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Fister Roboto posted:This is so loving bizarre. Yes. I've said similar things throughout this thread, to varying degrees of hysteria, but at the end of the day, what makes this comic... Something I keep coming back to is how alien it is.
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Apr 30, 2024 11:27
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There's something oddly appropriate about Mookie bookending this chapter with a blog post lamenting that nobody wants to buy his "DIY" comic at cons, and a blog post lamenting that people at the vegan market have started putting more effort into their presentation:quote:In the past, the Vegan Markets were largely populated by very small businesses and DIY crafters, bakers, and chefs. Sweets were hand-wrapped, shops were either in-town or the next town over, or had no storefronts at all and were just starting to get off the ground. This most recent Market had brands; logos with professional graphic designs, tables manned by salespeople with practiced pitches, and machine-wrapped goods that resembled things I could buy in the plant-based section of chain supermarkets.
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Apr 30, 2024 19:11
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Robot Style posted:There's something oddly appropriate about Mookie bookending this chapter with a blog post lamenting that nobody wants to buy his "DIY" comic at cons, and a blog post lamenting that people at the vegan market have started putting more effort into their presentation: ugh, he has such a punchable ARTISTIC AUTEUR vibe that I hate. Peak lovely hipster. Pretty sure most people go to the vegan market to get food, not ~discover people~
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Apr 30, 2024 19:41
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Don't some places in the US have scheduled farmers market events where local businesses get to sell their goods? Does it just not occur to Mookie to Google this if he wanted non-corporate branded vegan meals or whatever? EDIT: Re-reading that section and Mookie does go to these markets. He's just complaining that, what, people are putting effort into their presentation or using machinery to have an easier time wrapping their goods? Smaller businesses like these already have a hard enough time in the economy without Mookie's weird gatekeep-y hipster bullshit. Midnight Voyager posted:ugh, he has such a punchable ARTISTIC AUTEUR vibe that I hate. Peak lovely hipster. He's acting like he expects salespeople to be kindly grannies or chipper moms who will act as his friend amigolupus fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Apr 30, 2024 |
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Apr 30, 2024 20:07
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amigolupus posted:Don't some places in the US have scheduled farmers market events where local businesses get to sell their goods? Does it just not occur to Mookie to Google this if he wanted non-corporate branded vegan meals or whatever? I'm imagining here that the same people he insists he came to discover are the ones that are now "salespeople." They just improved their craft. You know, the thing he refuses to do.
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Apr 30, 2024 20:16
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Robot Style posted:There's something oddly appropriate about Mookie bookending this chapter with a blog post lamenting that nobody wants to buy his "DIY" comic at cons, and a blog post lamenting that people at the vegan market have started putting more effort into their presentation: jfc, this mfer is so entitled
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Apr 30, 2024 20:34
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Hmmm, I wonder if there's anything that might have happened in the past few years that could have prompted people to put more thought into how they're wrapping products people will be putting in their mouths?
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Apr 30, 2024 20:37
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It's pretty funny how transparently he makes everything about how professionalism and standards are for chumps and losers. These are artisanal stink lines coming off my works, heathens.
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Apr 30, 2024 20:46
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It occurs to me that Mookie's worship of authenticity as the only virtue applies to his understanding of both work and emotions. He validates all his characters' basest impulses for the same reason he validates their good intentions: because not outlining a plot and having characters scream every thought in their head are raw, and that's the only way to be honest. He does not draw a distinction between finesse and disingenuousness.
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Apr 30, 2024 21:02
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He really thinks he has any right to bitch about anyone switching to using machines to wrap their products when he openly and proudly copy-pastes his own work and traces over the efforts of others that he then expects people to pay money for. Lazy rear end in a top hat.
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May 1, 2024 00:05
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What I get from that is he wants to go buy stuff from small businesses or regular people, not large corporations. And the presentation of how they used to be vs now makes it feel more...commercial? perhaps might be what he's thinking. So it feels like corporations have moved into an market that was originally for the average person. But as Midnight Voyager puts it:Midnight Voyager posted:I'm imagining here that the same people he insists he came to discover are the ones that are now "salespeople." They just improved their craft. You know, the thing he refuses to do. I don't know anything about vegan markets but it wouldn't surprise me if several of those people who would be out there with hand wrapped goods are now selling them prepacked with logos and art after getting enough money to upgrade. I buy wetshaving stuff from small businesses and they also have artwork on soap containers/aftershave and cologne bottles/etc that look like they could be on something you buy from a store.
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May 1, 2024 00:51
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Think I found the place he's talking about : https://www.theveganmarketma.com/ It looks like any farmers market/local swap meet. What the gently caress is he bitching about? How much branded merch do you think this rear end in a top hat uses without a second thought? What about your phone, Mookie? Your PC? The software you use to poo poo out the scribbles you call art? Your car? Those are all made by large corportations! BRANDS! This loving guy.
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May 1, 2024 01:00
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And there I was feeling pangs of guilt about being too snide about his switch to digital lettering.
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May 1, 2024 01:19
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Support your local businesses! Unless they use professional packaging, then EUGH.
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May 1, 2024 02:16
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Dude found a way to have a madonna/whore complex about produce.
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May 1, 2024 02:26
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drat, it's just not the same since the locals stopped handmaking the labels and packaging. I should've known things were headed in this direction when they treated me like another customer and not a close friend. Ah, well, time to hop in my Toyota RAV4 and head to Whole Foods rudecyrus fucked around with this message at 04:13 on May 1, 2024 |
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May 1, 2024 03:10
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I shouldn't be so upset about this, but this dickbag lamenting the commercialization of a local market when that's obviously not the case is some short-sighted, overprivileged, first-world-problems bullshit. I expected to see stalls covered in Wal-Mart and Costco signs, not this. Get out of your bubble and find something real to complain about, you talentless dipshit.
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May 1, 2024 03:23
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 Seriously, THESE are the corporate shills he's talking about, it looks like the artists alley at a con but for vegan goods. He's lamenting that people have realized that a good-looking, presentable product sells better.
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May 1, 2024 03:57
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Not to psychoanalyze too deeply but he got his big start in the early webcomic community, back when none of it was terribly professional or high quality. He's statedly very nostalgic for that era of the early and mid 00s. He's probably feeling the same stress he's felt as he watched webcomics become more professional, more high-grade, more seriously-done, and how that squeezed him out of favor, and extrapolating it to what was clearly a place of refuge and comfort for him in this vegan place where the same thing is happening. Reliving the trauma of seeing things become polished, professional, and being unable to keep up. I wouldn't really blame him for this, but like. My dude, you are the one who made webcomics your job but refused to get better at it. This panic you feel at the environments you find comfort in growing up and becoming more professional and expertly put together is something that's on you.
FlocksOfMice fucked around with this message at 04:05 on May 1, 2024 |
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May 1, 2024 04:01
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Well he certainly hasn't realized making something look nicer gets people interested about his own work, so at least he's consistent.
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May 1, 2024 04:02
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Samovar posted:Yes. I've said similar things throughout this thread, to varying degrees of hysteria, but at the end of the day, what makes this comic... Something I keep coming back to is how alien it is. I feel like he is incapable of looking at his work in any meaningful capacity. He understands that there are components, but he has no mastery or understanding of how they work, just that they exist. So he has a big punch line, but he is insistent that each comic is now a set number of pages. So it would be like if after the joke tag in a Star Trek episode, instead of end credits, you get yet another scene. He writes plot points and think that they make a plot. He has no interest in the deeper thoughts of his characters, so they have none. And sure, not every work needs to be a deep. Most Jackie Chan movies are excuses for fight scenes as the action directors play with different locations. But you don’t care, you watch for the expert choreography and physical comedy. But what does Mookie give us?
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May 1, 2024 04:16
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Oh for fucks sake
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May 1, 2024 04:28
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My first reaction is: ahahaha I knew this would happen re: Jacob vs. Pares. But thinking it through, Pares training to be a thoroughly flawed Spirit Shepherd is a far more interesting concept than whatever Saritha or Merrill would do. What I didn't expect was a direct link from the Spirit Shepherds to Dominic Deegan, I should have known better.
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May 1, 2024 04:45
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Trapezium Dave posted:My first reaction is: ahahaha I knew this would happen re: Jacob vs. Pares. But thinking it through, Pares training to be a thoroughly flawed Spirit Shepherd is a far more interesting concept than whatever Saritha or Merrill would do. Yeah it's incredible how funny "You know, you're actually really good at reading and dealing with people. Do you want to be a legitimite Spirit Shepard?" would be as an ending to this story so of course Mookie goes the boring route.
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May 1, 2024 04:52
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"My time and labor have value!" -the villain, with whom we the audience are supposed to disagree
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May 1, 2024 04:58
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It's interesting how completely incapable of conceptualising anything outside of a sort of contemporary bougie suburban sensibility Legacy seems to be. This poor woman, completely selfless, has utterly abandoned worldly desires. By which I mean she eats off the dollar menu at literally the same restaurant as the self-centered materialistic bad guy. The entire moral spectrum is the literally the range of prices at a sandwich shop. Anyway, the story makes a lot more sense if bad spirit shepherd already is a "real" spirit shepherd, and he cuts corners and solicits "tips" from customers because being a spirit shepherd is itself an intrinsically unpleasant experience. Like being ridden by a ghost is like being a houngan or mambo, where you end up physically and mentally wrung out every time you do it. So it's like volunteering to stick your finger in a light socket to talk to the spirit, instead of being mostly happy fun time with your spooky temporary buddy and every once in awhile they get uppity and you have to one-shot disintegrate them with your can opener while monologuing about consent.
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May 1, 2024 05:09
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SatansOnion posted:"My time and labor have value!" -the villain, with whom we the audience are supposed to disagree You know, sometimes I think this thread might be a little too hard on the author about the whole 'hard work is evil, natural talent is good' thing, since he seems to be trying to beat that one at least a little. Then this happens and I see that no, the thread has his number.
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May 1, 2024 05:15
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of loving course a Deegan founded the Spirit Shepherds
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May 1, 2024 05:48
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And there's still no reason why the Deegan estate can't monetarily support the shepards. Even if they aren't stupidly rich, they probably still have access to magical resources that would trivialize providing for them.
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May 1, 2024 05:55
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aside from the Mookiena chapter, every story features a Deegan affecting the plot in some way to the protagonist's benefit
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May 1, 2024 05:58
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So the shepherds are completely selfless, they can't accept payment for their shepherding. But they can take money from people for doing other things like busking. And it's totally fine for them to be paid with food, and possibly sexual favors? This is so stupid.
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May 1, 2024 05:58
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"... or you can find another outfit to wear while you scam people." Or what? What is the penalty? Jacob is implicitly threatening Pares, but how? Bodily violence? Hauntings? Even if we were to agree with Mookie that Jacob is in the right to protect his family's work from a swindler like Pares, the fact that Jacob is threatening Pares means that he's not an unambiguously 'good guy', and that there's a moral grey area (using violence for what he believes is the greater good) that he's stepping into - and since Jacob is the leader of the Spirit Shepherds, that casts a lot of shadow over the whole operation. If their leader is willing to do something totally dirty and underhanded, then how can anyone trust the Spirit Shepherds unconditionally? That's ultimately a minor point, but... there's something I've been noticing for a while, now, and this page is just more circumstantial evidence to add to the pile. The anthologies are meant to be 'all ages', setting aside the extremely adult and distasteful jokes, particularly in Rebel, but ever since OGDD, Mookie's been particularly drawn to weird, grotesque body horror stuff. There was a whole arc involving Facebath where Greg got his inspiration from having nightmares about gross poo poo happening to his body. OGDD was full of blood and gore and viscera from exploding body parts or whatever. One of Jacob's favourite party tricks all across DD's entire history is ripping off his own face. The Rebel dwarf lady made other dwarves see hideous monsters whenever they looked at each other. Merrill's dad was some hideous simile of a human, the result of a person's worst qualities condensed and made manifest. It's obvious that Mookie has a type. He enjoys drawing these hideous creatures, these gross designs that are meant to make us recoil in revulsion. He loves the shock value that he gets out of these moments. Why doesn't he lean into that? There's an audience for that! He keeps trying to make family-friendly, all-ages content when he's, one, clearly not very good at it, never has been and probably never will be, and two, his true passion keeps leaking into it. Like, I don't want to tell a guy what sort of artistic endeavour he should or shouldn't pursue, but he has a strength, or, at the very least, a passion. There's a kind of story that he wants to tell and he's hamstringing himself because... he wants it to be a story his own kid would want to read? Does he know that his kid wouldn't be into the weird poo poo? Scott Cawthon, the guy that made Five Nights at Freddy's, used to make highly religious, deeply Christain games, but they were usually poorly received and the common complaint among them was that the art direction was 'too creepy'. One day, at his lowest point, Scott looked at himself in the mirror and said 'I can make something way creepier.' Not to compare the two - Scott had a deep, technical understanding of art direction (not to say that it was digestable for his intended audience, apparently) and all his games, particularly the Christain ones, were highly detailed, especially in their backgrounds, but that can be him! Mookie can make something he's really passionate about if he just loses whatever hangups he has about making something all ages and just go all-in on the freaky poo poo. Bonus points if he makes it a whole new world and setting, completely detached from DD and all of the stinklines emanating from it.
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May 1, 2024 06:00
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The trouble is that he doesn't want to create good comic book art, he just wants to be known as a comic book artist.
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May 1, 2024 06:10
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I can't wait to learn about Declan Deegan, famed pathologist who founded the greatest medical university in the world. Or Daavi Deegan, renowned painter, sculptor, Renaissavnce Man, considered one of the most brilliant artists ever, founder of the global artistic movement known as Deeganism.
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May 1, 2024 06:14
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Trapezium Dave posted:My first reaction is: ahahaha I knew this would happen re: Jacob vs. Pares. But thinking it through, Pares training to be a thoroughly flawed Spirit Shepherd is a far more interesting concept than whatever Saritha or Merrill would do. I'd have thought Jacob would've founded them himself after his death is not zombies speech
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May 1, 2024 06:50
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Trapezium Dave posted:My first reaction is: ahahaha I knew this would happen re: Jacob vs. Pares. But thinking it through, Pares training to be a thoroughly flawed Spirit Shepherd is a far more interesting concept than whatever Saritha or Merrill would do. Honestly, this would be the one point where I wouldn't mind it if Dominic had founded the Spirit Shepherds. Dominic But no, it's (presumably) Rebel's dad who founded the Spirit Shepherds. So once again, it's Dominic's family and friends who keep bailing him out of whatever troubles him like the nepo baby he is.
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May 1, 2024 06:50
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Joe Slowboat posted:Well he certainly hasn't realized making something look nicer gets people interested about his own work, so at least he's consistent. Its one of his core principles. Putting in effort is anathema
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May 1, 2024 07:47
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Derracciano "Bookie" Deegan, renowned academic and artist, well-known for his valuable contributions to feminism and the LGBTQ civil rights movement.
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May 1, 2024 07:49
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amigolupus posted:Dwarf Mookie (Dookie)
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May 1, 2024 07:51
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Breetai posted:The trouble is that he doesn't want to create good comic book art, he just wants to be known as a comic book artist. It's this. It's telling his worldbuilding is as simple as "everything was done by a Deegan." That he can't imagine a world that isn't the same as ours, where people go to restaurants, and order things off menus. Dominic Deegan was 200 years ago and in the time between they traded airboats for airplanes but otherwise the world is still exactly the same. These were meant to be the works where he showed off his worldbuilding but his worldbuilding is as far thought out as "uhhh the Deegans did it." He has no interest and no conscious understanding of what worldbuilding actually is beyond the most basic surface signifiers of it. He doesn't want to learn, because he doesn't want to change. He has no ability to address any political issue, cannot conceive of a moral conflict greater than Lawful Good vs Chaotic Evil. He cannot put any meaningful work into his worldbuilding, or make use of that worldbuilding in any interesting ways, at all. His stories are still either slice of life ramblings that draw on whatever he did last week, or simplistic childish good-vs-evil, and when he tries to step outside of simplistic good-vs-evil, the reveal is always that no, see, you were a fool for thinking it was more complicated than that--in reality, good is good and evil is evil! He doesn't want to get better at storytelling because he doesn't want to change. No wonder he's frustrated at webcomic artists becoming more professional. No wonder he whines and cries at the terror of his work being outpaced. Of course things at his local farmer's market being different is ontologically terrifying to him. He cannot put in the effort to keep up. He refuses to. He's full of nothing but excuses and nostalgia. I understand! Life is hard. In a lot of ways, I miss the easy free dealing of the early internet sometimes! I miss the smaller communities, the easy sense of finding your place in it! Things have changed, and he cannot handle it. He's doing this because he misses being glomped at cons, he's said. He's desperate for what he used to have, not realizing that change, that loss, that things moving on and becoming different are a PART of life. No wonder 200 years later nothing has changed in his world. It is the most primally terrifying force in the world to him. His worldbuilding and storytelling reflects that. A world held in permanent stasis, where the same handful of people are still the most important people in the world. He'll never be replaced at cons by a better artist or writer. His popularity will never wane in this world trapped in time. He's safe here. He's safe.
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