Dominic Deegan/Headscratchers

• What happened to Greg keeping his staff as a memento?
  • I was just going through the archives, and I found this. Look in the corner of the first panel, just below Gregory's speech bubble. You can see the top of the staff poking into the panel as he's walking. Not sure why he doesn't have it for the rest of that arc, though. Could be because he's depressed and stuff.
    • Mookie forgot about it, apparently.
    • I don't think so. Greg had the staff initially because he couldn't walk without it, and then to keep himself humble and not let his power go to his head. He clearly has the staff in that panel above--but after that story arc, he can walk under his own power, but he doesn't have all that power any more, so he no longer has those two reasons to use the staff.
• If Dominic's the Champion of Balance why has he done so much more good than evil?
  • I think he's mainly there to correct imbalances on a massive scales (such as preventing the Storm of Souls from getting loose).Otherwise, he seems free to do what he wants for the most part.
  • Also, he's the champion of balance between order and chaos, not between good and evil.
    • And light and darkness.
  • Also, he's done plenty of evil. :3
    • All hail Lord Dominus!

• Who was Mosly? And what is his secret agenda?

• Why the hell does luna prefer to commit suicide rather than go to the alterist and get her problem solved? Or even illusion magic come to think of it.
  • Because spending the trivial amount of time at the "Creepy" alterist is obviously worse than eternal damnation. I bet his breath smells like mothballs and his hands feel like uncooked turkeys. Ewwwww!
    • How does a small child of a sorceress object enough to make the visit unworkable? They have sleep spells, even. Or for that matter, since it apparently manifests in babies...
    • It might have been her mother's decision initially. Or her father's; we don't know anything about him except that Luna's mother married him for his money before having him killed, so for all we know he was of the mind that his daughter was beautiful the way she was and didn't need to go to an alterist.
    • Suicide is a mortal sin in the comic?
  • For the same reason fat girls don't just eat healthily and exercise to lose the weight? Oh, wait, was that too much of a cheap shot for some people? </sarcasm>
    • that actually might be a lead on it. It's not unheard of that jealous and cruel mothers will deliberately sabotage an overweight daughter's efforts to lose weight; a similar situation could have been at play with Luna and her mother. Perhaps instilling an irrational fear of alterists in her daughter, so that she wouldn't get her problem corrected and mommy dearest could keep working the "ugly daughter" angle on her.
      • On a baby? On a toddler? On a 4 or 5 year old? Hell, even a politically convenient loveless arranged marriage is of more value to Hagface than funeral costs after almost 20 years of maintenance, upkeep, and the bother of abusing her nigh-constantly.
    • Presumably she considered the compensation she would've gotten from having her suicide while a member of the Royal Knights was around as more than enough compensation for funeral costs; though given how little she regarded Luna, her "funeral plans" for her likely weren't much more extravagant than "toss her in a hole and be on my merry way." Gotta remember, the elder Travoria isn't exactly firing on all cylinders here. And, again, there's the question of Luna's father; he could very well have been a mitigating factor preventing the elder Travoria from badgering Luna before she had him killed.
  • It wasn't her tusks that were the problem, it was her family. Her suicide attempts were the ultimate result of being the Travoria family Butt Monkey, and having her self-esteem systematically destroyed. The unfortunate dentistry just made that easier. Besides, she's pretty much gotten over the tusks by now.
    • She still gets mocked for it and reacts to it (and sometimes calls herself a freak.)
      • Not necessarily. We only really saw that in Lynn's Brook, which has repeatedly been established as a town full of ignorant morons, and with people trying to provoke her, like Celesto. When they were arguing with Penelope the Pain in Quiral, which is a hub of knowledge and learning, the only comment made was someone asking about a comment from "that toothy girl". Since she works in Quiral and lives in Barthis, and is on good terms with a lot of people (presumably)in both towns, not to mention engaged to the former headmistress's son, they aren't likely to bring that up as much. Plus, she has a fiance who's over the moon for her, friends and coworkers who think she's brilliant and a new family unit that gives her the support she needs in the form of the Deegans. Having a social circle that thinks the world of you can do wonders for one's self esteem. She's not undamaged, but she's a lot better than where she was.
    • Also, I think the implication wasn't so much that the Alterist himself would be creepy so much as what he does that's creepy. As one of the recent ships showed, those that did use magic to get rid of the tusks felt "empty" afterward, as if something was missing, and it's not a stretch to think this would be the effect of other alterist magic, and they'd develop a stigma.
  • By now, it's been established that those who do go to an alterist end up with big, bad consequences. But that's an in-story Retcon, of course.
    • And we know it's a Retcon how, exactly? Retcon doesn't just mean "Gets around to explaining something that was ambiguous before," it means directly contradicting previous information. So, tell me, where was it said that going to an alterist didn't have some sort of stigma or bad feeling to it?
      
      So, to sum up: New information about the setting does not make it a Retcon.
      • No - it's an Author's Saving Throw.

• Seriously: why hasn't Luna had those damned tusks removed?
  • Because she doesn't care any more, and neither do any of the people around her.
    • Except for all the random bystanders who call her a freak, and all the times she reacts to it sadly (or defiantly)?
  • Because obviously, the tusks represent both a fetish point (before you say it... about a third of the comic is obviously Mookie's Author Appeal) and they represent the last step before Luna becomes a blatantly flawless Mary Sue (as opposed to a blatant Mary Sue with a token non-flaw).
  • The same reason many physically handicapped people don't want to get corrective surgery- She's so used to living with tusk-mouth (she can talk without a lisp!), removing them would just feel weird.
    • If that's the case, Mookie should say or imply as much, instead of leaving up the original, ridiculous explanation.
  • It helps her take down her prey.
  • It's implied she has certain... talents with her tusks, although Dominic may have just been making it up to squick Gregory out.
  • The thing is, Luna originally didn't care about her tusks. Flashbacks show that she liked how she looked as a kid. Hell, the alterist her mother called in refused to do anything to Luna because she was happy with the tusks. It was only after years of her self-esteem being crushed that she wanted to change and her mother refused to let her as some sort of payback. By the time Luna was in any real position to DO anything about her tusks, she had made real friends and rebuilt her self-esteem enough that she didn't care to. Which kind of helped with the whole "restoration of Maltak" bit.

• How did Luna get away with launching a massive fireball, off a cruse ship, onto a prankster and his three innocent friends.
  • Rule of Funny
    • The fireball does indeed seem to be a simple gag attack. Have you EVER seen it give the target anything more than a light singe? Among her many targets (one of which was Dominic himself), not one even came close to dying. So why should some mermaids (which were hanging out in the freaking OCEAN and were likely soaking wet anyway, even the one sitting on a rock above the water) be roasted any more than easily flammable humans?
      • You'd think cruise policy would prohibit launching magic spells off the deck anyhow.
  • Or maybe it was an illusion. Seriously, I thought "illusion" the first time I saw that one, mainly because Luna's illusionary fireball is something of a recurring gag.
    • But what's the point of an illusion that goes unnoticed by the people it's affecting? They're not even looking at it.
  • Considering that when she blasted Celesto at point-blank range with a fireball because he called her the family orc, all that happened was he was a bit singed and more than a little startled (this troper wonders if he needed to change his pants because he accidentally relieved himself), it's likely that unless she's actively being attacked by someone who is a threat to her, it's nothing more than a bang and some smoke, nothing more.

• Okay, going back a bit, Serk Brakkis is helping out with the "crush Luna's spirit" plan, but is having second thoughts due to having developed actual affection for his target (well, to the extent that such a person can.) Indeed, before he goes in to have sex with Luna, he's ready to call the whole plan off. But then Luna wants to use a protection scroll, and her refusal to not do so infuriates Brakkis enough that he loses any softer feelings towards her. Now, I get that this is meant to be analogous to asking him to wear a condom, but I really would like to know why Brakkis objected to it. Yes, most men who object to condoms have bogus reasons, but the reasons actually exist. (Loss of sensation, pinching, latex allergy, religious objection, there's even a small percentage of men who can't get it up period while encased.) None of these would seem to apply here, and Brakkis never gave a reason, especially one that would cause that strong a negative reaction.
  • Brakkis claimed that using the scroll "killed the mood". Whether or not he meant the time it took to work the spell or that the spell itself put a damper on the action, he never said. Didn't seem to bother Dom at all, though. Brakkis was probably just being a Jerkass.
    • Dominic's superior Seer abilities probably would allow him to punch right through any "loss of sensation". But I guess we'll not know unless there is ever a character to objects to "protection scroll" use who isn't a Complete Monster.
    • From the looks of it, Donovan didn't always use them, since there was some doubt as to whether or not he had an illegitimate child with one of the Blinders.
    • It's magic, an element that exists within Dominic Deegan and not in the real world, so we have no idea how the spell itself might work. Perhaps it works by affecting the man's "magic wand", which could very easily affect sensation. For instance, it could dull the feeling in your special area a bit. As for Dominic not minding, the key factor here is that he loves Luna. Not only does that make him more willing to sacrifice part of the good feelings sex delivers, but some say that sex with someone you love is the best kind.

• Come to think of it, Dominic's opinions that Callan is a racist and corrupt regime also Just Bugs Me. From what little is shown of Callan in the comics, Callan, while far from perfect, is quite tolerant of other races. Orcs and other races are allowed to live there and make a decent living. Melna lives in Callan because she wanted to escape the brutality of Maltak. Heck, the royal seer was an Orc. From what we've seen of Maltak, Orcish society is much more brutal, especially to women. And you don't see any Callanians (or any other race) being allowed to live or work there either. One of the tribe's (admittedly one that even the other Orcs don't like) foreign policy boils down to "kill on sight". Yet Dominic holds Orcs in a higher regard than Callanians simply because he's pen pals with an Orc.
  • Dominic said that the rulers of Callan were currupt and almost criminal. I don't recall him saying the whole regime was racist (and if the Royal Seer was an Orc, that's unlikely), but admittedly the Kingdom was at war with Orcs not long ago. Clearly, he doesn't mind the kingdom itself, because he could easily leave and live anywhere else and keep in contact with the friends and family he does like in Callan. Also, an explanation for the last two things about Dominic could be that, quite simply, he's wrong. He's holding an irrational grudge against Reinholdt because the first meeting with him colored his impression of the man, and Dom's a cynical bastard who just let his experience with the people of Lynn's Brook (and probably other places) and with Siegfried color his impression of the rest of the kingdom.
    • This troper concedes to the above point. Dissatisfaction with the country's rulers doesn't automatically translate to dissatisfaction with the country itself. And while it does seem that Dominic's making Reinholdt into a Strawman Political of everything he doesn't like about the kingdom, the current lack of evidence does suggest that he's wrong about him. It is still a little hard to read since it's not really being played for laughs.
    • Let's keep in mind that while Reinholdt has been shown to be a decent person now, it was Dominic's prediction that probably helped to get him that way. He DID make that comment about Luna that suggested a racist attitude towards orcs, something that has been shown to be a major issue throughout the comic, especially given that the torture and horrible treatment of those people was what doomed Siegfried and his father to ending up in hell.

• So... the big scary curse of that Orc mage is that some kids will be born with fangs? I guess it might lead to some witch-hunting, but... it's still kinda meh for a terrible curse.
  • Given that the curse started happening in the war, and given Callan's distrust of Orcs after....I dunno, only thing i can think of s, they might act more like Orcs.... or short sightedness on the very familiar looking Orc's part that the war was going to be short.
    • My understanding was that he was trying to do more than just give them tusks, but due to his state of mind at the time his attempt fell short.
    • I think it was to serve as a reminder. The curse was his way of forcing the Callans to remember the war and the atrocities committed. Damaske "The Butcher" had a habit of collecting the teeth of orcs he had slain and wearing them as trophies. When he confronted Damaske, Thuen even made a foreshadowing Call Back about the curse, noting the teeth and telling him that he'd be seeing more of them at Callan, meaning that Thuen knew exactly what the curse would do and planned it that way. Given the general disdain and even fear that many had towards the Orcs, seeing their own children with the number one defining feature of the Orcish people was probably enough to freak them out.

• Melna hates anti-feminists so much that she is compelled to beat up women who express such viewpoints. This seems rather...counterproductive.
  • To be fair, she beat up Kiya for badmouthing her dead father. She only seemed annoyed by her anti-feminist views. Though when she was first introduced, she was about to beat up Luna for expressing what she assumed were anti-feminist views.
    • Well, considering what happened to Melna directly because of Orcs views on women (father killed, mother killed, and then she was raped immediately after), and it's probably understandable that it's a Berserk Button for her. And nobody said she was perfect, anyway.
    • What she seemed most upset about was that it sounded as though Luna was saying her own life was meaningless without a guy. Though that wasn't what Luna meant, it would probably hit home with Melna that most, if not all of the horrible things that have happened to her are because of that belief that a woman is worthless or is somehow not a woman if she does not have a man.

• What the hell was Klo Tark's prison break about? There was no reason to do that. The only effect it had was "focusing Siegfried's vision" and preventing anyone from healing Siegfried when he was mortally wounded. And getting a bunch of knights killed. And, you know, letting a bunch of dangerous criminals go free (leading to the whole "Urban Eddie" thing, but, was Klo Tark's game plan really "release a bunch of crooks in order for Stunt and Bumper to become good guys"?). It temporarily saved Dominic from being beaten to death, but then Dom ended up getting defenestrated anyway and Klo Tark just flew up and caught him--so why not just do that to begin with?
  • I think the object behind the jail break was to clear a path for Siegfried to get to the Royal Seer; with the rest of the Knights occupied, he could get to him faster, without having to, say, stop and try and explain himself to people when he was on the way.

• Jacob Deegan was a brilliant character concept: a necromancer who pursued that path like an ascetic, attempting to pare away desire and excess wherever he found it (Quilt was, ironically, supposed to be the greatest expression of this). What happened to that motivation? (This really Bugs Me, because it is one hell of a wasted plot)
  • You mean that motivation disappeared?
    • In what might have been a planned plot line or might have been an Author Saving Throw, he's right back to the ascetic path.

• Fridge Logic has set in for the end of the vacation arc. Rillian's entire plan was to monitor and test Dom and Luna's they reacted to different stesses. If that's right, then Rillian failed on so many levels
  • The trip wasn't stressful and everyone enjoyed it.
  • Rillian's proposed stresses are really weak A link to old foes? A strained friendship? Really? Dominic has scried on Cosmic Horrors, and a War in Hell. Are these really supposed to strain his mental stability?
    • Keep in mind that, right before the tour arc, Dominic had a massive Freak-Out over candy.
  • The most dangerous and stressful part of the trip, the Wild Edge Territories, had Rillian relaxing on the airship while Dom and Luna wandered about with an untrained guide in an area of extreme peril. He had nothing planned for this place. How was he supposed to kill him before Dominic went killcrazy if he doesn't even know where Dominic is?
  • Those stresses would be weak, if Dominic weren't already near the breaking point. Rillian is quite ruthless, but he's not going to engineer a real disaster that might get innocents killed just to test Dominic. As for the first point, it really seemed like Rilian didn't want Dominic to go berserk; yeah, he "tested" him, but he also went out of his way to make the rest of the trip more pleasant. As for the Wild Edge part of the arc, Rilian was probably just hoping nothing too disastrous would happen (hey, I never said he was perfect). That part really seemed more like a flimsy excuse to bring in the Mongrelfolk and Stunt into the story. And the end of arc revealed that Rilian had ulterior motives behind "testing" Dominic anyway, he needed a vacation too, and wanted to take the chance to be his original jolly self.
    • Also, while Rilian's plan was to test Dominic, the whole point of the vacation was to have him relax and recharge a bit. Rilian didn't want to make Dom get overstressed, because that would be defeating the whole purpose: He wanted to make sure he didn't go into Mindbreak, and having a horrible vacation isn't going to help matters. That the stresses were (relatively) minor was part of it. If he couldn't cope with those minor stresses, he would've been that much more liable to go into Mindbreak from the much stronger stresses he'll be facing.
  • Actually, Rillian was even called out on this by one of the others in on his "plan". It was meant to help Dominic relax and prevent mindbreak, but it was also a chance for Rillian to be "Brian" again. And maybe to get to know Dominic and Luna as a friend instead of as the powerful Necromancer who'd have to call on them to help save the world again at some point.
  • A recent strip proved that "friend" theory. Basically, Dominic and Luna get married and send out a spell to tell all their friends and family. Dominic mentions that the message for Brian didn't get through, that it "went dark". Then, we see a panel of Rillian holding a tiny version of the message spell. He really does care.

• Let me outdent... I won't accept that just two of them are valid. Bareheaded on a wilderness expedition? 10" visibility on a plain? Arrow in the arm without ill effects? But. The "screw in a lamp post" joke seems to be an excellent example of what can cause the hatedom's viewpoint to be so different. I was honestly not aware that it was supposed to be cheesy. To detect cheesiness, I presumably would've needed to (a) assume that the setting has coherent ideas behind it to be cheesy off of, and (b) assume that the comic was kidding instead of breaking its own rules. These assumptions are so fundamental that they happen almost automatically, but their loss turns the way you see the work on its head - and I don't know how anyone could make them after Snowsong. Suspension of disbelief seems to be like the cushion of a hovercraft. Lose it and you'll feel every nick and bump, and small or not, they're going to get to you.
  Put another way: breaking suspension of disbelief causes the reader to lose the leeway that fiction needs to work. Of course he's going to go on to see other things as not working.
  • Three, then (the arrow). Being bareheaded, while useful when talking about Real Life, is an incredibly minor nitpick. And I'm quite sure the visiblity on the plain was more than 10 inches. Besides...you honestly couldn't tell that "screw in a lamppost" was supposed to be cheesy? That's the second cheesiest joke setup imaginable, right behind "Why did the X cross the road" and right ahead of "Two guys walk into a bar." Barring unfamiliarity with humor conventions of the past century or so, if someone's willing suspension of disbelief is so broken as to render that unobvious, it proves the original point: there is nothing the author could possibly do that won't be viewed in the absolute worst way possible.
    • No, it's the enviromental equivalent of having shipwreck survivors subsist on sea water. If the flat, open plain doesn't have visibility problems, then it has JRPG encounters and Melna moves at Mach speeds. And no, I couldn't. After a strip about a grumpy, frail man and the power of his mind transforms out-of-the-blue to feature an overt Superman clone throwing around thirty-ton ice golems, what sense can there be left? If you think I'm bad, you should see the hatedom proper.
      I have not contested the original point. I guess I have been trying to show that (a) there are reasons for that, and (b) viewing things that way might not be up to choice for those who do. Feel any better?
    • Given that we've seen caves, broken ground, and hills in Maltak...no. I still don't get it. And, no, if you're talking about Super Greg, I don't get that, either. I found it to be unsubtle, but I do not, and probably will never, understand what the hell is supposed so soul-crushingly wrong about it.
      So, no. I don't feel any better. Not when the reasons cited for people hating the comic ring strike me as so trivial as to be beneath notice. I can see people not liking the comic for its particular blend of camp and seriousness, but I draw the line when that dislike becomes Serious Business.
    • Yeah, seriously. What the hell is so wrong with Super Greg? Nearly every reference I see to it seems to think it's self evident that it's The Worst Thing Ever, but nobody seems to want to explain why they think it's so terrible. So he put on a silly costume and pretended he was a superhero. So what? Seriously, someone explain this to me, because like the above poster, I don't get it.
    • Quite a lot of hostility towards me, given that I just came here to help people understand things. I don't think I can explain the reaction to Super Greg to those who didn't feel it, but let's try an analogy. Imagine a fantasy work set in a medieval kingdom, which previous installments have established as consistently mundane and with few miracle cures. Here a farmer trips at the wrong moment and bangs his head against a nobleman's horse, managing to injure the beast. The noble is outraged and uses the privilege of his class to challenge the farmer to a sword duel at the next summer festival. The duel is to the death and if the farmer doesn't show up, his homestead and everyone in it will default to the noble. This drives much of the book. Famers aren't even allowed to own swords, so this one goes into increasingly desperate lengths to get a smuggled one (he briefly succeeds, but narrowly escapes being caught and has to ditch it), to train with rods and sticks and to seek out a swordmaster who can give him pointers pro bono and without a sword. There's a subplot about an attempt to get the challenge annulled, as the noble is misusing a tradition meant to maintain honor among the nobles out of sheer pettiness, but he ultimately proves to be untouchable by common law. The farmer uses what valuables he has to make sure that his wife and children will be cared for, and spends the last night before the festival - universally reserved for carousing and getting drunk - sitting quietly with his family. When the day comes he's dressed in robes, looking like Samuel L. Jackson, and he slices the noble into bits with his purple lightsaber. That is approximately how out of place Super Greg is. Further discussion should probably be given its own header or taken to the forums.
    • That analogy doesn't really fit Greg's situation. Gregory isn't some guy who's never been in a fight and doesn't have any sort of special powers...even before Super Greg, you already knew that Greg for all intents and purposes had superpowers via his White Magic, and was experienced in using them. He could fly, give himself super strength, make himself invincible, heal from just about any injury...honestly, he was a superhero in everything but costume and setting. And Dominic Deegan has, from the start, basically been an analog to the modern world, only with magic taking the place of technology in a lot of places. So while I can see how it might be jarring and more than a little silly to go into a comic book homage/parody, I still don't see how it's a wall banger. It's a kid with superpowers doing exactly what you'd expect a kid with superpowers to do.
      
      And I wouldn't say the hostility's being directed solely toward you, but to the anti-fans in general. Unless you somehow personally account for every mention of Super Greg on the wiki.
    • The farmer is not supposed to represent Greg in qualities other than his inappropriateness. If you saw the Supergreg mess through the archives, imagine how much worse it was for those then reading the comic. Having Greg turn into a generic superhero would've been tolerable. As you said, he had a lot of the powers. Instead he turned into an explicit Superman. Note how the last panel is copied from Supes' first issue. Instead of minutes, readers had two weeks to wonder what, exactly, a fictional character from Earth is doing in a fantasy world. The fans -- and they were genuine fans then -- tried to accept it, and failed. The explanation simply didn't fly. DD is not just the modern world with magitek, not when the very next arc started with a werewolf having visions about Hell, and it was much less so back during Snowsong. They may have printing presses but we can't just be expected to assume that they have disposable, coloured, cheap printing of pictures for children, not when comics had never been mentioned before and Greg never mentioned his idol after he learned to fly. At least show kids reading them.
      But like all spectacular failures, this one had all sorts of circumstances acting in concert. A lot of people, myself included, liked DD because it started out with the one spellcaster who lacked phenomenal cosmic powers and had to rely on his intelligence. This had gone downhill for a good while and throwing around thirty-ton ice golems was the clincher that showed that it wasn't coming back. That would've turned Greg into The Scrappy, but the then-temporarily disillusioned fans were treated to Dominic taking all the credit with smug self-satisfaction that's genuinely creepy, the target of his manipulation shouting thanks at him, Pam giving Dominic some actual retribution for deception and puppet-mastery (while praising him repeatedly), and Luna chewing Pam out for daring to punish him -- to which he says that it's not her fault, that her judgement's impaired. Fans, disillusioned by Snowsong's resolution but still discussing and speculating over every comic, took this much more intensely than Archive Bingers, and couldn't see how this was not the mark of a Mary Sue. The seeds of the hatedom had been sown.
      • For starters, I red the Snowsong/Super Greg arc as it happened, not through an Archive Binge. And the analogy of the farmer still fails. A farmer turning, completely unexpectedly, without prompting, into a Jedi is not analogous to Gregory doing exactly what he's been previously established as being able to do, with the only difference being...he put on a costume.
        
        "They may have printing presses but we can't just be expected to assume that they have disposable, coloured, cheap printing of pictures for children, not when comics had never been mentioned before and Greg never mentioned his idol after he learned to fly. At least show kids reading them." <-- This, to me, comes off as basically disagreeing with an author about his own setting. Just because they haven't been shown doesn't mean they can't exist; by saying you can't "assume" that they exist, you're making an assumption, contrary to what you're actually shown, that they don't. In the first few comics, we see Dominic getting a "Seer's Catalogue," clearly implying that, yes, there is a form of cheap printing; and remember the benefit concert, where Miranda's students made hundreds of fliers to distribute in very little time at all? Why can you accept printing presses, but not printing of pictures? Not showing children reading them is a moot point; you barely ever see any children in the whole comic strip in the first place.
        
        And by saying it was "the real world with magic" no, I did not mean exactly like it. Obviously it's a fantasy world, with fantastic things in it; but it has, from the very beginning, had a lot of things directly analogous to modern inventions and concepts.
        
        And I have to disagree with you on the assessment of the Snowsong aftermath. The implication is not that Pam's "judgment was impaired," but that she was deliberately not playing favorites because she was under scrutiny by the kingdom's government. She's "praising" Dominic because his chessmastering did prevent something worse from happening. It's not like he played chessmaster just to screw with people or for his own amusement, he did a genuinely good thing, but was punished because he did it in a somewhat callous way. And if you want to get technical, she probably punished him more than the law would dictate. I'm trying to figure out just what law he could have actually broken; probably something about "conspiracy," but in the real world, at least, those tend to be aimed toward conspiracy to commit other crimes, whereas Dominic, though he was smug about it and manipulative, certainly didn't commit any actual crimes.
        
        I think we're just going to have to disagree on this one. The only way I can see it as a wall banger, honestly, is if you're already going into it to pick it apart. I read it as it happened, and have gone back and read it, and I don't nearly see how it's as bad as everyone says, certainly not for it to be constantly referenced as "Super Greg, just...Super Greg," as if it was self-evident and clear to all creation that this is the worst thing anyone's ever done, ever, all the time.
        • The analogy would not hold if Greg had just put on a costume. I keep saying that. Instead he turns into a painfully explicit Superman. Also, having foresight of a giant monster attack and not warning anyone would probably run afoul of the law.
          Yeah, we might as well stop. I've been trying (poorly?) to explain the emotional reaction that's behind the hatred of Super Greg, and we constantly get stuck debating the facts.
        • Greg did just put on a costume. Everything he did in that arc vis a vis superpowers he was very clearly established as being capable of, which is why the analogy fails; in the thing with the farmer, we're explicitly told that he cannot fight, and doesn't have a weapon to fight with even if he did, so him showing up as Mace Windu is not only out of place, but a direct contradiction of previously established facts. In Gregory's case, he's flying, fighting, displaying super strength and nigh invulnerability, exactly as he'd been shown to do explicitly in the comic before. The only difference that I can see is that this time, he's doing it with an added homage to Superman.
          
          So, what I'm curious about is, if everything else remained equal, but Mookie hadn't thrown in the comic book references and had Greg in his regular clothes instead of the costume, would it have been perfectly fine?
          
          As to the foresight, I'll grant you that, though aside from Greg knocking Snowsong's head off, we're never shown exactly what Dom foresaw (though him showing up to get ice for his drink at the end is rather telling).
      • But why be hostile at all? We just find this webcomic far more enjoyable when we snark it, we don't tell fans of the webcomic "you're stupid and you have a crappy taste", nor do we directly insult Mookie. If we didn't snark it we (or atleast I) would have stopped reading it out of boredom ages ago, we are just having a good laugh.
    • Then you're not the ones we're pissed off at. Most of the ones I've seen have been saying, essentially, "you're stupid and have crappy taste, Mookie sucks." That's the only explanation I can think for calling people who enjoy the comic with few or no reservations a Misaimed Fandom (hope it wasn't put back up). Personally, I enjoy the comic too much to think of MSTing it, but I don't begrudge that in others...until they get obnoxious, which is distressingly common.
  • The most infuriating thing about the Snowsong arc is that it could have been a genuinely good, light arc if there had been a bit of foreshadowing. If the intro had had Greg reading Supermage comics with Quilt saying "get back to work", that would have made the Supergreg scene more of a "oh he didn't" instead of looking like an asspull. If there had been more "Dominic is up to something" scenes instead of it looking like Mookie made it up on the spot in a big revelation at the end.
• This is a mild one, but it's always bothered me: The Chosen. A cult dedicated to CHAOS... whose members all wear the same robes, unquestioningly follow the orders of a charismatic leader even when it means killing themselves, and have been known to perform very rigid, specific rituals for power. Uh...
  • As much as I hate to defend the Snowsong arc, it did kind of address this point. Not all of the cult's members were Ax Crazy lunatics who wanted to kill everybody. Some were just screwed over by the current system and thought that the cult gave them a chance to help change that system. The higher ups of the cult like Caylen Bren were also shown to make good use of propaganda to manipulate the lower level cult members into becoming loyal Mooks. Hence why they'd be willing to follow orders highly likely to get them killed. I will agree that the dress code and rituals are rather out of place in a cult dedicated to bending and breaking rules. Perhaps the writer got 'Chaos' and 'Evil' mixed up.
  • But then you remember, the cult founder was Raf Ma Liksh, who was BOTH the Champion of Law and the Champion of Chaos during his time. Basically, it was a nice way of showing that even though he supposedly embraced chaos, there was still a large mess of the Law Abider he once was. Fridge Brilliance, if you ask me.
• This isn't a big deal, but how long have Dominic and company been in Maltak (in-universe I mean)? Days, weeks, months? It just kind of bugs me that we've been given little to no sign as to just how much time they've spent there. Also, is it just me, or do the heroes' priorities seem a little off? Yes, saving the land of the Magical Native American people is a crucial and monumental task that normally should be given top priority. But shouldn't the Eldritch Abomination immune to magical surveillance be dealt with first? I'm just saying that leaving the task of delaying its progress to a guy that already had to rescued from it once isn't one of Dominic's better ideas. Though I admit it would be pretty dramatic if everyone saved Maltak and then, while still high on their success, returned to find Callan devastated by Lovecraftian horrors.
  • Well, it seems that there's at least a sense of urgency to the whole Maltak thing. In all likelihood, things there were going to come to a head one way or another even if Dominic and Friends hadn't shown up, so it was either they go there now or it would be too late.
    • Not that the reader can easily pick up on that sense of urgency, since it's been about a year for us since this arc started. Though apparently only a few weeks have passed in-story.
  • And just for reference, Celesto pretty much told Dominic that he had to go there in this comic and solve the problem with the land. It's the classic Adventure: We can't battle the Big Bad head on, so take out his sources of power.
    • Finally, the Council of Archmagi, which include numerous (indeed, seems to be mostly comprised of) Edlritch creatures have been shown to be on the case. Dominic is quite a force, but he's hardly the only person in the multiverse that can fight the beast. (I have to say that this is a great improvement over the typical "the hero and gang are the only ones doing anything" scenario in most stories).
• Luna's (and Dominic's) reaction after the the whole Maltak incident, after the news was dropped. After thinking about it, I realized Luna's either not ready to be a mother, or doesn't deserve to be one. Seriously... the cost was worth it? While it sounds all noble, the attitude makes me cringe. No child will be safe at her hands if it gets to her head that its fine to sacrifice him or her for the greater good.
  • There's a bit of a difference between actively sacrificing a living child, which you seem to think she'd do, and accepting the fact that she can't bear children any more. For one thing, she had no control over this. If she were told she would have to sacrifice a living child's life, obviously she'd feel differently. What you have here, though, is a woman choosing not to dwell on what she's lost, and focus on the good she's done.
    • Exactly. She never actually sacrificed a child. What happened was that she's lost the chance to get pregnant, which she never was in the first place if what they said about Dominic was true. It was never even a choice on her part, it was a result of what was done TO her because of Neilen's attack. That she's not shutting herself away and refusing to live over the children she will not have and instead, actually took measures to help OTHERS who were originally unable to have kids says a lot about her character. Besides, Word of God stated that though Luna may not be able to get pregnant, that doesn't mean that she will not be a mother.

• So... no one in the comic has a problem with the fact that Quilt's body is made out of the flesh of murdered victims sewn together? In fact, Quilt as a whole bothers me. He just stops being evil because he liked puns? That and he's pretty much just Greg with stitches and only one joke: pirate puns.
  • Well, first off, when he first came onto the good guy's side, Miranda said explicitly she was going to check and see who he was made of. As for who it was, Jacob built him out of the Chosen he slaughtered, hardly innocent victims.
    
    As for him "stopping" being evil...well, he was never really "evil" to begin with. All we ever saw him do was some scrying and attacking Donovan, both pretty much just because Jacob, his creator and probably initially his controller, told him to.
    
    Also, only one joke? The Pirate thing didn't even last that long. Did you miss the whole 'Detective' thing he was on for a while?
  • As a matter of fact I did, but I didn't like that shtick either. But that doesn't change the fact, made up of innocent people or not, he is still made up of people! People! No one cares about that? No one gets squicked out when they have to look at him for too long? He walks around in public a lot, no one in town goes "HOLY HELL LOOK AT THAT FREAKO MONSTER"?
    • Assuming you just mean disgust at Quilt's composition, and not Quilt himself: Given the very magic-saturated world the Deeganverse is, and how Barthis seems a bit more accepting of others, (And we know how important tolerance is in the comic for deciding if one is good or evil) a flesh golem just doesn't stand out as much as we'd think. At least, I'm assuming you're not proposing the town gather up torches and pitchforks and destroy the monster. (I want to draw the obvious parallel to Frankenstein's Monster, but I'm not sure if the torches and pitchforks actually happened in the story.)
    • Doesn't stand out? We watched Dominic and Luna go on that vacation across the world, if Quilt's not the only flesh golem ever made, there's certainly not enough of them to make the fact that NO ONE ANYWHERE even blinks at his appearance. Basically Quilt's entire existance turned into a big wallbanger.
      • This is really such a huge problem to you? I wonder if you sit and rage at, say, RPGs because every single NPC doesn't do the "WHOAMG A TALKING LION/FROG-PERSON/SUPERMUTANT/NAKED LADY!", or if this is exclusive whining about DD for the sake of whining about DD.
      • In some RPGs NPCs do occasionally remark on your weirder party members. They usually don't though because of Gameplay and Story Segregation. DD is not a game. It does not to get to use that as an excuse. That said, it does make sense that Quilt is more or less accepted in Barthis. The people who brought him to live there and vouched for him are the town's local heroes after all. Plus, we only ever see him interacting with the members of the cast who have already accepted him and we never see him talking to other people by himself. It's entirely possible that some people in Barthis are still uncomfortable with Quilt and only tolerate him because the Deegans vouched for him. He'd probably invite more than a few uncomfortable stares if he ever left his comfort zone in Barthis, which is probably why he rarely ever seems to leave it.
      • Just to interject: Quilt does look a lot like a Mongrelperson, just less deformed. People might assume that's what he is, or at least that he spent time in the Wild Edge and was affected by the magic there. Presumably, he doesn't smell like rotting corpses, so if he is the only flesh golem in existence, most people would probably assume he was something else entirely. (And if flesh golems are more common than we've seen, well, how many of them are friendly, human-sized, and have free will?) Admittedly, people outside of Barthis would probably remark on his appearance, but how often does he get out of town?

• Why did Momma Travoria teach Luna magic?
  • Judging by what Barnett said, Travoria women learning magic is just expected, so she'd have learned some as a matter of course. The elder Travoria might also have wanted Luna to have some use in case she for some reason didn't kill herself. Additionally, given that Luna's well versed in magical theory as well as application, it's likely that however much or little her mother initially taught her, she would've taken it upon herself to study on her own.

• Melna's twin Offhand Backhand looks very awkward, and it really makes the guards look even more dumb since they were armed and didn't bother prodding their spears into her back before she could smack their faces in.
  • Considering how long it took them to realize that it was Melna walking in their direction.. I think it's safe to say they weren't that smart to begin with, and were probably put on guard duty just so they'd be out of the way.

• The recent Alterist arc invokes something of a Voodoo Shark: Way back when, the implication was that most people who had "Tusk Mouth" like Luna had their tusks removed entirely. So people would rather their teeth out than have them altered down to normal size and shape? The reputation of alterists is that bad?
  • Actually, at one point of the comic (I believe it was when Luna went on her spirit walk), it was hinted that people did try magical means to remove their tusks, but Thuen's curse ensured that no method worked properly.
  • People who were desperate or had no issues with them used alterists. Others tore their own teeth out. All of them ended up feeling like "something" was wrong afterwards.

• I made a strip slay joking about how the Infernomancer of the Demon of Chaos, after bragging about how the rules don't apply to him, got spaced when pointed out that gravity is a rule. I found the concept hilarious but I've been wondering, how does a creature that defines itself by thwarting the rules maintain itself in a universe that is ultimately defined by rules?
  • Presumably, it doesn't thwart all the rules all the time.