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"Mookie's writing is driven by thoughtlessly reacting to cliches that are for the most part barely even cliches, and when they are he doesn't identify what's actually cliche or boring about them" explains a lot honestly.
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Jan 10, 2022 23:03
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Rotten Red Rod posted:It's all very specific and very weird tropes that, for the most part, don't really exist or don't make sense. Even the specific examples he cites are way off base. He mentions sci-fi scoundrels who don't care about fighting the Empire, and how they always only have a change of heart once their beloved ship is destroyed. Or his reference to The Usual Suspects, which he thinks is a story where the police arrest a person who they know is Keyser Söze, but he's so smart that he convinces them to let him walk free.
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Jan 10, 2022 23:18
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Mookie is somehow even worse at understanding media he watches than writing it himself.
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Jan 11, 2022 00:04
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People that physically train are jocks and Mookie has permanent high-school brain. It's as simple as that.
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Jan 11, 2022 00:10
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Robot Style posted:Even the specific examples he cites are way off base. He mentions sci-fi scoundrels who don't care about fighting the Empire, and how they always only have a change of heart once their beloved ship is destroyed. This isn't even Han Solo! I am struggling to think of even two examples of this kind of character with the ship. Honestly I'm practically struggling to think of one but I'm accepting 'misunderstood what Han Solo's deal was' for the moment.
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Jan 11, 2022 00:16
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Rotten Red Rod posted:Maybe Mookie has been reading Kill Six Billion Demons and liked the faux philosophy, folklore, and ancient texts Abaddon inserts in the news section for many updates, and decided to take a crack at it himself. Except, you know, he's real bad at it.
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Jan 11, 2022 00:16
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Hostile V posted:...man imagine what Mookie would do with a protagonist like Allison Wanda Ruth. This is a beautiful misery to contemplate.
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Jan 11, 2022 00:19
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Nighthand posted:C'mon Mookie let's see the DreamsDreamsBowl.pdf thank you for reminding me of this
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Jan 11, 2022 00:22
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Zerilan posted:Mookie is somehow even worse at understanding media he watches than writing it himself. I mentioned it before, but after seeing his depiction of Law vs Chaos I would love to hear his take on Moorcock's Elric.
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Jan 11, 2022 00:59
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catlord posted:I mentioned it before, but after seeing his depiction of Law vs Chaos I would love to hear his take on Moorcock's Elric. I would be shocked if he would recognize the name, except as the Fullmetal Alchemist character. I would be doubly shocked if he recognized the name Moorcock.
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Jan 11, 2022 01:01
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Robot Style posted:Or his reference to The Usual Suspects, which he thinks is a story where the police arrest a person who they know is Keyser Söze, but he's so smart that he convinces them to let him walk free.  How do you misunderstand that movie that badly?
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Jan 11, 2022 01:05
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Joe Slowboat posted:I would be shocked if he would recognize the name, except as the Fullmetal Alchemist character. I would be doubly shocked if he recognized the name Moorcock. Oh, I'm sure.* His view of a grand Law vs Chaos conflict is clearly derived more from a cultural osmosis than anything specific, but I'm just thinking of all this classic fantasy that informed that culture that Mookie just seems completely divorced from. But because of that and his... interesting takes on media, I find myself fascinated by the idea of him doing a bookclub podcast or something. *One of my friends was getting into FMA when I was starting to read Elric, I've seen that moment of confusion. Edit: vv Thanks! catlord fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Jan 11, 2022 |
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Jan 11, 2022 01:17
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catlord posted:Oh, I'm sure.* His view of a grand Law vs Chaos conflict is clearly derived more from a cultural osmosis than anything specific, but I'm just thinking of all this classic fantasy that informed that culture that Mookie just seems completely divorced from. But because of that and his... interesting takes on media, I find myself fascinated by the idea of him doing a bookclub podcast or something. I love your avatar
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Jan 11, 2022 01:20
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Mookie couldn't do media analysis in an environment open to criticism. He can do it on a con panel where the audience is other awkward nerds and where by virtue of being a speaker he is a kind of authority figure. But anything where he would likely be corrected in a comment section or where he has a co-host and his ideas on literature and writing would encounter friction, he would probably find exhausting. You see stuff like his blog post on lawful good paladins where he sees a personal bias and doubles down on it, or the weird twists and very late justifications in his comics that can only be interpreted as responses to criticism, and... yeah. He could get away with something like a podcast if he did it solo and it was only accessible to his patrons or something, anything else would probably make him feel bitter.
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Jan 11, 2022 01:33
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Mookie already has a podcast and, just like always, he's hosed it up so badly he's transcribed it and made it into an extremely poo poo and lazy web'comic'.
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Jan 11, 2022 01:35
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catlord posted:Oh, I'm sure.* His view of a grand Law vs Chaos conflict is clearly derived more from a cultural osmosis than anything specific, but I'm just thinking of all this classic fantasy that informed that culture that Mookie just seems completely divorced from. But because of that and his... interesting takes on media, I find myself fascinated by the idea of him doing a bookclub podcast or something. You know, you're right. I would find Mookie's bizarre takes on the root works that Dominic Deegan derives from fascinating, in a sort of 'weird bug' kind of way. I wonder if someone could convince him it would be easier and more popular than Legacy...
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Jan 11, 2022 01:41
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Robot Style posted:
Please show me where to find this because it sounds amazing.
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Jan 11, 2022 01:45
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Breetai posted:Please show me where to find this because it sounds amazing. There's a few of his panels up on youtube, but this one has the Usual Suspects anecdote (at 7:39 if it doesn't start there).
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Jan 11, 2022 02:20
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Mookie isn't talking about actual narrative tropes, he's talking about tropes that happen in DnD campaigns, because those are also games and people simplify their characters to get to the playing part of roleplay sometimes.
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Jan 11, 2022 02:30
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Beelzebufo posted:Mookie isn't talking about actual narrative tropes, he's talking about tropes that happen in DnD campaigns, because those are also games and people simplify their characters to get to the playing part of roleplay sometimes. Ok but is the trope of a smuggler whose ship gets destroyed really that common in D&D either? I can see the 'I wrote farmboy on my character sheet' thing happening. Also people don't usually have massive training montages in D&D, because 'training time' isn't really a thing in D&D. So I don't think it's just that he's accurately describing D&D shorthand.
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Jan 11, 2022 02:57
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I don't think Mookie is talking purely about D&D, just fiction in general. "Character who is always training and has no personality outside that" feels like he's talking about shounen anime protagonists, like maybe Goku from DBZ or Zoro from One Piece. I mean, if he is, he's wrong that those characters have no personality, but it feels like the closest thing he could be talking about.
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Jan 11, 2022 03:06
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Robot Style posted:Even the specific examples he cites are way off base. He mentions sci-fi scoundrels who don't care about fighting the Empire, and how they always only have a change of heart once their beloved ship is destroyed. ...but... but Han Solo's ship is fine. Han Solo is currently dead, but his ship is still fine. The ship outlived the man.
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Jan 11, 2022 03:09
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Twelve by Pies posted:I don't think Mookie is talking purely about D&D, just fiction in general. "Character who is always training and has no personality outside that" feels like he's talking about shounen anime protagonists, like maybe Goku from DBZ or Zoro from One Piece. I mean, if he is, he's wrong that those characters have no personality, but it feels like the closest thing he could be talking about.
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Jan 11, 2022 03:45
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Yeah, the Han Solo misread is really messing with me, there exists no example of this that I can actually name! It's so cliche it apparently doesn't exist!
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Jan 11, 2022 03:48
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SubG posted:An extended training sequence bookended with a revenge story is an absolutely standard boilerplate Shaw Brothers-era martial arts film plot. 100% He is basing all of this off of just Luke, Han, Goku respectively, not understanding/remembering them well, and projecting them out to the whole genre.
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Jan 11, 2022 03:59
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Joe Slowboat posted:Yeah, the Han Solo misread is really messing with me, there exists no example of this that I can actually name! It's so cliche it apparently doesn't exist! The only thing I can think of is Waterworld when Kevin Costner's boat gets destroyed. Or maybe some of the Mad Maxes because the Interceptor buys it a lot, but that's always the first 5 minutes and Max still has to be persuaded to help out.
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Jan 11, 2022 04:00
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Zerilan posted:100% He is basing all of this off of just Luke, Han, Goku respectively, not understanding/remembering them well, and projecting them out to the whole genre. Can we get Mookie to record a recap of the plot of Star Wars? For the purposes of science?
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Jan 11, 2022 04:03
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"Well for starters, Darth Vader is an evil jock. He does car races, that's a jock thing, right?"
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Jan 11, 2022 05:51
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SubG posted:An extended training sequence bookended with a revenge story is an absolutely standard boilerplate Shaw Brothers-era martial arts film plot. And if he's complaining about that, then he's failing to misunderstand that genre too. You don't watch those kinds of movies for deep, complicated characters, the characters in those movies are usually archetypes and you're just there for the spectacle of the fighting.
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Jan 11, 2022 07:27
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He's probably thinking of videogames. It's not just that Mookie's morals are stuck in highschool. His whole consumption of the medium is stuck in highschool. Nerd culture of the 90s-00s, full of cliche animes and RPGs and superheroes and sci-fi and fantasy and everything in-between. The most paper-thin of writing. Endless gaming webcomics were written with such cutting-edge commentary as "what's the deal with all these RPG farmboys with mysterious pasts???". Eventually the tropes all blend together and become their own thing that nerds recite ad-nauseum and still get a few chuckles with no basis anymore. Like a lot of nerds, he has the most surface-level understanding of the medium he consumes, and that would be fine if that's all he did. But no, he decided he can do better. Original Dominic Deegan was basically "I'll show all those animes and videogames how it's done!" (and again, every other webcomic doing it). The lowest of bars, and he still tripped over it. What's confusing is it's 2022 and he's still doing it, when that culture is long gone. At most the Legacy of Dominic Deegan is future Mookie trying to prove to past Mookie how it's done. He's grown up now, he can write deep mature storylines with sex and philosophy and no dialogue and so much more! And it's so much worse.
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Jan 11, 2022 07:42
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Twelve by Pies posted:And if he's complaining about that, then he's failing to misunderstand that genre too. You don't watch those kinds of movies for deep, complicated characters, the characters in those movies are usually archetypes and you're just there for the spectacle of the fighting. I mean for the record I don't necessarily think that Mookie was thinking about martial arts films when he was complaining about training sequences--like I honestly have no idea what his media consumption habits look like and his work is such a muddled mess that I'd hesitate to make too many assumptions based on it. I was just pointing out that the extended training sequence as a major part of the character arc isn't something that's just in shonen manga/anime.
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Jan 11, 2022 08:42
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Ague Proof posted:Does he say the slur? What do you think? Of course he does.
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Jan 11, 2022 10:00
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SubG posted:You, uh, mean Tolstoy? Or are you making a very obscure joke about the death of Ambrose Bierce? No, I've just been trying to read Trotsky's history on the Russian Revolution. He is staggeringly wordy.
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Jan 11, 2022 10:10
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Samovar posted:No, I've just been trying to read Trotsky's history on the Russian Revolution. He is staggeringly wordy.
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Jan 11, 2022 10:21
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SubG posted:If you think Trotsky is wordy for the love of god don't try to read Marx. The Communist Manifesto isn't that bad - though it was designed to be concise.
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Jan 11, 2022 10:33
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Samovar posted:The Communist Manifesto isn't that bad - though it was designed to be concise.
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Jan 11, 2022 11:24
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SubG posted:Yeah, I guess Marx in pamphlet form isn't that bad. I was thinking of Capital, the actual reading of which is approximately the worst way of learning the material in it. Fair enough.
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Jan 11, 2022 12:31
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SubG posted:Eeeeeh. Like yeah, there were plenty of grindhouse kick flicks that were light on everything except the action. But Shaw Brothers had plenty of filmmakers that I'd happily go to bat for, like Chang Cheh (the guy that more or less put Hong Kong film on the international stage) and Lau Kar-leung. It's worth remembering that a lot of Hong Kong action films, particularly early on, were very consciously social and political texts and were generally seen that way by their original audiences. In the export market the films often got terrible dubs and were often extensively re-cut as exploitation films, and that tends to distort the image of the films in the West. But Shaw Brothers absolutely produced great films, not just genre fluff. I guaran-loving-tee you Mookie hasn't seen any of those films.
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Jan 11, 2022 14:45
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The ship thing has gotta be the weirdest part. It doesn't exist. That's not a trope. That's a thing Mooks did to Black Hole Bill except in reverse because he didn't like that people liked the character so it is clearly coming from somewhere. I started thinking about media where there were at least sentient vehicles: Knight Rider, Airwolf, Short Circuit, Futurama, Not Quite Human, My Mother The Car, all of the love bug movies and I admit this is where I lost the plot. Jack Burton from Big Trouble In Little China? Where he loses his truck and then is only in the adventure to get it back? A sadder theory is that such a character doesn't exist, but Mooks kept expecting it to materialize. When it never did he carried a chip on his shoulder against a trope that doesn't exist because if it did, well, he wouldn't like it. (^ this is so dum)
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Jan 11, 2022 15:31
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Double posting, but Is he misremembering Lando Calrissian? - Ex-scoundrel - Terse towards Han about the condition of the Falcon - On the Empire's side until the double-cross - Eventually gets to fly his baby again The big misread is that, despite Lando's stern "What have you done to my ship!", his character isn't actually motivated by the ship. It's a plot point to tie Han and Lando together. Since Lando flies it again in RotJ, maybe he thinks that was Lando's actual long game?
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Jan 11, 2022 15:38
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