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FIXING DOMINIC DEEGAN
Okay to end my sprawling review and analysis, I’m going to throw in my two cents on how I’d try to fix this interesting trainwreck of a comic.
MAIN CAST & Opening chapters
DOMINIC
Okay so on paper I love the core concept behind Dominic as this grumpy seer but … truth to be told, within DD he’s not -that- grumpy, his only real grumpy scenes tend to be in reaction to inane stupid lynn’s brook people.
He’s mostly portrayed as a smart and empathetic guy who tries to do good but has little patience for stupidity … a sorta bookish nerdy RELATABLE protagonist.
Rubbish, I feel if he was a legitimate grumpy misanthrope at the start of the story, one who actively chose to socially isolate because he tends to resent people of all shapes and sizes it would immediately fix a whole slew of issues his character has.
1. An actual arc for growth.
When I look at Dominic throughout the entire story, the most interesting aspect is that he shows some PTSD-type signs over his intense adventures, which eventually leads into the whole MindBreak subplot, but beyond that I’m not sure I can really talk of any arc worthy of note for the man.
I feel if Dom’s grumpiness was more openly misanthropic and more frequently significantly worse/more extreme than a situation calls for, it’d allow for him opening up to people to be a more gradual and essential arc.
I think that for a good part his current personality can work -fine- as the note he’d end up on, but right now he’s honestly a bit too nice and “perfect” at the start of the narrataive already.
2. his relationship with his mother and brothers could be made far more interesting.
A big issue with the story as it stands is that his mother is incredibly powerful & her relationship with both Greg and Dom is … great. This kinda makes it confusing when certain arcs have these massive problems that could probably be solved easier through a single call to Miranda.
As we’ve seen though, Miranda does have some interesting character traits, like her very controlling nature & her often using her incredible magic powers/scrying capabilities to pry into business that starts to feel a bit uncomfortable.
If Dom’s relationship with his clown of a dad & privacy-invading mother is significantly worse at the start of the story, it’d make a lot more sense why he’s off in this ****ty little off-the-grid town getting beaten by royal knights without ever bringing up what family he’s part of.
There’s a bunch of hints at unpleasant behavior within the family, Dom’s reaction at Greg talking about Jacob, Miranda’s behavior & her life coming with a lot of baggage that keeps affecting her sons.
Having there be a dilemma with Miranda where relying on her powers simultaneously results in her returning in Dom’s day to day life in a way that turns out a bit too controlling and toxic after too much time could make for an interesting dynamic within the family to overcome.
I’ll elaborate on this further as I get to the Miranda rewrite.
3. His rivalry with Celesto could be more interesting if the two started much closer on the moral spectrum.
So I’ll say immediately: Celesto to me is the most interesting/fun villain in all of DD and conceptually I really love what Mookie -wants- to do with him but … his moral decline happens too fast & gets too extreme so early on that it kinda makes his points fall flat.
I think a good number of the Celesto & Dom conflicts we see within the narrative can almost stay as-is, but I’d feel inversing their trajectories as characters could work wonders. Have Dom be more of a complete antisocial misanthrope who believes most people are fundamentally bad and not capable of redeeming themselves, whereas Celesto is more idealistic, sociable and open-minded.
Then as Dom goes through an arc of moral and social progress, Celesto through various choices and experiences simultaneously follows an arc of moral decay.
4. The self-insert bookish good guy vibe would be lessened if he was less of a bland hero trope.
A lot of the “people annoy Dom” moments feel off because it feels like random strawmen Mookie as a person hates and wants to make fun of. This point is pretty easy to fix by making Dom’s grouchy reactions feel a bit too extreme and harsh even with people who clearly aren’t that bad.
5. his good nature could be a well-kept secret that Dom doesn’t openly share, explaining a lot of the stigma and negative reputation he keeps gathering.
It’s kinda strange how in DD, Dominic is this absolutely massive hero who does amazing good, and outside of Barthis and a select few friends this seems like a pretty well-kept secret to many people, there even being a point to how these terrible rumors spread around him.
I feel that early on, there can be a point made about Dominic having some deeply rooted heroic/good traits, going out of his way to help people/fix bad stuff his visions alert him to, but that his antisocial side and unwillingness to really connect with most people because he doesn’t respect them, results in him never taking any form of credit for all the stuff he does.
There can be a bit of a self-destructive side to his grumpy misanthropic tendencies where he considers people ungrateful, despite the fact that Dom goes out of his way to help them by “fixing things himself” in ways that barely leave any evidence for people to even understand he helped them out.
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LUNA
So I feel keeping the Luna x Dom relationship as the core of the story is -fine-, I actually love how DD has the main character get into a legitimate relationship early on and builds on that. It’s pretty rare for fiction to do that as they usually love dangling the ‘will they won’t they?’ question in front of audiences for eons.
I do think it might be good to introduce Luna a little bit later into the story so we get a bit of a fuller picture of what Dom on his own is like, and that the actual connection between Dom & Luna requires significantly more growth from both people.
When we first meet Luna she’s about to kill herself because her mother is so incredibly cruel to her & based on what we learn later, her siblings also treated her like dirt. I’ll get to her sisters later, but aside from some self-esteem issues that sometimes shine through, there’s this weird disconnect in Luna where she goes from absolutely suicidal and at her lowest point to mostly okay with a few self doubt issues from time to time when she’s with Dom.
I -get- that Mookie wants to portray a mostly positive relationship, but in all honestly reading through DD, most of the major characters can feel quite stale because they’re “already there” for the most part, the true development they must go through happens relatively quick. If Dom is written to be significantly more misanthropic and grouchier though, that would naturally change his early relationship with Luna.
I think that Dom stepping in and stopping her from committing suicide should stay (cut out the stupid pun though, it feels tasteless), but I think that them connecting early on will go slower.
Luna can definitely stay smart and studious, but she attempted suicide twice, meanwhile Dom is a grumpy hermit who, although, going out of his way to keep Luna alive, has the social finesse of … well, a grumpy hermit. I can imagine that Luna’s first remarks about Dom’s house being shoddy and fitting for a pauper result in them not entirely starting off on the right foot. So the entire “they immediately hit it off talking about theories of magic” takes time.
Luna does actually read and understand Dom’s notes, but they’re not communicating well enough for Dom to realize just how smart she actually is. He tolerates her because he doesn’t want to feel responsible for her dying if she’s left unsupervised.
Spark
Spark I wouldn’t change much! However, here’s an important part:
-> all the insensitive and out-of-place puns and jokes? Throw as many of them onto spark as possible.
He’s an absolutely idiotic animal with no social antennae, a lot of jokes in DD feel cruel and callous because people who supposedly have empathy keep making them at awful times, but for spark this works.
It’s repeatedly established throughout DD that talking animals might be able to converse, but they don’t quite have the people skills to grasp complex emotions. Spark being this joking, jolly emotional support animal that literally cannot comprehend that there’s no bad time for a joke fits.
There’s 1-2 other characters I feel can be the resident jokesters, but for early DD all those puns should go to the cat.
More importantly: By making Dom extra grumpy and maladjusted & making Luna’s self-doubt put her far more in her shell, also makes Spark the perfect glue to help break the ice. As cold and grouchy as Dom might appear, he’s keeping this cat around who always makes the most inappropriate remarks, why? Spark can basically function as the first “hint” that whilst Dom acts cold and secludes himself, he does actually crave conversation & company, even if it’s annoying.
Spark works because no matter how grumpy Dom reacts, Spark will always love his boss based on the food he gets. Meanwhile Dom enjoys the simple social interactions that come from this animal who will always be happy to share weird jokes and remarks and never gets offended if Dom’s reactions are earnest and grouchy. For a person who has a difficult time showing his good side, who tends to scare people off with his rather unpleasant grouchy demeanor, someone as unbothered by it as spark is a perfect companion.
I can imagine that early on when Luna and Dom are sort of frigidly living in the same house, that whenever Luna feels she upset him, or that the only person who wants her alive also resents/hates her, Spark can be a source of simple yet unintended wisdom; e.g. “I don’t think he hates you! He gets mad at me every day and he absolutely loves me!” “how can you tell?” “well he feeds me, why would he do that if he doesn’t love me?”.
Right now Spark is mostly a source of alliterations and puns, but he kinda lacks greater narrative purpose. Considering almost everyone makes puns in DD it makes him a bit of a wasted character.
I feel keeping the pun/joke focus more fundamentally on him, and making him the key piece to the Dom/Luna relationship actually evolving from the frigid standstill it starts out at makes him a far more key character.
THE TRAVORIA CLAN
Okay so here’s a small thing I want to change:
Luna has a couple of sisters: Barnet, the lawyer sis & szark’s girlfriend. I don’t feel like recalling their names. (Amalia was the Szark one I think?)
and their mother Croona.
So as it stands I find luna’s original story a bit … weak, like I feel that her mother pushing her to suicide to get a whole load of money from the Callanian knights is a decent enough scheme and can largely stay, but here’s my big question: why *now*?
So next to Luna’s tusks I want to add another little thing to her history: Luna actually helped Barnet escape their terrible household not too long ago in the current story, and when Barnet left she secretly took a ton of family jewels and riches with her.
As a result not only was Luna the “ugly” child, but she’s also seen as partly responsible for bringing the family this massive financial damage that her mother & the other two sisters hold Luna largely responsible for.
DD currently has a bit of a problem where many of the protagonists have such incredibly vile and evil plans that come out of nowhere that it becomes laughable, having Luna help Barnet without realizing that Barnet would
a] leave luna behind
b] would take off with an incredible amount of family diamonds and wealth
perfectly sets Luna up as the loser child who was tolerated because she was family, who has now also done something so “Harmful” to the family that even keeping her around seems like a mistake.
In addition to self-esteem issues about her appearance, this would also give more room for general trust issues & the feeling like she deserved to die for a lot more than -just- being ugly.
SIEGFRIED
So Siegfried’s role in this arc is mostly just fine as-is. But knowing his long-term arc I feel that his racism could already be implied/foreshadowed here. When the mother is doing her monologue about her plan, she could blurt out that Luna with her orc-looking face having a crush on the most racist knight in the entire kingdom gave the perfect set up to completely crush her self-esteem, assuming Siegfried wouldn’t just kill her on sight out of shock. (heavily implying the compensation could’ve come simply due to Siegfried apparently having a reputation for killing orcs on sight). I can imagine Siegfried slightly bemoaning his honor and stating for clarity that whilst Luna’s tusks might be disgusting, he’d never stoop so low as to kill an innocent human for being cursed with looking hideous.
Croona knowing a lot about Siegfried’s history and trying to leverage that against a daughter who -looks- a bit orcish would make total sense and could easily add some foreshadowing to Siegfried’s character with only one additional page or a couple of additional lines. This’d also fix one of my biggest issues with Siegfried’s general arc, namely that some terrible traits just seem to come out of left field.
STUNT & BUMPER
They’re … fine honestly. With Stunt I kinda feel if his misogyny comes from religion, perhaps he’d still be obviously/openly religious somehow? I don’t fully mind the idea that he’s kinda in that sexist “women are inferior” camp and grows out of it, but the reasons he feel that way feel a bit wishy-washy right now. Blaming religion when he’s clearly not a religious character at all feels a bit … off.
Later in Just Deserts it’s implied he -knows- his dad was ****ty, but he still held his beliefs anyway?
I feel him simply being completely absorbed in extremely toxic ideas regarding masculinity and clinging to those because it’s the only thing of “Value” he has in his own mind & him lashing out as women/treating them as inferior to secure his own masculinity makes more sense than some weird religious stuff that feels barely relevant to his character.
I also feel that making Bumper a bit younger, like we’re talking stunt 22-25 and bumper around 18, might also fit their dynamic. Stunt doesn’t just see Bumper as a friend, but he’s kind of trying to protect/help this lost kid who he recognizes himself in, and in a weird way making sue that Bumper never has to do the “dirty/bad’ stuff that Stunt had to do to survive at that age.
If there’s anything in particular I’d do with Stunt’s arc that was honestly already kinda there, is have his entire self-identity, his misogyny, his lashing out all be violent protection against the notion that he absolutely hates himself in extreme ways. He’s so desperately clinging on to notions of toxic masculinity and violence, because if he admitted even for a second any of that was bad, he’d have to accept he’s one of the worst most disgusting people out there. Ironically his almost obsessive desire with keeping Bumper’s morals “clean” could be rooted in this.