, since all his minions have the same hair color and height as him so they're very obviously clones, of him. The gently caress does he need other people's dna for.

Rotten Red Rod
Mar 5, 2002

Well, I was talking more about the subtle hints, but that gets explained. Sort of.

Daikloktos
Jan 1, 2020

by Cyrano4747

Zereth posted:

I... Think he's trying to give subtle hints, and then more explicit hints, except he's bad so the first ones weren't subtle at all and it was blatantly obvious they were harvesting DNA samples from the very first time he showed them doing it, for example
And then he posts linky reminders of the first ones. Is it possible he himself loses track of how he's revealed his own plot and what the audience is expected to be thinking? Or does the audience even enter into his writing at all

Rotten Red Rod
Mar 5, 2002

Time for your medicine, kiddos.

Chapter 5.3



Guest covers still good. I’ve been intentionally leaving the artist’s attribution in the image: https://www.kristilynink.com/



We start with an entire page restating the fact that Dr. Hymn’s minions are brainwashed to worship him. Although to be fair, this is probably for the print version, as it probably wouldn’t have the epilogue where you see that. But it gets restated AGAIN later, so…



I know this is supposed to be a funny moment, where the chief is really excited and motoring off what he’s learned, but it really is obnoxious to read.

TL;DR: Dr. Hymn was the recipient of some human cargo in the case connected to Burke, and they can’t contact the crew to tell them this due to the comm-blocker.



We get a few pages where we learn one of the singers formed a close friendship with an unsure applicant, who ended up being executed by Hymn for being imperfect. This is the minion that escaped, and he is currently hiding in the garden.



Two Hymn puns in the same page. And they’re the SAME pun.

Also, WEIRD HOW THAT PORTRAIT LOOKS JUST LIKE HYMN’S MINIONS, HUH. WONDER WHY

(I promise there’s a reason I keep doing this, you’ll see next issue.)



Danica accepts a request to show Dr. Hymn the star power, and he recites a poem that references a beautiful woman gifting someone a lock of her hair…



She DOES IT???? WHY? THIS IS A WEIRD THING TO DO

He didn’t even ASK for it! He just recited a poem!



“Hey, you know what people would love? For my superhero comic to be full of stupid puns. In fact I think I’ll make that the majority of the humor because I’m not a clever enough person to think of anything else.” – Mookie, probably

Then Burke and Danica bond for a bit and talk about flying blah blah I didn’t include any images of it because it’s boring.



Danica talks about how Dr. Brightman inspired her to be an astronomer, and I want to bring up one of Mookie’s blogs that references this directly: Let's Review: Danica and Dr. Brightman

It talks about this moment from a previous issue and how it gets across the emotions both are feeling without any text. And it’s true – as he says in the blog…

Scenes where you “show and don’t tell” are important. It’s a show of trust between author and audience, where a creator says “you can figure this out” and they trust their readers to do so.

All correct, and all good! That was a good moment. And then he ends the blog with this, referencing the last image above:

Did I spoil this wordless moment with Danica’s recent acknowledgment of it to Burke? Maybe. But I felt that scene only further strengthened the bond between these two characters, and restated what had already been said between them, albeit wordlessly.

Yep. He ruins it. By later telling it. And he does it again later in this chapter.

And he did it earlier with Grex.

And again.

And all the other endless pages and pages of word bubbles and the entirety of Legacy of Dominic Deegan and etc. etc. Yet he pats himself on the back for ONE moment of “show don’t tell”, as if that’s his normal thing.



To put a point on it, we then get a wordless page…



… Followed by a page where Burke goes ON AND ON AND ON explaining his feelings. Mookie CAN do “show don’t tell moments” – he’s just too insecure to stick the landing. Or maybe he thinks his audience is too dumb? Hard to say.



Dr. Hymn puts the hair in his machine, and… I guess that was his plan all along? Good thing she handed it over as soon as you recited a poem! And what was the point of gathering the rest of the DNA then? (We don’t get an answer to this.)



Danica reconciles with Burke. Right after he pukes in the bathroom because he’s SO DRUNK AND AN ALCOHOLIC, DID I MENTION HE’S AN ALCOHOLIC GUYS, WELL HE IS





And then Burke recognizes the portrait of Hymn, from when he made a delivery to one of his minions (which he now knows was human cargo). Yes, this is the entire reason he was shoehorned into coming along in this plot. And yes, we are ONCE AGAIN getting an entire page dedicated to a reveal of something the audience has already known since nearly the first page of this issue.



yeah they gonna bang



Burke WHERE THE gently caress ARE YOU GOING. You were RIGHT BEHIND DANICA. Go tell her what you discovered. WHY ARE YOU GOING THROUGH THE GARDEN oh i just don’t care anymore



And he runs into the rogue singer, and ONCE AGAIN we get it shoved in our face how they all look alike. YES OK ALREADY

And that’s where we end things. A bit light on dumb stuff, I had to dig a bit. But don’t worry, things really go down next issue. (Yes, the first three issues of this chapter are entirely set up.)

Rotten Red Rod fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Aug 16, 2020

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TheHan
Oct 29, 2011

Grind, you poor fool!
Grind straight for the stars!
Ok, maybe I'm just stupid but...I don't follow Burke's logic here? He recognizes the young portrait of Dr.Hymn as this lowly dock worker from when he filled in for the human trafficker. But Burke doesn't know that Dr.Hymn has a bunch of clones of himself yet? Does he think Dr.Hymn was that dock worker? The chief says this delivery Burke's recalling was specifically to Dr.Hymn's private estate, but Burke didn't seem like he knew he'd been there before...also the idea that these corrupt officers would only do corrupt cargo runs and even let people fill in for them and log the corrupt runs is kinda stupid, but mainly I'm confused on Burke's revelation here. What's the context in the full page? What are we supposed to think he knows?

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