DOA Dumbing of Age

Yo yo, check it out with all this crazy shit ya'll. Wiggity woo.

Other urls found in this thread:

wdtn.com/2016/06/27/former-iu-student-sentenced-to-1-year-probation-1-day-in-jail-in-rape-case/
imgur.com/a/48WB1
fox59.com/2016/06/27/prosecutors-office-explains-plea-deal-in-rape-cases-involving-former-indiana-university-student/
dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/trauma/
dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/used/
pastebin.com/5MwZPhsE
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

It's cute that Amber thinks a clean-cut white boy would go to jail just for doping somebody at a party, especially after he was assaulted with a baseball bat and considering that nobody actually got raped. That's not how the system works, Amber.

No, seriously, an escalated version of this just happened. Homeboy got off with one day in jail and a year of probation- and that's with substantial evidence against him, including DNA and fingerprints. wdtn.com/2016/06/27/former-iu-student-sentenced-to-1-year-probation-1-day-in-jail-in-rape-case/

Only one strip for today.

Man fuck Amber. Joyce isn't like afraid to go outside, she had a fun time on the beach and stuff.

Damn you draw fast

And the crowd's just... wandering away. No actual security chasing down Amber or questioning Sal. Look at that lady in the first panel. She could not care less now that there's not going to be a fight. This is not how real people react. A situation like this does not de-escalate on its own.

imgur.com/a/48WB1

Figure I'll post this for the next couple of threads and then by request or whatever. All but two are in here, and those two are too corrupted to read.

Oh no, I've had this one ready all morning, it's just that last thread dies before I could post it.

But it did take me only 30 minutes which is pretty fast.

So.... what's she actually going to do, exactly?

Is she just gonna go up to him and beat the shit out of him or something?

God, this is supposed to be some kind of big moment and it's at a snails pace with Amazigirl literally bumbling her way over to a major plot point that took six years to get to.

And Ryan is most likely going to get away, drawing this out for another ten years at least.

i like this one. baby joss is cute
also i always assumed she picked the name because it was similar to joyce's, not the other way around

Is that mike?

>"Ugh, gross, that's a Kennedy!"
Today on stuff Willis might have heard growing up that he was too autistic to understand was a joke and not -ism.

Honestly this is looking better than the last time Willis had Amber chase down a bad guy.

At least there aren't any semis around.

Is Amber white-splaining to Sal?
That's racist. Amber needs to check her privilege.

Also, this recent series of strips has got me thinking about the flashback. We're set up to believe that: One, Sal is the victim of (and thus holds contempt towards) figures of authority, and Two, Sal often acts impulsively, as seen by how she attacked Leland. That being said, a flashback of that nature is normally meant to set-up something that is going to happen later on in the story, if not explain an action that had happened immediately prior to or after said flashback.

So with the flashback in mind, one would assume that Sal learns via Amazi-Girl that Ryan is an attempted rapist and thus would go right after him before waiting for Amazi-Girl's word. However, we're getting something much more boring and much less developmental: Sal and Amazi-Girl talk to each other while Ryan casually walks away. In fact, Sal seems to have been written as an opposite of what the flashback set her up to be: She's become the voice of reason rather than a man of action. Well, woman of action. You know what I mean.

On another note, if Ryan knows he's been recognized, he should be running, not walking. I'm not sure if he knows he's been recognized, though, so I'll let it pass.

Willis didn't need the large crowd anymore, so he just had them walk away because they didn't care anymore for no real reason.

Exactly. Ryan is literally walking away while Sal and Amber have their chat. And now Amber is walking away as well.

Both are equally stupid.

One was ridiculous and physics defying
The other is boring and slow.

Like, wow, I can't believe how badly this is put together. She's literally just slowly walking towards the dude while acting like she has no idea where she is.

Sal's also very much in the wrong in this case too. Absolute defeatism to the point of not even trying isn't going to make anything better either. She's also completely discounting the fact we live in the age of social media and easy lawsuits.

It should be noted in your example the prosecutors actually made a statement why he wasn't charged with rape.
fox59.com/2016/06/27/prosecutors-office-explains-plea-deal-in-rape-cases-involving-former-indiana-university-student/

Sal and AG calmly conversing is still really jarring and stupid to me. To me, it would've been slightly easier to swallow if the rapist showing up had been what got them to stop trying to fight each other (a Martha moment, if you will).

>So.... what's she actually going to do, exactly?
This is a really good question. Ryan already got beaten badly with a weapon and barely got away. This might've dissuaded him from preying on women in the future. If not, beating him up again probably won't do anything, and there's no evidence to stop him via legal means. And even if there was evidence, he's a white christian interacting with authority so from Willis' perspective he's immune to that anyway. I'm really struggling to see how this will end in a satisfying manner, even if Willis was good at writing.

Maybe Ryan will be armed and mess AG up.

IIRC there is a preview panel of Sal as Amazi-Girl so he just might beat the shit out of Amber. He knows she's coming and I'm pretty sure it's been a long while since she's attacked someone after making them aware of her.

>Sal as Amazi-Girl

Wait, what? You got that panel?

This strip is visually adorable.

But Joyce does get freaked out when she's by herself:
dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/trauma/
dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/used/

>Sal and AG calmly conversing is still really jarring and stupid to me.
It reminds me of the "Phantom Menace"/"Star Trek" comparison in Red Letter Media's review of "Phantom Menace". This is an important event that is in motion and puts too much at stake to be ignored (within the DoA Universe, at least), yet Sal and Amber just stand still and talk it over, instead of Amber actively following Ryan while Sal follows after her. Ryan could also realize he's in deep shit and start making a break for it; that would increase the stakes as well if he were to escape. Knowing he's been caught, he might set his sights on Joyce, assuming that she was the one to tell Amazi-Girl where he was going to be. Thus, Amber needs to go off and stop/arrest him, but is challenged by Sal who is, for some reason, essentially begging her not to be a vigilante, even though the flashback at the beginning of the month set up Sal as being the kind of impulsive person that Amazi-Girl is.

See, Willis? Stakes. Raise 'em.

Also, I'm starting to think that the flashback was an afterthought to Willis.

Nope, no preview panels of Sal. There was a strip where Sal was dressed as Amazi-Girl, but I don't know where that particular strip is. Nor do I know the context.

But here's the latest preview panel. Who is Sydney?

Y'know, I still don't understand that. It's not like she was attacked in an empty room; she was roofied at a house party. If anything, she should be afraid of crowded areas, not straight up being alone on campus.

Is that Danny?

Dang. I should have checked out the Bellbrook v Fairborn game.

This has got to be one of the weirdest gearshifting of the plot that I can remember - from Sal v AG to AG dropping Sal to go after Ryan.

>Who is Sydney?
Wasn't she the crazy bitch from Shortpacked?

I am honestly surprised Willis has a black woman as a villain.

She was alone with Ryan when everything went down. While they were at a party, everyone was in a different room.

Also Ryan has no reason to go after Joyce now since no one reported what happened to the cops and there is no longer any proof. He does have a reason to go after Amazi-Girl though. And I'm really surprised no one has ever tried confronting Amazi-Girl before.

I'm gonna need to see a goddamn map of the place if I'm going to believe that everybody was just in another room. I've been to house parties, and the only way the two of them could have been alone is if they were already in a bedroom.

As for Amazi-Girl, I've recently been under the impression that she was a myth on campus, like early Batman. Was that ever the case, or did I just think wrong when thinking about how Willis ripped off Batman for Amazi-Girl?

Also, does Ryan even have a reason to go after Amazi-Girl? Technically, he should be thanking her for allowing him to somehow sneak away without a sound and without being witnessed after having his head bashed in by a baseball bat.

>And I'm really surprised no one has ever tried confronting Amazi-Girl before
They have, she just usually runs away.

They were near the bedrooms in front of a bathroom, I got the impression they were upstairs or in a hallway, but when Amazi-Girl showed up I think it just looked like an open room. Anyways the point is the party was really packed, Joyce was playing board games in a bedroom with some happy drunks and then the confrontation happened at a bathroom door.

>As for Amazi-Girl, I've recently been under the impression that she was a myth on campus, like early Batman. Was that ever the case, or did I just think wrong when thinking about how Willis ripped off Batman for Amazi-Girl?
Maybe at some point early on, but an interview Dorothy did with her was printed in the school paper, so anyone paying attention to that would know she was real.

The layout was something like room with everyone, hallway, hallway that intersected the other hallway. Joyce and Ryan were in the intersecting hallway.

>Amber ordering Sal around when she came there in a crazy rage to beat her
Bitch, you don't get to talk down to her. You're a goddamn psychopath. You should be locked away just like that rapist.

That's one fucked up layout.

Also:
>an interview Dorothy did with her was printed in the school paper, so anyone paying attention to that would know she was real.
First of all,
>being in college
>reading the college newspaper
topkek.jpg

Secondly, has the newspaper been brought up again between that interview and the recent Patreon-only bonus strip? Does this paper only print monthly? What does journalism bring to Dorothy, who would be better suited to a political science position in her pursuit to become President?

When you think about it, this is the case of a woman being calmed upon the sight of a man.
That's sexist.

>Bitch, you don't get to talk down to her. You're a goddamn psychopath. You should be locked away just like that rapist.

Hello next DoA porno. "Amazi-Girl Rapes the Shit Out of an Attempted Rapist."

>What does journalism bring to Dorothy
Networking and a background in mass media. Realistically she'd probably be going for pre-law, as undergrad poli-sci without a double major is mostly the realm of people wanting to be lobbyists or policy wonks.

I forgot that law is a major. Shows how much I know, eh?

Still, it doesn't seem like journalism is a track worth following if she plans to be President. Just look at how many other Presidents were journalists. She'll be networking with people in due course.

If I had to guess, I'll reference RLM again and assume it's a case of Willis feeling like he had to give Dorothy something to do while other events were happening in the story.

Does the crowd not have any intrest in her anymore?

They weren't alone in a room. They were standing in the hallway in full view of everyone when Ryan started growling and shouting "I'M A RAPIST! I'M GOING TO RAPE YOU!" or something to that effect, even though he had to have known the drugs were going to take hold of Joyce at any moment. Because that's how date rapists prey on their victims.

Then Joyce immediately stabbed him in the face with a broken glass.

>They weren't alone in a room.
That's what I'm getting at. And it's what confuses me about everything that happened afterwards.

This is a crowded party where a person was almost raped and her rapist was shanked in the face and beaten with a magic baseball bat. Apparently Amazi-Girl has a magic power of getting everybody to look at her while Antagonist Of The Week gets away without making a single noise, too. And finally, apparently nobody took it upon themselves to call the cops about the assault.

This must have been a party where everybody in attendance were ghosts because nobody did jack shit.

It seems to be a recurring pattern that unless you're specifically one of the main characters or their antagonists, you can't do anything that'll affect the story in any way.

A concussed rapist with a wound large enough to leave a distinct scar that covers half his face will instantly escape from a crowd made up of dozens of people because they looked away for a second. An armed gunman on a college campus won't have the police called on him until he's already taken down by the "heroes". And as seen above, a crowd of people go from calling for blood to just... Being backdrops. Silent, doing nothing. Being nothing.

All of those people might as well be replaced by cardboard cutouts. It'd be a more honest representation of how the world is written.

This is awful.

They're republicans, guys! Get it!

No, just same-hair disease. It's supposed to be Joyce's dad.

Note that John's hair is Ethan's hair, and Joyce's mom's hair is Joyce's hair.

It ties into one of my overall theories about DoA and Willis' writing, which is that he cannot and does not develop the world itself. It may have a wide variety of locations and a diverse amount of characters, yet it all feels like a cheap backdrop for whatever's on-screen at the moment.

Like Leland from the flashback. We're probably never going to see him again, for one. Toedad is another character we might never see again, assuming Willis feels the need to rehash the gun threat and car chase.
Speaking of which, if I recall correctly, apparently the cops were called to the fountain after Toedad fired into the sky, an event which was directly followed by Becky going with Toedad. You'd think that whoever would have called in the shots being fired, assuming they were close enough to the scene to see where exactly the shots were fired from, might have also seen the gunman himself driving away, and thus would have mentioned that to the police as well.

But no, they neglected to mention that the gunman had driven away with a hostage so that we could have a strip where the police were going in the opposite direction like it's an old Keystone Kops film.

pastebin.com/5MwZPhsE

It's Jocelyne/Josh, one of Joyce's siblings.

Yep. Sydney's a total psycho with no purpose.

>If anything, she should be afraid of crowded areas, not straight up being alone on campus.
Willis doesn't understand mental health because he's afraid of therapists.

>I'm gonna need to see a goddamn map of the place if I'm going to believe that everybody was just in another room. I've been to house parties, and the only way the two of them could have been alone is if they were already in a bedroom.
I know for sure there was a really long line of people, so it's pretty much guaranteed that people were behind them.>What does journalism bring to Dorothy, who would be better suited to a political science position in her pursuit to become President?
Resume fodder?

Yeah, that'd be consistent with how Shortpack was written too. Everything in that comic came from the interactions between the people. Anything that happened to the world, like that part where Robin became president and brought utopia, are just excuses to create more drama and only get brought up if they can affect the main characters somehow. It's supremely lazy writing.

The difference is Shortpacked didn't try to exist in the real world most of the time (YMMV toward the end).
DOA goes for this ultra-realistic setting yet feels like a 15 year old is writing it based off his ultra-left facebook feed.

Agoraphobia is based on a lack of trust. It's less that being alone recreates the conditions of the party. it's that she's lost the ability to trust people.

Now don't get me wrong. I believe there probably ARE children who are in-tune enough with gender identity to feel a dysphoria at a young age. But honestly, it just seems heavy handed here.

Yes, it was way too direct. It could have been handled with more finesse.

Also, why the crap is Sydney coming to this comic? I would argue that she was one of the most pointless characters in Shortpacked. If I hadn't already quit reading DoA for fun, that would do me in. Sydney is so freaking annoying and cartoonish. We have enough annoying and cartoonish characters already. Really.

>Men accused of rape don't go to jail or suffer serious consequences.

Just not the white pretty ones, according to Willis.

Might wanna read the literal first reply, mate. It also helps that it's "people like him," not just men in general.

Of course, plenty DO as well.

Just a reminder that a rich white american kid got off scott-free after getting hammered, driving without a license, and killing four people in an accident.

...Entirely because he was rich. No, really, his lawyers argued(successfully) that he suffered from 'affluenza', and a rich upbringing never led him to learn his actions had consequences, nor that he had actual responsibility.

You know what would help a man get out of a rape charge? Violently assaulting him even though he hasn't made physical contact with anyone, failing to detain him and contact the authorities, and failing to file a police report.

Ryan as the embodiment of white male privilege with regards to rape utterly fails as a metaphor because the characters in this stupid comic have done NOTHING so far to test the theory that the system would protect rather than punish. Instead they cut his face open and then let him get away. This whole delayed arc is a disaster.

Wait ... How does she KNOW "people like him" don't go to jail?
Did she even get a good look at who she was talking about?
Was she there for that too for scene and knows what is going on?
Or is she assuming any white guy in college is immune to the law.

The last one.

Remember: It's not racism or discrimination if you're attacking white males.

That's because whites respond to oppression with overwhelming, unstoppable violence and by rebuilding a new society for themselves on the ashes

Inferior colors could learn a thing or two.

>it's a willis would rather shoehorn half-baked commentary about Very Serious Issues than tell an interesting, coherent story strip

oh wait that's all of them

To be fair, despite taking something like a week and half in the real world, Toedad only had the gun out for a few minutes and spent most of those running through the woods in-universe. And it is probable that the police got several calls about gunshots near the fountain, but no detailed description of what exactly was happening.

Willis' format really couldn't work with an arc about Joyce and her friends trying to find her attempted rapist. It'd take something like two years.

>Willis' format really couldn't work with an arc about Joyce and her friends trying to find her attempted rapist. It'd take something like two years.

You're right. He shouldn't have written a rape plot to begin with. It took him 4 years just to get back to it, and he had to use sheer coincidence to do it. Willis is a supreme hack.

Duke LaCrosse team begs to differ on that.

Yet I know of a few cases that even reached national attention when some white college dude was accused of rape.

Nah they'll just get into a conflict among themselves way before they are large enough to bother the top tier.

Toedad was sighted with a gun the moment he pulled it out of his trunk. Furthermore, even if it was only minutes at the fountain, that would still be minutes in which a person could have made a call and reported what was going on, and minutes where people could report that it is now a hostage situation.

>Willis' format really couldn't work with an arc about Joyce and her friends trying to find her attempted rapist. It'd take something like two years.
It's not like Willis had anything more interesting to do in those two years.

She strolls into action!

Wow, Willis is unpacking Sydney Yus out of mothballs for this comic.

Yeah, she got let go from her seasonal gig at Shortpacked and swore a blood vendetta, complete with at least one terrorist plot against the store and crew.

She knows throttling Ryan will earn her more hero points. If Amber beats up Sal and resolves the rest of her Tragic Origin Angst, there's literally no There there anymore.