Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire, Mk. XLVI: A Tark of the Klones, Electric Boogaloo

[Trazoi]

Something about this line from panel 5 seems wrong to me. I keep reading it to myself and it just sounds awkward.

It's because Mookie can't separate his knowledge as writer from that of his characters. All Luna should know from Dom's words and body language is that he has seen something particularly disturbing. But since Mookie knows specifically that either Dominic has/might do something horrible or that something horrible has/might happen to Dominic, everyone in the comic knows that too.

Edit: (random11 below)

Maybe Dominic will be addicted to the heart of magic like DJ was, and change his life goals?
(Like others said before, that would make him EVIL, because he has goals)

Dominic's one of the few main characters with no goals whatsoever. At least SmugGreg wants to sing in his band. Or going for the lowest awfullest bar, Luna wants her man to be happy. Dominic doesn't want anything - I'm not even sure if he wants to be left alone anymore. He's just there filling the lead protagonist slot.

[random11]

Something about this line from panel 5 seems wrong to me. I keep reading it to myself and it just sounds awkward.

The thing that bothers me here is her nagging.
Dominic asked for a moment, he didn't even say "I don't want to talk about it".
Let him breath for a minute after a vision before you start accusing him of keeping secrets.

So. That's it. Wow. And here I was thinking there'd be consequences in this comic. Silly me.

Maybe Dominic will be addicted to the heart of magic like DJ was, and change his life goals?
(Like others said before, that would make him EVIL, because he has goals)

[Mr. McGician]

So, what utterly anticlimactic thing did Dominic see and is keeping secret in order to build some more very short-lived tension? As of now I'm thinking it showed Dominic what the King is planning to do next, because of course we can't ever have our intelligent protagonist ever figure out anything using his intelligence. It's probably something that was supposed to be shocking and terrifying but just seems laughable and nonsensical, like turning the entire population of Callan into Smuggly battlecaster mutants in order to create greater focus for the Heart because magibabble.

[Doompuppy]

He saw the light at the end of the tunnel and realized the comic was going to end...

[DoomHat]

Wow, Mookie really blew our expectations out of the water with this one.

Will he go blind? Will becoming blind make him god? Will Mookie make a big deal of how bad what happened to him is supposed to be?

Will he actually do the right thing and let something truly bad really happen to this person?

Answer: None of the above. In fact, nothing at all. The protagonist just made a staggering choice in direct regard to THE MacGuffin. He reaches out to take hold of the single most consequential and dangerous thing in his entire universe, and what becomes of it?


...nothing...


So much nothing that it might as well not have happened. His decision was predicated on the idea that this event must be important, but one page later it turns out to be so crushingly meaningless that it really might as well not have happened at all.

Will this even be brought up in the future? What possible impact could an event so void of... event possibly have on this or any narrative?

This is worse then bad. This is some kind of artistic black hole. This comic transcends mere laziness, ineptitude, insanity, or simple contempt for its audience. This... there are no words...

There is nothing to say because there's nothing here, yet somehow we read it. This is Schrodinger web-comic....

[AgentofOdd]

Sneaky Gate
Future Link

I should revise my prediction algorithm for this comic. Mookie has gone from always choosing something mind numbingly stupid with plenty of unfortunate implications to choosing the most boring option available.... For the love of god why? Stick with your strengths man!

[M84]

Bit of an anti-climax, but I'll give Mookie the benefit of the doubt and assume that he did this on purpose. I do like Dominic's sheer disappointment at himself when he realizes that his initial fear of the Heart (turning away from it) cost him the opportunity to look into it. Now he'll never know if the Heart would have granted him blindness or illumination.

[Lord Raziere]

…………………..

…………………..

…………………..

Thats….like……surpassing 8-bit theatre in anti-climaxes.

……….thats…….like…………

like……

an anti-thing. its a gnith. a gnithyreve. a unspeakable. a Not. a divide by zero.

Does not compute. its Null. Void. a Voidnull nullvoid. A….Nuloid if you will.

Yes thats the closest think I can call this. this anti-climax is Nuloid.

[T-O-E]

What are the chances that the Heart of Magic didn't vanish back into space but went into Dominic (who would then be called HoMinic)?

However I did like how TP distilled one bubble down to the vaguely ominous "No, you will know".

"Vision is no exception" could be remarkably accurate if Dom's gone blind/lost his second sight. It's more likely that the Hom made him allergic to Mavpel or something though.

[elros]

I have a bad feeling that Katya (who is also a seer) just saw the Heart of Magic, and that is why she screamed out. If that is the case, Mookie just proved that everything falls in place for Team Deegan.

He's explicitly stated that he spends 8 hours a day on each comic.

I can't imagine that he spends that much time on each comic. He must include the time he spends on making his books, planning for conventions, and playing video games (as inspiration).
The only other explanation is that it takes him a long time to draw, and that he goes through a lot of rough drafts of each comic.

Regarding Star Power: I hope that working with someone else will force Mookie to plan in advance, and that discussing his ideas with someone else can help him overcome some of his flaws. Let's just say I'm keeping my expectations low.

[Anodai]

This is so amazingly suddenly anticlimactic that it's creepy. It's handled weirdly but I have to believe that even Mookie wouldn't just drop something that huge. More is going on here than we realize.

[Cavelcade]

…………………..

…………………..

…………………..

Thats….like……surpassing 8-bit theatre in anti-climaxes.

……….thats…….like…………

like……

an anti-thing. its a gnith. a gnithyreve. a unspeakable. a Not. a divide by zero.

Does not compute. its Null. Void. a Voidnull nullvoid. A….Nuloid if you will.

Yes thats the closest think I can call this. this anti-climax is Nuloid.

You have reached the core of the comic.

But I don't know why I'm surprised. The more I contemplate this comic, the more the void behind it all starts sucking at me. I see why anyone who tries to seriously analyse it goes mad - you stare into the abyss and it stares back until you blink.

After 10 years there's just so much nothing. What are the politics in this world? Nothing. What are the issues with race in this world? Nothing (now that that one orc, Siggy and his dad are dead). What about homophobia? Non-existent. Distinctive backgrounds? Only the void. Character motivations? Paper over a crack into madness. Distinct faces? The void is all and all are the void. Sensible villains? There is no fighting the nothing. Diverse magic users? All magic just sucks more into the void. It is not a beam but an obliteration we see.

Religion?

The void is me, and I am the void.

[MReav]

I'm just worried that Mookie was originally going to do something, then chickened out and gave us this anticlimax.

[Mewtarthio]

In other news, I have been reading about how experts perfect their craft by spending 10,000 hours on something. Since Mookie has been doing DD for 10 years, he should have reached that mark if he spent at least 3 hours a day on each comic. I think that means that Mookie has become as good as he is ever going to be.

It's not that simple. If Mookie had spent the past ten years challenging himself, improving his craft, and making the best webcomic he could make, then he'd be an expert webcomic author. As it stands, he's spent the past ten years churning out a crappy product for no effort, and so he has become an expert at producing crappy webcomics.

[Oracle_Hunter]

It's not that simple. If Mookie had spent the past ten years challenging himself, improving his craft, and making the best webcomic he could make, then he'd be an expert webcomic author. As it stands, he's spent the past ten years churning out a crappy product for no effort, and so he has become an expert at producing crappy webcomics.

For evidence of this sort of evolution:

Schlock Mercenary: June 12, 2000
Schlock Mercenary: June 12, 2010

This is what Mookie could have been in an alternate universe where he wasn't as lazy.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Thats….like……surpassing 8-bit theatre in anti-climaxes.

8-bit Theatre's anti-climaxes were still funny and part of the comic's thematic style. This one is just infuriating.

I know I'm just throwing money in a hole, but I bet 5 Monies that Katya goes blind from the HoM.

[Aquillion]

In other news, I have been reading about how experts perfect their craft by spending 10,000 hours on something. Since Mookie has been doing DD for 10 years, he should have reached that mark if he spent at least 3 hours a day on each comic. I think that means that Mookie has become as good as he is ever going to be.

The thing is, experts get better at what they actually do, not at what they should be doing. That is to say, Mookie hasn't gotten any better at making comics as a general talent; he's gotten better at making Dominic Deegan, with all that that implies.

[Johnny Blade]

I just read the last one and a half weeks or so of updates in one go and I am seriously stunned by how absurdly bad this comic is.

At this point this whole arc feels like at some point Mookie had around a thousand ideas about how to end this comic, all at the same time (all of them bad, because they were, after all, Mookie's ideas).

But then, he forgot to write them down, or was too lazy to do so. Or, I don't know, maybe he was so excited by the strange sensation of having ideas that he was just completely overwhelmed.

Either way, he now only remembers some bits and pieces of those ideas and makes comics out of them, hoping that the scraps of a thousand ideas will somehow amalgamate into some sort of cohesive story if he just smashes them together hard enough.

[T-O-E]

Every so often, I remember that the Beast was defeated by a Halloween mask and a teddy bear and it amazes me.

[random11]

I should revise my prediction algorithm for this comic. Mookie has gone from always choosing something mind numbingly stupid with plenty of unfortunate implications to choosing the most boring option available.... For the love of god why? Stick with your strengths man!

Oh, don't worry, there are still unfortunate implications.

I mentioned it before, but it just got funnier after reading the news post (what else is new?)

Luna's "no secrets" policy is one I share with my wife. If there's one thing the both of us have learned from previous failed relationships, it's that communication and openness are very important. Even if it's an unpleasant conversation, it's vital to get whatever's bothering you off your chest and out in the open.

Of course honesty and communication is important, but imagine the following conversation between a married couple:
Person 1 - *Grumble grumble*, what a horrible day at work...
Person 2 - Want to talk about it?
Person 1 - Later, for now I just need a beer.
Person 2 - NO! We have to talk about it, No secrets!

Does this sound like a healthy relationship?
I'm pretty sure that's not what Mookie meant, but this is exactly what Luna did.
Most likely he just wanted to show the main characters have an open and honest relationship, and didn't notice what happens when you try to shove this idea in a timeline of just a few seconds, especially when it's done on a single panel.

[Trazoi]

Does this sound like a healthy relationship?
I'm pretty sure that's not what Mookie meant, but this is exactly what Luna did.

It's worse than "doesn't want to talk about his day". Dom's clearly seen something horrible and needs time to mentally process it, but out of nowhere Luna hits him with the "no secrets" thing like an emotional bully. It's really weird. I guess it's because Mookie doesn't think about the context of his characters; it gives DD this level of robotic weirdness to it like it's been computer generated.

[Mewtarthio]

Either way, he now only remembers some bits and pieces of those ideas and makes comics out of them, hoping that the scraps of a thousand ideas will somehow amalgamate into some sort of cohesive story if he just smashes them together hard enough.

The best way to describe Mookie's writing process: Take 100 stories, cut out 99% of each, then stick them all together to get a full story!

[Oracle_Hunter]

It's worse than "doesn't want to talk about his day". Dom's clearly seen something horrible and needs time to mentally process it, but out of nowhere Luna hits him with the "no secrets" thing like an emotional bully. It's really weird. I guess it's because Mookie doesn't think about the context of his characters; it gives DD this level of robotic weirdness to it like it's been computer generated.

You know what's even better?

Dominic has absolutely never kept secrets from Luna about his Visions

[AgentofOdd]

Does this sound like a healthy relationship?
I'm pretty sure that's not what Mookie meant, but this is exactly what Luna did.
Most likely he just wanted to show the main characters have an open and honest relationship, and didn't notice what happens when you try to shove this idea in a timeline of just a few seconds, especially when it's done on a single panel.

You have a point there. Trying to coax vital information out of someone by invoking marital stability is just so... Self-centered? Manipulative? Bizzare? And of course, that doesn't even touch Luna's impatience with him. Like she doesn't know things move at the leisurely pace of Mookie's plotting.

[Squark]

You know what's even better?

Dominic has absolutely never kept secrets from Luna about his Visions

I think that commitment came later. Dunno for sure.

[Oracle_Hunter]

I think that commitment came later. Dunno for sure.

AFAIK it was mentioned today for the first time

[Zaq]

Sneaky gate.
Future link.

As dumb as this is, what my brain catches on is "Capitol City." That's it? That's the best he can come up with?

[Trazoi]

Sneaky
Future

"Capitol City".
Edit: haha I know.

Luna continues to be an amazingly awful person.

Edit: One-panel Dominique

Spoiler

Show

[Glass Mouse]

"Capitol City" sounds suspiciously like a city name I made up when I was 14 and couldn't care less about worldbuilding.

Edit: One-panel Dominique

Spoiler

Show

"Great RIP RIP"

[Turcano]

As dumb as this is, what my brain catches on is "Capitol City." That's it? That's the best he can come up with?

It was funny on The Simpsons because the writers were deliberately vague about where Springfield is. This is not even pretending to give a ****.