/doag/ - Dumbing of Age (Support) Group

>There's only us
>There's only this
>Forget regret
>Or life is yours to miss

Welcome again to our daily group therapy sessions for those who are surviving through "Dumbing of Age". When we previously met, David Willis had decided to end the story on some kind of a bittersweet cliffhanger in which Amber recognized a potential rapist in a crowded crowd of conservatives and everybody else in the cast went to sleep.

While we wait for tonight's shipment of AZT from The Patreanon, let us reminisce on events past and how we can use them to better inform our decisions in the future. For example, we can learn by example that being sent to juvenile detention at thirteen has no impact on how your parents perceive you; rather, it is entirely based upon the color of your skin, even if it can be proven that your skin is the same exact color as your sibling.

If you wish to speak, please do not be afraid to make yourself heard.

Other urls found in this thread:

walkypedia.wikia.com/wiki/Leland
dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/hostage-2/
dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/hugggggs/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Patreanon here, there WAS technically a timeskip.

>Alt title: /doag/: it's fucking nothing edition.

Since Willis loves his bookends, we're never going to get a resolution to the rally plot.

Every "book" begins with the characters waking up in the morning and ends with them going to bed at night.

The best we'll get is either flashbacks or Amber offhandedly explaining that she just ran off or something.

So that rapist traveled back in time and told a child that looks just like him to harm Marcie? Wow, deepest lore.

I don't even know why I should care about whatever's going on here.

But I guess it explains this preview panel.

It turns out it's the rapist's slightly older/younger brother. And the next strip will have Sal slashing this little fucks face so that he has the exact same scar as Ryan.

What happened to Amazi-Girl? Did she get fully triggered into some PTSD shit?

Is... is that Roofie Ryan?

So youre telling me that Sal, Walky, Marcie and Billie knew this guy since childhood?

I legitimately can't believe how contrived that is.

So he's a clone of the time-traveling rapist's little brother?

Oh it's so goddamn obvious that Sal is going to get blamed even though Marcie was right fucking there.
No it's Leeland. Fuck just read the strip.

4th panel--did that chick eat the bristle end of a long broom, or a mustache? because thats one hairy looking set of teeth.

you guys ive got some bad news

It's Willis. We already knew this was going to take weeks to finish.

On the one hand, if he's going to do a week long flashback to Sal and her parents, then good. I want to see this horrible racism she keeps talking about.

On the other hand, fuck Willis for being a fucker.

Ok got two strips for you bois today.

oops, already posted that one.

Ah well, you guys could need some catching up.

And here's the latest one.

Hopefully the gif works.

Also if you guys haven't noticed, I've put up and ad for college university USA on the Dumbing of Age Website.

>Also if you guys haven't noticed, I've put up and ad for college university USA on the Dumbing of Age Website.

You magnificent bastard.

>Also if you guys haven't noticed, I've put up and ad for college university USA on the Dumbing of Age Website.

Christ, now I feel a need to make a parody of College University USA and take out an ad on your page.

the guys from menage a 3 are friend with willis right?
they have a lot in common

how would you even manage, it might as well be a parody of itself already

Just out of fucking nowhere?
>REMEMBER THAT TIME WHEN SOMETHING BAD HAPPENED
No context, just a rocky ditch (I think?) next to a playground, and a kid on roller-skates this-is-sparta'd into it.

Also I wish he knew how to draw. He can differentiate between girls and women, but all his boys look like midget men.

>No it's Leeland. Fuck just read the strip.
Not him but I assumed Leeland was a last name, because what the fuck kind of first name is that?

I take the general plot lines and use them to make good stories.

The kind of first name you give a kid who grows up to be a state senator and also a Gunsmith Cats villain.

Why is there, presumably, a ditch full of shattered concrete with rebar sticking out right next to an unenclosed playground?

>Leeland
Okay, it's been a while since I've read any Willis stuff outside these threads. Literally who?

hes nobody, as far as we can tell

wait, no, he is someone
walkypedia.wikia.com/wiki/Leland

Either was being sarcastic or he seriously expects me to remember a one-off from Shortpacked who now looks exactly like Rapin' Ryan.

probably meant the new strip, since it has his name in it and all

>Why is there, presumably, a ditch full of shattered concrete with rebar sticking out right next to an unenclosed playground?
Not only that, but it's a schoolyard as well.

I'm surprised more kids haven't died already.

Yeah, I'd wager it's a callback sort of thing.
Though I do have to ask why he spelled it as "Leeland".

I'm told they aren't aggressively terrible human beings and are generally tolerable to be around though.

Ah, ya got me there. I didn't notice that.

Sorry about that.

Why does she get kicked into a muddy ditch, but land on grass? Why is Walky closer to Leland when Sal was closer and would've charged in first? Why is the teacher stopping Sal and Walky instead of checking on Marcie? Why is she so focused on Sal *and* Walky anyway when the strip doesn't actually show enough of Walky's motivation to know what the hell he even did? (I know the answer to this is racism) Also, ditto to about the rocks and rebar.

What the hell? We're back in the dorms/flashback land?

>weeks long arc deticated to parents are evil
>weeks long arc of Willis telling how evil and racist mix-race couples are

Oh god this is going to be fucking painful. Go back to Amber. Go back to the Church. Hell, go back to Becky. Please Jesus don't take us down this road.

Ah well, guess I can just relax and take a break from the comic to do a Danny/Ethan smutcomic

RF is that you?

dave zero and t campbell strikes me like real assholes

Tell them to stop striking you and call the authorities.

at least most of the comments are mad at willis for the shitty bookend on the DOA website

what?

If he wanted a cliffhanger ending he should have had the crowd split between support for Sal and support for Amazi-Girl, skipped Amber wavering in her desire for revenge, dropped Ryan or at least have him unnoticed in the background, and made the bookend Dina waking up Ethan because she read some of what Amber wrote and is afraid she's gone off the deep end.

For real? That's actually kind of amazing.

Round and round we go, day in and day out. You think Willis is ever gonna' talk about something besides how much his mommy made him feel stupid?

Sure he will. He has to make room for insulting everyone who has a different opinion from him or doesn't know something he thinks is incredibly obvious!

No, we obviously need to learn just how evil and racist Sal's parents are. The more we know, the more we can logically deconstruct it.

> I've put up and ad for college university USA on the Dumbing of Age Website.
oh man, you glorious bastard

>Why is the teacher stopping Sal and Walky instead of checking on Marcie?

I assume he's drawing on his own experience of being a kid in the 70's and 80's when adults just didn't give a fuck

but Willis was coddled as fuck as a kid by his own admission

Oh well so much for that theory. I guess it's shitty story telling then

> potential rapist
You don't get a Nobel Prize for "Potential Chemistry!"

Since Willis has a bad case of sameface, what does Sup Forums think best girl would actually look like?

...

>Well thats anti-climatic.
>Starting tomorrow; a week of strips where Walky eats McNuggets.

>I shouldn’t have gotten so excited to see Ryan’s ass get kicked…now I’m left with a feeling of emptiness for the rest of this night.

>It’s a good thing this comic updates 7 days a week for eternity or I would be upset.

>This is way too abrupt. It’s not good storytelling. Maybe if it happened before all the Amazigirl stuff. But this is like slamming on the brakes for no reason other than freak the passenger out.
>I dunno, it’s where I would have placed a cliffhanger if it were me. With so many plot threads going on they can’t all come to a rest at once.
>That would be the same as putting a cliffhanger here. dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/hostage-2/

>i…. okay?

>Now we buckle up for six weeks of Joe and Roz talking about fast food before coming back to these plotlines?
>Well, at least a week of Sal flashbacks because we all foolishly asked for that 3 months ago.

>Augh, no, why, I wanna see mentally ill superhero shenanigans, what is this nonsense.

>The cliffhangers and tantalising teasers would probably work better if this wasn’t a daily strip.

Here's one that Willis responded to:
>Williiiis! Why did we jump over here from Sal and Amazi-girl NOW!? … I really hope we go back there tomorrow.
>i’ll think about it
What a hack.

Also, somebody theorized that Mary is going to be Ryan's next victim.

And then there's a whole fucking wall of text for Cerberus' reactions, as always.

> Even Willis's regular fans are giving him shit for this

yes. it me.

>Mary gets raped
>Cerberus is going to bend over backwards trying to explain how it wasn't really rape and mary deserved it

it's gonna happen. Just let it happen.

Could you imagine if Mary got raped, and people began trying to rationalize that she deserved it?

I can see the comments now...

>Carla rapes Mary
>Standard Commenter: Rape is forced sex + privilege, so you see Mary actually raped Carla. That fucking monster.
> Sane Person: What the fuck is wrong with you?
> Willis: No, that's accurate, Mary has always been the devil incarnate since Roomies, so literally anything that happens is due to her evil influence, just like my mom.
> Sane Person: What the fuck is wrong with you!?
>Followed by a ban and Willis tweet bragging about the ban.

>Comic reactions:
>Panel 1: Look at Carla's expression of pleasure and malice! She's been so opressed that she has now become complicit in her own rape!
>Panel 2: Only a complete monster like Mary would be able to take it so deep! I'm getting triggered having to read and jack off to this.
>Panel 3: Why do they keep making stupid faces? It's probably the patriarchy.
>Panel 4: That's really not what dicks look like...
etc.

Like they rationalized her being assaulted by Ruth.

Ruth at that point had started dating Billie so there were still a vast majority of the shippers trying to do damage control for her.

If that had happened further down the line but right before the whole "You belong in the boys dorm" scandal, more people would've been pissed.

What suck is that you guys are right.

Willis's fans are basically saying that violence is okay, as long as it happens to the correct people.

If any of the "likable" characters got assaulted, they'd be upset. But it would be Mary's fault in their eyes.

That actually makes me kind of sad.

It's why we should've known he wasn't going to show the Amber/Sal fight. Too many people feel bad about Amber for him to have Sal curb stomp her like he was originally planning.

Oh god, now I can see Willis making a porn comic off of Mary's rape.

Did Willis say he had plans to show the full fight?
The only recent change of heart I know that Willis has had was changing around the whole thing with Billie and Ruth being revealed as lovers and Walky and Dorothy coming in to comfort them. Or whatever that shit was.

Is this awful on purpose, or is the author just delirious?

both.

I think he'll give us her tragic backstory for ages, then we come back and see Amber beating her up and we're supposed to feel super-bad for Sal because she's so oppressed. Sal smirks the whole time and psyches Amber out until Amber runs off and cries in her room because revenge isn't what she wanted it to be. It shouldn't have been that easy.

But I thought he doesn't edit them??? I mean, he has a three-month buffer. It's just NOT possible.

(Also, he recently admitted to going back and editing some strips where he wanted to have Sal's hands covered with gloves all the time because he originally didn't always have her wearing them.)

No, he'll give us the week long backstory, and when we cut back to real time it'll just be continuing on from where Amber sees Ryan and she tries to chase after him.

I got it, user.

That would be a Cerberus essay I would love to read.

Ok, I was going through the archives recently (I read the comic with my friends on skype, we read it in silly voices and make fun of it.)

But I noticed while going through it that there was this one strip in the parents day arc that was missing.

It was one where Mikes parents hug Walky while he's in his boxers covering up his dick.

Does Willis just lowkey delete strips too?

I don't think so. Wouldn't exactly put it past him, but I don't think so.

It would be stupid to get rid of that strip anyways. IIRC, the book it appeared in was actually named after it.

It may have only been a bonus strip.
That's actually something you might want to ask Willis about directly via Twitter or Tumblr. See what he has to say.

No, that was on the site. I remember reading the comments groaning about the "Just Hangin' Out With My Family" pun.

Thanks!

dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/hugggggs/

>Just Hangin' Out With My Family
Why must Willis sully everything I love?

Was Sal present for Joyce's roofie-ing?

There is no Jesus

There is only social justice

She wasn't, but when they were deciding whether or not to got to the cops the next day she sided with Joyce about not reporting it.

Remember when Joyce nearly got raped by Wormface. But then she shoved glass in his face and turned him into Wormface.

And the comments section were snarking with shit like "Lol but Joyce I thought you were a Christian, shouldn't you be turning the other cheek?" because they hate Christianity?

In the case where someone roofies your drink and tries to fuck you, would turning the other cheek equate to letting them drug you suppositorily?

Only if he made a Slipshine about it

Oh my gosh. Why did I have to look at that set of strips again?

That is truly horrific. What would they have said if she wasn't able to fight back?

When did he start constantly making comics about his mommy issues? He was capable of making regular shit back in the Walkyverse days.

Now everything is "MY PARENTS ARE WHITE AND WORSHIP JESUS OH WOE IS ME" day in and day out.

Somewhere in the middle of Shortpacked is where I noticed it the most. There was that whole storyline about Leslie's bigot parents. Whiiiiiich I realize sounds a lot like Willis's situation.

But that was the first time I noticed a "my mom sucks" storyline of his.

It's funny, I knew somewhere in the middle of Shortpacked, everything suddenly became Willis on his social justice soapbox, but I didn't think it had anything to do with his parents until I read some criticism of DoA.

Seriously though, Shortpacked fell fucking hard. By the end, Willis' complete lack of a grasp of the world around him was so fucking obvious it was ridiculous. The comic's ending wasn't even a fucking ending. He did the same shit there as he did here with the Amazi-Girl/Sal plot. Fucking nothing.

I feel like "Set up a dramatic Cliffhanger then cut to a really long flashback won't be as successful for Willis as it was for certain other webcomics.

It isn't. Even his own hugbox hates that he's doing it.

See

The thing about cliffhangers in media, is that it's usually until the next episode/movie, after some wait or hiatus. If you switch topics while everyone is hung up on the cliffhanger, nobody is going to care about the stupid bullshit you put in instead.

I think I hate the comment section more than Willis, but then I remember it's probably mostly children.

Is this thing even worth reading?

Not really. These threads are for shitting on how bad it is and how batshit insane its author is, not because anyone actually enjoys it.

If you don't enjoy reading something to hate, then no, absolutely not.

With hindsight? Nah mate go enjoy something more worthwhile.

It's competent enough that it makes an enjoyable hate-read (unlike, say, Sinfest lately), but there are a ton of better webcomics out there.

Yes, it's a good hate-read, because it has tiny scraps of potential. It could be a million times worse than what it is, but it's still a trainwreck.

DoA is the kind of comic that has something about it that makes you curious but just tends to fall flat in execution.

Plus there's the occasional bout of Loss level atrocity sprinkled in every so often.

I'll admit, I think the maddest I've ever been over a piece of fiction was at a DoA strip.

Ooh, which one?

The worst I've gotten with it is sincere disgust.

was it the car chase?

The one where Becky and Dina hook up.

Dina was my favorite character at the time, and probably the only one left who was in any way tolerable.
Becky is one of the single most obnoxious characters I've ever seen in anything ever. I was so sick of her by that point that her mere presence was enough to irritate me,

Willis pairing them up was like he had literally set out to ruin the one last good thing he had going for the comic.

That and by giving Becky a girlfriend, this only meant MORE of her spouting lesbian jokes now that she has an outlet for it.