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loving YIKES.
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Sep 18, 2020 08:40
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| # ? May 27, 2024 19:31 |
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Instead of "Dance, puppets, dance!" can we start saying "I have planned a plan with my mind!"? 
Invisible Clergy fucked around with this message at 08:50 on Sep 18, 2020 |
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Sep 18, 2020 08:45
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~~Mookie recipe~~ Ingredients:
Preparation: - Mix a bit of the revenge of the nerds with the madonna/whore complex, let it rise into proto-incel misogyny. - Add the failed burlesque career to the misogyny to develop a necrophilia fetish. - Then dump everything in a bathtub and stir with an "how to draw manga" book - Make sure no introspection gets in at any point! - Let it congeal during adolescence and wait. If it still looks like a teenager despite being officially adult, you have successfully created a Mookie.
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Sep 18, 2020 09:20
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And man, reading all those slurs. Like okay, they're bad people for saying the slur. You don't have to keep heading them repeat it because then it's gone being cartoonish villainy into writing it because you really really want to say that word yourself.
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Sep 18, 2020 09:35
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Codependent Poster posted:And man, reading all those slurs. Like okay, they're bad people for saying the slur. You don't have to keep heading them repeat it because then it's gone being cartoonish villainy into writing it because you really really want to say that word yourself. Mookie also never right gently caress or poo poo or anything close to that. He sticks with slurs for women and homosexuals.
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Sep 18, 2020 09:38
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Trixie Slaughteraxe had a way better homophobia bit, at the debate Thorsby has good lesbians
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Sep 18, 2020 09:52
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I'm on a nostalgic dive into Power Rangers because the world is chaos and sometimes childhood media is your raft in the ocean, and even THAT franchise has more complex characters and a less childish black and white world view than Mookie does. Mookie wishes he could write any character development on the same tier as Bulk and Skull's. And their characters are simply just bullies who learn they enjoy helping people. But it's still more than... anything anyone here goes through. I just want to preach to the choir that Mookie is more shallow than any the superhero/shounen anime/etc. media he's incessantly ripping off. It's impressive! I think the fact it's so incredible how bad everything is is why this series is infinitely more interesting than his projects afterwards. Marin Karin fucked around with this message at 10:17 on Sep 18, 2020 |
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Sep 18, 2020 09:58
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I kinda forgot about this part. Then I remembered it had people beating up women, but I didn't remember them beating up Pam because, uh, ?????
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Sep 18, 2020 10:38
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hey The Little Death thanks for doing the reread of OG deegan this is way more entertaining than legacy
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Sep 18, 2020 10:43
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I forgot. After seeing all the ways Mookie inserts the jock/nerd dichotomy in all his stories with Star Power, and seeing it prototyped with Siegfried, it feels like a slap to the face to see this extremely explicit storyline about jocks bad nerds good.
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Sep 18, 2020 11:24
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I woke up this morning with a pinched nerve or something in my back and then I read this arc while trying to sit upright as comfortably as possible. Dealing with the back has been much more preferable. Pushing through the massive bargeload of slurs Mookie has shoved into his dialogue and the hilariously terrible way the overstereotyped jocks act as if they've never seen titties before, I want to point out the amazing final panel is one of my favorite worst attempts by a grown person to try and draw a punch. Mookie's got the speed lines right from his favorite mangas and the plaque's impact goes along with them, but the arm is tilted. Why did he not align the arm. Why did he not align the arm. The lines don't carry the motion of the arm, so it looks more like he's pushing a button with his knuckles. While holding very still. That's also a dangerously non-Euclidean pose, and Brett's just lucky he didn't fracture something or pinch a nerve in his back or whatever.
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Sep 18, 2020 12:11
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Nothing Mookie draws is Euclidean - he doesn’t use straightedges to draw lines. All non-Euclidean means is “curved lines exist.”
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Sep 18, 2020 12:34
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Mors Rattus posted:Nothing Mookie draws is Euclidean - he doesn’t use straightedges to draw lines. Lookit this nerd. And technically those non-euclidean lines are straight, even if they curve and intersect. There are circles in euclidean geometry
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Sep 18, 2020 12:48
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How old is Greg supposed to be? 16? 18?
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Sep 18, 2020 12:56
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Never really says, but I think 19 - 20 since he is an adult in the way people treat him and refer to him
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Sep 18, 2020 13:00
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Assume all Mookies in the story are 23, because that's... well, you know why. Donovan is an obvious exception, but that's just who Mookie imagined himself to be as he got older.
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Sep 18, 2020 13:18
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All Mookies are as old as Mookie was at the time they were written. That means Donavon, Dominic, Stonewater, Greg, Nimmel, Quilt, and everyone else I haven't named are all in their early 20s.
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Sep 18, 2020 13:31
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christ almighty all of this had slipped right out of my mind
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Sep 18, 2020 14:42
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I don't know why this jumped out at me amongst all the super, super gross poo poo but it took those guys THREE HOURS to drink a measley four beers?? And they got wasted off of that?
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Sep 18, 2020 16:27
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Who What Now posted:I don't know why this jumped out at me amongst all the super, super gross poo poo but it took those guys THREE HOURS to drink a measley four beers?? And they got wasted off of that? quite clearly before mookie got into craft beer and was probably of the opinion that all alcohol was evil. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Sep 18, 2020 |
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Sep 18, 2020 16:46
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Soup du Jour posted:christ almighty all of this had slipped right out of my mind Right? I vaguely remembered the jocks, but not that they were tossing out slurs so heavily. Hell, I’ve been torn between having a scene early on in my own story where the protagonist is called a slur without actually writing out said slur (just a description cut of him hearing it and getting appropriately pissed off by it), or if even that is a bit too much and should be toned down or even excised entirely.
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Sep 18, 2020 17:18
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The difference is: do you get a secret thrill when using slurs like Mookie clearly does? There's a big difference between using language to evoke revulsion in the reader and saying "You know what a fun world-building detail for my egalitarian space utopia? Let's make up racial slurs for every alien species!" Like, take this poo poo: Garbage posted:I'm pretty sure the only reason Rachel was reintroduced (with a changed hairstyle) in this arc was because Mookie thought up this loving awful joke and was chomping at the bit to use it in his webcomic. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Sep 18, 2020 |
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Sep 18, 2020 17:42
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Yeah Mookie’s use of slurs and bigotry is especially disgusting cause it feels like he revels in it. The jocks aren’t even talking like humans, they’re madlibs filled with the f-word. Then despite claiming this is the language of bad people Mookie will write punchlines that rely on you finding the slurs funny, it was constant when Greg had a bad leg and there are a million gay jokes going forward.
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Sep 18, 2020 17:48
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PoptartsNinja posted:The difference is: do you get a secret thrill when using slurs like Mookie clearly does? Oh, absolutely not, and I’m well aware of the difference; hell, the idea was to help set up the society of the city that he lives in as lovely to people like him despite billing itself as an all-inclusive refuge to make it all the more gratifying when he finally gets the power to start actively and visibly rebelling against it. It’s just that I’m also a (nominally) straight white guy who hasn’t really ever been on the receiving end of institutional racism/discrimination... hence why I kind of feel like it’s a very delicate balance between between making an effective, dramatic point, and just being gratuitous (like this whole arc of DD).
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Sep 18, 2020 18:02
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Brett is just so cartoonishly awful that it's impossible to believe that he's ever been anyone's "hero" or even manages to stay in his sportsball league since it sounds like they take assault and poo poo seriously. Like yeah, star athletes and celebrities can get away with being lovely people to varying extents, but he is just non-stop speaking in slurs and appears to always be two seconds away from assaulting someone. Other thoughts: The only reason that Rachel, our "good" non-jock athlete, isn't viewed as a rapist in this story is because Mookie doesn't believe that male on female rape or sexual assault can exist. Regarding Mookie's madonna/whore complex: we're a long long ways from Greg's encounter with Down-Town Erossus, but he literally does the whole "women being openly sexual does nothing for me, unlike fantasizing what Pam is like under those robes."
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Sep 18, 2020 18:11
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Echoing some other people on this thread I expected classic DD to slowly degenerate into the poo poo it became, not like, instantly take a left turn into crazy sex hang-ups and the worst-written villains in history. And all this happens PRE-Stonewater.
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Sep 18, 2020 23:10
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I don't think i could ever give this a pass, but if you had told me a 15 year old boy had written this then i could kind of understand why he felt like he was being edgy and gritty for writing this, but the fact that a) this a grown rear end man, and b) this a reoccurring thing with him even to this day is just 
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Sep 19, 2020 04:01
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The jocks’ dialogue is too obvious for Tails Gets Trolled.
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Sep 19, 2020 04:13
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Maxwell Lord posted:The jocks’ dialogue is too obvious for Tails Gets Trolled. Parody can never quite live up to the sincere.
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Sep 19, 2020 07:26
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There was a point near the start where Dominic Deegan was bad but at least at a level of quality where if I didn’t already know about the comic and you were to tell me “yeah it’s not great now but it gets better later on” I’d be willing to believe you, but now we’re well past the point where I could see a comic like this ever becoming something decent. There’s plenty of instances of bad comics improving but Dominic Deegan just keeps getting worse.
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Sep 19, 2020 13:30
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Chapter 11 Hello, Nurse! [Part 2] Already starting off strong with the dumb stuff. Greg hearing this going on off-panel is the dumbest way to bring him back. The fact that Greg thinks of her as Nurse Pam in his internal monologues also gross and dumb. Also check out that face in panel 3  Oh look, there's that word again! Again, now Brett is straight up a premeditating murderer. He's so cartoonishly evil that the idea that he's a sports star is ridiculous. Greg saiyans out..   Meathead is such a dumb nerd insult. So yeah, Greg does something really stupid, something that never happens again either, and hulk rages all the dudes.  See here's where I think that mookie wants to start implying that it is the jock bullies who are gay. Like look at this imagery.  "Ball-breaker". Get it? At least Blitzball looked cool, what is slaughterball even supposed to be?  Here's Mookie actually planning ahead, giving Garrit and extremely convenient condition that will make Pam actually relevant later. Kudos, I guess?  Pulse pounding action in that first panel.   Ok, so here I'm actually going to go on a bit of a rant. Gregory hear is supposed to be solving problems non-violently, as a display of moral superiority. But he does so using magical powers that just lets him take away animosity. That's not necessarily a problem in a story, but it this one, so clearly strawmaning the filthy jock/women-disrespecters/why-don't-women-love-a-nice-guy-like-mes, it's egotistical nerd bullshit. There's no cleverness on Greg's part her, no subtle use of strategy to avoid violence. It's just an I win button that doesn't hurt people because Mookie. Much like Starpower's DBZ beams of peace that never killed anyone, stuff like this has no place outside of a kid's cartoon. If you are going ot insist on non-violently using magic to solve a situation, the user has to do it in a way that makes it clever, or at least face some hurdle to using it. Otherwise it's just making one character morally right in a way that is totally disconnected from reality. At least when Greg cast weight on Siggy, that was a little clever but didn't work. This works and is trivially easy. In summary. booooooooooooooo, Dude is obviously Brock too. How anime can you get!  Garrit saves the day and says a generic sportsball line to remind you what his character is.  Interlude here to say that I think Mookie being so active on the Con circuit helped DD. In the early days of the internet cross promoting was super important and he made friends with all the other terrible webcomic authors.  Brett Vegeta's in from left frame  Again more terrible misogyny and rape insinuations, because he's a bad jock who doesn't respect women. Also his calling greg boy is a little weird and I keep hearing it in a southern accent.  Again, so on the nose projecting it's not even funny. Anyway gregory selflesslsy white knights Pam  Greg gets a big moment of turning the other cheek. I don't on the face of it hate the idea of Greg's struggle with the blight powering his ability to get back up here. It's a good arc for him. But I have problems with this story turn, seperate even from the glaring issue of having a dowey-eyed virgin protagonist giving himself up as a christ-like sacrificial lamb to the violence of the JOCKS (I mean cmon). This pacifist turn is not earned. It first relies on the idea tha absolute pacifism is some sort of clearly moral superior choice, that allows a fake nobility to infuse the choice. In this case, it is a given that a) innocents (Pam) are totally protected from further violence, b) Brett will not do this again, or the authorities will stop him, and c) That allowing violence to your own body to diffuse a situation is clearly the better choice than fighting back, especially with no audience to see it and hence no public to influence. This is not a solution of sorting out differences, which with someone as obvioulsy one note evil as Brett, would obviously be pointless. It is not a question of even proportionality, to assert your right to exist without oppression. It is purely meek victimehood, a saintly martyrdom that liberals love to invoke. I point this out because this is not just a fantasy story, but is essentially the same underlying theme as the space elf arc in Starpower, where the moral group is the pacifist suffering mixed group, and not the group that canonically was enslaved in recent history and (up until they started talking about genocide) appeared to want to go through a gate to escape their oppresors. Pacifism is a tactic that has been used repeatedly in history, and people can debate how and why it is useful or effective, but no pacifism was ever meekly accepting punishment or death purely for the sake of not fighting back. I really, really hate this turn in stories. It's lazy and honeslty insulting to any true understanding of morality or history. It is a childish belief system. Mookie's contrivances don't excuse the awful, infantile message. Oh and its a cop-out anyway because Rachel comes in to punish Brett with violence, which means Greg gets the to be the martyr without sacrifice    One last slur for the road.  And injuries don't matter lol. Also again, it is so funny that those two jocks were esmaculated and are now showing affection to each other! Those homophobes sure are faggy, right! Lol.  Pam has a use! Better than Luna   Man is bleeding to death greg. Again the newspaper humor in these incredibly high stakes situations.  Again, morally pure in victory, yet vengeful in the consequences. Mookie is so predictable. What sort of horrible pain will Pam cause?  That homophobe sure is a fag     Again the projection. "if only I could find a girl as insecure and passive as me! I'm sure we'd get along! (Cause then I would know she's never leave me)"   middle school drama ensues. Honestly in the pantheon of Deegan sins having Pam give Greg a hickey is the tiniest thing, but it's still very high school as a thing to happen, made only weirder by Greg being so boyish and immature while Pam is clearly meant to read as a grown woman.  We end it out by showing greg having seer powers weirdly, and also Jacob is back with his frankenstein project. I've already said my feelings on the slurs, but I think this arc's main takeway for me is how much with Mookie, and many nerds like him, the insecurity and meekness is a cover for the same type of misogyny and entitlement they see in the jocks they hate so much. Obviously not a surprise, but this is a good illustration of it. In this contrived scenario, Pam is literally punished within panels of showing overt sexuality. Mookie again goes for a story of inner beauty and intelligence coupled with insecurity, which is really the fantasy of having a woman they can guarantee won't leave them for someone better, the Bretts and Chads of the world really caricatures and stand ins for every man mookie has ever felt intimidated by. He wants a girl to just sort of fall into his lap (literally this is what happens to both Dominic and Greg), fall in love with his niceguyness and never leave him. I know that a lot of guys go through this phase but a) they mostly get out of it by their 20s and b) I don't sympathize with it. Personal note, but as a large gay man who didn't come out till his late 20s, I have a good idea about what toxic masculinity does to people. It's also why I get to say when using fag is ok, which Mookied doesn't. Obivously Mookie is repudiating some parts of toxic masculinity, in particular the physical agression and dominance, as was the standard nerd retort in the 90s, and that's fine. But, the entitlement and misogyny remain, and that's what I don't forgive. both Pam and Luna are that awful nerd stereotype, the slightly damaged 10. They are immensly competent and nurturing, conventionally beautiful except for tiny flaw, in Luna's case fangs, in Pam's case wearing a hat. They are extremly emotionally damaged, but thin and white and feminine in every way. Because no matter how much Mookie talks about inner beauty, he only thinks a very narrow subset of women are up to his standard, and doesn't look outside out it. It's not treating women as equal people, but as a prize he deserves for being so much better than those jocks. Gross. And again, I am readin this into this comic, because in the context of Mookie's other work, and the fact that he did this storyline once already with Dom and Luna, it's obviously conveying something about his worldview. It is possible to write arcs that are problematic wihtout meaning to, especially by invoking tropes without thinking, but like liking dozens of anti-trans tweets, eventually a pattern emerges, and people are right to sideeye you when you write a book about a serial killing "cross-dresser". Next time, the Storm of Souls [Part 1] Also here's Mookie drawing himself as Dominic in a filler. 
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Sep 20, 2020 02:37
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The Little Death posted:And again, I am readin this into this comic, because in the context of Mookie's other work, and the fact that he did this storyline once already with Dom and Luna, it's obviously conveying something about his worldview. It is possible to write arcs that are problematic wihtout meaning to, especially by invoking tropes without thinking, but like liking dozens of anti-trans tweets, eventually a pattern emerges, and people are right to sideeye you when you write a book about a serial killing "cross-dresser". Just so we're all clear in case anyone hasn't heard, it's JK Rowling that did that last bit, not Mookie.
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Sep 20, 2020 02:56
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I feel like we could solve all of Mookie's issues if we got him to watch Cobra Kai a few times. Mmmm, maybe not.
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Sep 20, 2020 03:13
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And here we see Mookie as the worst kind of “ally”: nominally condemning outright gay-bashing and slur-slinging ( ) homophobia, but still latching on to jokes that rely on (slightly) more subtle versions of it to make the “””punchline””” work.
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Sep 20, 2020 03:47
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And double-posting, but... I can’t help but feel like this tweet is pretty relevant to DD as a whole https://twitter.com/ospyoutube/status/1307503811620147201?s=21
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Sep 20, 2020 03:50
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That's the biggest thign that stands out to me. Their victory is never that they're actually SMARTER. They never do anything more CLEVER> It's like deegan beating the demon in the mindspace by going "MY MIND IS STRONGER: MIND LASER SUPREME BLAST! KABLAMMO" "OOoooh no dominic you're so smart that i just explode!" They rarely have some kind of actually clever plan, especially never a plan that is clever that doesn't rely on them automatically knowing everything ahead of time. They're so proud to be ~nerds~ but this is still at a time when it was assumed being a nerd meant you were smart, where they had internalized that, and didnt' do the work to earn that supposed intelligence. So you really just get people who are defined by their not doing sports or wanting sex, winning because... well, if you don't do sports or want sex, you're automatically a smart person, right?
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Sep 20, 2020 03:50
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The Little Death posted:Obviously Mookie is repudiating some parts of toxic masculinity, in particular the physical agression and dominance, as was the standard nerd retort in the 90s, and that's fine. But, the entitlement and misogyny remain, and that's what I don't forgive. both Pam and Luna are that awful nerd stereotype, the slightly damaged 10. They are immensly competent and nurturing, conventionally beautiful except for tiny flaw, in Luna's case fangs, in Pam's case wearing a hat. They are extremly emotionally damaged, but thin and white and feminine in every way. Because no matter how much Mookie talks about inner beauty, he only thinks a very narrow subset of women are up to his standard, and doesn't look outside out it. It's not treating women as equal people, but as a prize he deserves for being so much better than those jocks. Great analysis. A few of these issues - the whiteness of it, throwing around homophobic slurs like nothing - is very much part and parcel of being part of internet culture in the mid-2000s, which is why he got so much of a pass back then. But I think your point on the toxic masculinity is very true and worth delving more into. I once read someone reference nerd culture as being just as full of toxic masculinity as “normie” culture; it’s just that where mainstream culture (especially of the 80s and 90s that Mookie grew up in) believed in a “warrior king” ideal, nerd culture believed in a “philosopher king” ideal - one that revered knowledge, especially esoteric knowledge, instead of force and physical prowess, and pretended to revere women for their minds and ideas rather than for their bodies. But at its core, both were still steeped in misogyny that saw women as trophies to be won by men who adhered to those ideals and not as people in their own right. Mookie is absolutely wrapped in that nerd toxic masculinity, and is doing the standard nerd culture thing of insisting that he’s actually progressive because he’s not a jock.
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Sep 20, 2020 04:06
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Being a high-functioning autistic who's never been in any kind of relationship, it took me until this post to understand why "Won't leave you for someone better" dependency would be so appealing- because that actually happened to Mookie. HIs girlfriend two-timed on him and based on this he probably knows it's because he wasn't a great boyfriend. That's not to say his girlfriend did nothing wrong but his reaction to it goes beyond simply being heartbroken and into genuinely misogynistic territory.
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Sep 20, 2020 04:13
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There is a very sharp turn with the women in the story, and once you learn it's because Mookie's gf cheated on him it clarifies why the misogyny got amped up. Jayden gets the worst of it, and I've always thought she was based on his gf at the time, so...
Marin Karin fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Sep 20, 2020 |
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Sep 20, 2020 04:26
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| # ? May 27, 2024 19:31 |
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quote:Oh look, there's that word again! Again, now Brett is straight up a premeditating murderer. He's so cartoonishly evil that the idea that he's a sports star is ridiculous. Greg saiyans out.. I like to imagine Greg didn't actually make the footballers hulk out, he just made their heads smaller. Which direction is Greg continues to develop new superpowers the second he needs them. There was no hint in earlier fights that he could blind people or turn people gay, so like The Little Death says, using these powers here in scenarios perfectly made for them doesn't count as cleverness. Why didn't Greg himself turn super saiyan when he blasted everyone with white magic like last time? Showcasing heroes who solved problems nonviolently would be fine if the kinds of obstacles they faced required nonviolent solutions like Encyclopedia Brown or Freddi Fish. If the people you are butting heads with are smuggling antiques or something, you trick them into saying the wrong thing about their whereabouts so the police arrest them. If you are at loggerheads with literal lynch mobs on a regular basis, tricking them into saying something that reveals an inconsistency with their story does not really fly, and either you will shoot them with your mind laser, or some other character will deus ex machina in and hit them in the head with a frying pan (nonfatally) at the last minute. Same as a lot of this stuff it falls flat because it's clear Mookie isn't actually interested in writing plotlines that are resolved nonviolently. Pam getting punished for showing agency is gross and is a stock trope in nerd media. The girl gets to dress sexy but it can't be because she wants to, Jabba the hutt forced her to dress sexy, or she was transported into her mirror universe double's sexy clothes, so you can safely keep her in the Madonna box while still objectifying her. I don't think Greg ever notices being scried on again, so this doesn't go anywhere. Great writeup as always. Marin Karin posted:There is a very sharp turn with the women in the story, and once you learn it's because Mookie's gf cheated on him it clarifies why the misogyny got amped up. Jayden gets the worst of it, and I've always thought she was based on his gf at the time, so... Oh, she was. That's a known fact. He talked about it on the blog.
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Sep 20, 2020 04:46
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