/doag/ - "Dumbing of Age" is for Girls

Previous thread: >>no_thanks

Today's topic of discussion: Walky is flunking math, and I don't give a shit.

Predictions for future strips: We change scenes in a day or two and follow another story I don't care about.

Other urls found in this thread:

dumbingofage.com/cast/
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I have some sympathy.
I felt goddamn awful when my "natural talent" ran out and I had to actually start putting fucking work in to my studies.

20 minutes into a freshman math is usually not when "gifted" kids hit that wall, unless they're getting wasted every night.

Some gifted kids do burn out pretty bad from no more leash syndrome

i breezed through high school and then stopped going to all my college classes like three weeks into the first semester

its not that inaccurate

He's in a low level math course, it's the beginning of October, and midterms haven't happened yet, there is no way he's hitting the wall this fast.

Ew. The eyes always look weird when the characters faces get a close-up. If you look long enough they don't even look like eyes anymore.

Why is Joyce the only character without those weird-ass eyes. For some reason she's the only one who gets an actual pupil.

I haven't read very much of Willis' comics before Shortpacked, but I suspect that the more ancient characters have proper eyes while the newer ones get those floaty black smudges.

>omg i'm going to flunk and you're going to dump me because you're too perfect for me
>hey, stop calling me perfect
Dorothy a shit

He said he took pre-calc his senior year. Gifted, he is not.

He really shouldn't have had a high opinion of his abilities in math to begin with. Surely there were dozens of kids who were 1 or 2 years ahead in math.

Personally, I absolutely breezed through high school, but I avoided honors classes because I was a lazy fucker. Then I got to college and my first calc exam busted my ass wide open. I found out that not only did I need to actually study, I had to study HARD. But I went to a pretty bust-you-in-the-ass engineering college, so my experience might not be a great example.

The section average on most exams was very rarely higher than a 65%. I don't know if that's very unusual though.

>I haven't read very much of Willis' comics before Shortpacked, but I suspect that the more ancient characters have proper eyes while the newer ones get those floaty black smudges.
But Walky himself has the horrible eyes.

Exception which proves the rule.

I find that kind of unusual. The first calc exam is limits, L'Hopital's rule and some very basic derivatives. Like, nothing too insane, all very intuitive stuff. The kinds of things that the "naturally smart" kids should get easily.

Hell, most of calc one is pretty damn simple. The hardest part is understanding what a derivative really is, but once you get that it's just learning a bunch of rules.

I honestly feel like this is Willis being an idiot and not knowing the first thing about anything in STEM. I attached a comic that annoyed me quite a bit. For one, the class seems to have no coherence. First year programming classes usually pick a specific language, and teach the basics of programming. Instead they jump around from HTML to random shit like excel I think?

holy fuck, Amber just annoys the piss out of me

too tired to look over the art

But I like this page, writing-wise. It doesn't overly explain dorothy, doesn't overly explain walky, and all around the panels are clean enough.

It's Willis' fault for wanting to do this storyline but not having the patience to wait for his own glacial storytelling to reach a realistic time.

It's almost like he can make a good strip when he doesn't force a shitty punchline

Oh I forgot to elaborate. What she did there is actually impossible. Unless her website installs malware on the computer that lets it force access to the printer. Like, fuck man, I don't know if that's common sense or not, but if you're going to write a supposed programming genius you could at least learn the basics of programming.

Another strip that annoys me. Just what...

>soup kitchen
has that been mentioned at all before
i feel like it could have been but i definitely dont remember it coming up

Again, it was a fairly bust-you-in-the-ass university. The exams were meant to see if you could truly apply the knowledge, not to see if you simply retained it. So they intentionally designed the tests to be focused on edge cases that strained the rules and forced you to go through hoops to arrive at the correct answer. In other words, they intentionally avoided anything remotely straightforward. It was very trying and the very consistent D section average is probably a good indicator of that.

What the hell. that's actually a nice moment.
Bravo willis I knew you could make me not hat these characters!

So does the university not have placement tests or something? Because I'm pretty sure that most do in order to prevent that exact situation.

I have no clue.

Also update, Willis is just retarded. Dorothy's given major is "Law". Joyce is studying elementary education, which doesn't have calculus as a prereq. Walky is allegedly a communications major, again no calculus required.

Didn't he attend university at some point? Does he not know how university works?

Ahh yeah, I hated it when my classes would get like that. In my experience the engineering mathematics classes focused heavily on application of the theory, thankfully. This was pretty nice for me, as I had a professor who did his undergrad in aerospace teaching me calc 3, so he knew tons about how the math was applied for engineering. Also mechanical engineering is basically married to calculus and differential equations, so I ended up using them a ton while learning them. Helped beat it in my head.

I can see you really stopped trying once you got into college

Did no one tell Dorothy that Law isn't an undergrad major?

well, yeah. thats kind of what i said

He probably tested well. My placement test was just a little thing done online that connected to our main school account where we register for classes. It wasn't super-hard or long.

I tested into a class that was slightly higher than what I needed for my degree. Tried taking it sophomore year and ended up dropping it after the first week or two. The first week was review, but all the homework was online, and it wasn't telling me what I did wrong. It was too stressful, so I took the $50 hit and withdrew when I realized that it was too stressful to be worth it.

I waited until my last semester in undergrad and took a super-easy version of the class, and my life was better for it.

More like I didn't start trying until I got to college. Never studied a day in my life until college and then suddenly I find myself cramming just to stay afloat. Christ I'm glad I'm done with all that.

I was referring to Amber, the apparent genius, getting stuck in a super entry level computer course. She should at least be in a low level programming course, not a "how do excel" course.

at this point my least favorite part of the comic is how fucking real Walky feels.

i went to college and stopped going to classes when it got harder than highschool. didn't tell my girlfriend because she was getting ready to graduate a year early.
didn't tell my friends because they were fucking trash friends.
stayed up till 6am on /r9k/ in the dorm lobby, then once my roommate left, i'd go to bed miserable and alone.

i'm not saying willis has created a good character, but this specific arc hits too close to home.

I just can't fathom how these characters could possibly be in the same math class.

That probably proves that Dorothy isn't as smart as she thinks she is. Also, why isn't she in Sarah and Jacob's classes?

Probably required as a part of the major. And she tried to get out of her class, but her advisor wouldn't let her.

>That probably proves that Willis is as lazy as we think he is

It's first year, but he is explicitly in a higher level math than his major requires (), although I dunno why Joyce, Mike, Billie and Sal are taking it. This strip I remembered sheds some light that he probably got guilted/shamed into it by his parents so he can switch to Life Sciences to be a doctor later (although I'm pretty sure *that* math isn't that high either, explicit math and physics routes required higher, more theoretical math than the more applied math in the life sciences route at my school). Anyway, based on that and these posts and he's probably in V119.

Honestly the way Willis has sectioned off his courses just seems like he thinks he's doing a high school strip more than a university one. The main thing I remember is being split off from my friends because our majors needed different levels of calculus.

>tfw in my mid-20s
>took a 3 year leave of absence
>back in college finishing up

Kek, I felt old back when I was just a normal senior on campus but now I feel really old compared to all the people who will probably graduate on time. Oh well.

The idea that Walky thought Dorothy would dump him because he's bad at math is pretty insulting. I mean, it's more of an issue of him being a lazy idiot, but even so it's pretty shitty to think that of a person. Also, when the started going out she thought he was an idiot anyway, so clearly that doesn't matter. Her being busy is a way better reason. (I had forgotten about the soup kitchen volunteering, Dorothy is kind of preposterously "good")

I do like the use of multiple excuses as Walky is trying anything to avoid facing his issues. It's just that I find this Dorothy character arc of "everyone thinks I'm too nice and perfect and hates me for it"to be fucking stupid as fuck. I really think he should've ended up going to Joyce for help.

Walky seems like he's the whiny drunk here, not Dorothy.

I think he is trying to juxtapose "everyone thinks she's too good" and "everyone thinks he's no good" to show some duality or some other nerdy thing I could write a literary essay about.

They both suffer from varying levels of expectations, both from themselves and from others. By colliding their two stories, they are able to make more sense out of their own worlds by collaborating through their difficulties.

If it were done by someone other than Willis, it could actually be done pretty well, if not at least the quality of a good cartoon episode. But Willis is making it whiny and trying to fit two pieces together by force. Plus, it has taken an eternity to get here. Not worth the invested time.

The only real way it would be worth reading at this point is if you had all the collection books in front of you.

>The idea that Walky thought Dorothy would dump him because he's bad at math is pretty insulting

Exactly, we already know she's going to dump him when she gets accepted to Yale, the same reason she dumped Danny. Of course, that's never going to happen (literally, at the pace of the comic).

I honestly forgot about that

Goddamn, Willis literally can't escape his own bullshit at this point

I think there's a pretty big difference between stopping a relationship when distance makes it difficult because you're following your career path and dumping someone because they are doing bad in a class.

I'm not saying their relationship is going to last forever, but being bad at math/studying is the worst reason to end a relationship ever.

This is actually the best strip he's written in years.

It's a bit wordy, but it's actually a good strip. It shows Dorothy caring for Walky as more than just a fuck-buddy and cartoon pal, and Walky clearly cares for Dorothy as more than a fuck-buddy and... cartoon pal. Wow, is there really that little to their relationship?

Anyways, hopefully this isn't straight up the end of Walky's math woes. After all, we've seen before how willing Willis is to just end storylines without a second thought.

It's not necessarily impossible; my university has Print Anywhere access that allows you to connect to printers and, well, print anywhere.

As for coding an operating system from scratch, yeah that's impossible unless you have a lot of time on your hands.

Calculus may not be required, but math credits might be.
Why he didn't just take an easy class, I don't see. My university offers some kind of high-school level math course, I think. Something for retards and kids who want a class they can blow off with ease.

Y'all are lucky

I went straight to college course shit from a high school that taught strict Young Earth Creationism.

I know friends who went into pre-med sciences after years of an education which didn't believe in evolution.

I still hate Willy but his stance on Fundie Christians isn't exactly inaccurate at times

If you were faculty and physically on campus, you could log in to a special site that let you send print jobs that could remain in the system for up to an hour. It was awesome, and technically, any student could use it if they knew the URL, but we didn't tell them that.

Neat.
The only limitations students have is their allotted printing budget. You can print as much as you like if you don't mind paying out of pocket when you print too much.

So.. when do you guys think we will have more of best girl?

OH MY FUCKING GOD.

ARE THEY REALLY STILL FUCKING THERE?

did somebody cut the last panel? this isn't total crap

I don't think that means what you think it means. The exception that proves the rule is used regarding something like "It's not okay to punch Carla when Ruth's around". The exception proves that the general rule (It is okay to punch Carla) must exist.

>Dorothy
>"perfect"
But that's not Mary.

if evaluation was real we'd know about it but when we look to the bibble there's noothing there according to elevation we all used to be monkies in the jungle then how come there still loads of monkies in the jungle and they dont keep turning into people? face it, everlution is just a liberal trick concocted by jews to corrupt our soft vunerable children in order to get them to turn away from good god almighty

Wasn't she drunk when she got it in bed?

She sobered up when walky told her he was flunking.

>Hell, most of calc one is pretty damn simple.
While I definitely agree, I still managed to get a D in that class several times. Homework I'd breeze through, but when it came to tests I'd suddenly blank out. At least when I flunked Algorithm Design it made sense why, that shit was difficult.

What in fuck are you on about, Frank?

I like dottie way more than Mary. Mary's not even cute (except that one time)

If he already had a connection to the printer from his tablet because he has admin rights on the network, all her button would have had to do is use the browser's print command.

You know, it would be a better use of Dorothy's time to help Mary study in peace.

Mary can already study, she just needs peace.

That heavy nose shadow looks like a fucking hitler moustache.

Luger shopped in her hand, when?

No matter how often I see that thumbnail, I keep thinking Mary has a toothbrush moustache.

great, now i'm going to see adolph mary every time i see this shot and have to wonder what the fuck is happening with her thumb

That is just how Willis draws noses nowadays.

All Willis characters are inbred and suffer from severe nasal deformities.

it's a real problem. allergy season kills thousands every year.

Because Joyce is Willis' waifu which is what makes the mindbreak doujins all the more fulfilling

>mindbreak doujins

Can I see those?

Maybe someone can edit the image so it doesnt look like a Hitler mustache"

I burned out at around Calculus in High school. So badly that I had to repeat pre-cal to keep my GPA up.

It can happen sooner than you think.

>Maybe someone can edit the image so it doesnt look like a Hitler mustache
I've gotchu, famiglia!

My alma mater doesn't have a pre-law major and instead offers a list of courses that develop the knowledge and skills needed for law school.

I doubt Amber wouldn't have been able to test out of Comp-Sci 110, basic shit like MSWord and Excel is usually covered in classes that don't count for graduation.

>tfw in my early 30s
>dropped my senior year due to personal and monetary issues
>still haven't gone back

Honestly at this point I'd just feel embarrassed at graduation.

Joyce has irises, but no pupils. All those shitty dot eyes are pupils without irises (or sclera).

Honestly I find Joyce's eyes creepier, its like they're glowing or something.

>No Dewd

Ahhh, good thread.

I really do think that DoA would improve twicefold if Willis just stuck to one storyline per chapter instead of sticking to that 'one day per chapter' thing and trying to balance every single goddamn thing that happens on that day.

It's so frustrating when you see these brief flashes of competency while knowing that he's just going to waste any goodwill you give him

Hey, better late than never. Besides, the way the job market's looking these days, a bachelor degree's a useful safety net.

>Honestly I find Joyce's eyes creepier, its like they're glowing or something.
Maybe she's an habitual melange abuser.

What you see is the beginnings of the Eyes of Ibad, the blue-in-blue marking her addiction to the spice melange.

I finished my degree at an advanced age, and I didn't go to graduation. I just walked into an office and they gave me the diploma. I'm sure if you contact your convocation department they could tell you if there's a similar process. That way you don't have to let embarassment get in the way of what could be a useful certification.

If you're too busy to do it, that's a different story. But I'd recommend it if you can finish without disrupting your life too much.

Walky should flunk out and resort to shitposting on the internet while telling everyone he's 'smart but lazy'.

>Eighteen people in Willis' cast page
And that's just his cast page; there must be at least three to five more than that who are regulars.

If you had to cut Willis' cast in half, from sixteen to 24 regular characters down to eight to twelve, who would you cut and who would you keep?

For reference, the cast list is: dumbingofage.com/cast/

I'd keep the following:
>Joyce
>Mary
>Dorothy
>Walky
>Sal
>Danny
>Amber
>Carla

Realistically I don't won't have the time, or money, for it until next year at the earliest and even then I have a bunch of other things that need to be addressed.

>Joyce
>Dorothy
>Walky
>Sal
>Amber
>Sarah
>Dina
>Danny
>Ethan
>Joe
>Ruth
>Billie

Nets you a decent spread of character interactions and personalities, though you could drop Ethan and replace him with Leslie if you want to be able to do a recurring focus on the faculty and staff side.

If we take Walky to be an Avatar of Willis, then he already did.

I like how all the relationships in this comic have troubles but are still worth fighting for, except if you have post traumatic stress disorder, in which case you're a disgusting piece of shit and you should get out of the way so your best friend can fuck your boyfriend.

Danny and Amber broke up because Amber's an abusive asshole you retard. She should fucking kill herself.

>Amber
>PTSD

Amber does has PTSD, to the point of needing a superhero persona to handle her triggers. She's still an asshole.

What's her triggers? A black woman? Hands being stabbed?

She's a piece of shit and she should be locked up like the fucking rabid dog she is.

Fucking worthless sack of dog shit. People like her deserve to fucking die.

Sal's a quadroon. But yeah, black chick and her dad.

Is there something personal you want to talk about, user?

Actually, yes, Sal triggers Amber.
It's to the point that she blocks out whatever she says, even if it's casual conversation.

People like Amber should kill themselves. They're bad people and all they do is hurt anyone who tries to help them. They're disgusting, worthless dog shit and the world is better off without them.

I want to die so much. I'm never going to stop being a vile piece of shit and the only moral thing I can do is kill myself.

Who hurt you, user?

I'm just going to hurt people all I do is hurt people I'm shit I' fucking dosghist dogshsit doghist I need to fucking die right now I need to fucking kill myself now worthless fucking worthless piece of shit I need to fucking die I need to fucking die I need to fucking die I need to fucking die I need to fucking die I need to fucking kill myself before I hurt anybody else it all i m capable of its all ille ever do to anyone im shit i shit im so fuckign hit im so rry sorry im sorry

Y'know, when we started making DoA threads, I didn't think somebody would actually die.
You see, the irony is that Willis instated a "no death" rule when he made DoA, so there's no actual tension in situations such as attempted suicide or being kidnapped by a gun-toting father.

Dude, it's alright.

You've done some bad shit, I presume, and you feel shitty about it. I get that. But the fact that you feel shitty about it means that you recognize that you've fucked up, and if you've recognized that you've fucked up, then you can do better.

No you don't uderstand all I do is hurt people and I'm useless and clumsy and stupid and I say the wrong thing and I'm lazy and ungrateful and spoiled and an asshole and fucking violent and worthless and I'm a burden I'm a burden I'm unappreciative and I don't care about anyone but myself and I'm selfish and I'm stupid and I do nothing right and I never give back to anyone and I take advantage of them and I never help anyone and I'm so fucking undeserving of being alive right now the only fucking thing I can do to make it right is to fucking die I fucking deserve it if I stay alive it'll just keep getting worse dont you get it I'lnk never stop being awful I'm awful that's all I am is awful I'll never be anything but a disgusting worthless fuck up

Then stop. That's it. You'll be good, then you'll go back to your bad habits inevitably, and that's okay. Just stop again. It will take forever and you won't think anything has changed, but as long as your realize what you're doing and stop, even if it's just for a second, they're you're better off than before. And even if it's just for one second now, tomorrow go for two seconds. It doesn't matter if you fail, if you backslide, or anything else, just keep going.

>skates are busted

How were his skates busted, Sal?