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Ph03n1x24 @ph03n1x24.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Sheryl Weikal (The Leftist Lawyer) @leftistlawyer.com ⋅ 18h
Polling USA @usapolling.bsky.social ⋅ 19h
onion person @junlper.beer ⋅ 1d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
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PAX East
HAXX0RZ
Amazi-Girl has turned to the Dark Side, flee while you can!
How can you cross the Dark Side when your action is Chaotic Good?
She’s leaning more towards True Neutral with that one
There is no way she is True Neutral, she wouldn’t really care about the sign and certainly wouldn’t be a vigilante.
Yeah, not even close. That one’s probably a chaotic neutral action.
This is what we call Chaotic Asshole.
Honestly, I’m going back to Aizat and calling for chaotic good. She’s clearly doing this out out good intentions; she’s trying to prevent those guys from vandalising the sign. She’s just being very unorthodox about it, hence chaotic good. She probably intends to put the sign up again later, though whether she’ll actually get around to it is anyone’s guess.
I fully support Chaotic Good in this discussion.
Because honestly, neutral and chaotic neutral would have given no shits about this vandalism, unless they lived near the sign and appreciated its function in their lives.
Alignment is the single worst concept ever introduced to RPGs.
djaevlenselv makes some excellent points. I also endorse chaotic good.
@John: Untrue. It produces great conversations like this one.
It’s only Chaotic Neutral/Good until somebody dies from flying off a cliff. Then it becomes chaotic evil. But hey, even Batman screwed up a few innocent lives, am I right?
If you consider disputes about which of nine ill-defined boxes a character must be crammed into to be “great” and not “pointless, limiting, and hostile to realistic characterization”, sure.
Personally, I’ve never seen any role-playing situation that an alignment debate couldn’t make worse.
It’s only chaotic good if she leaves the sign at a campus security office.
@John I fail to see why defining how good or evil your character is (with a lot higher variation than most video games, I might add) at all limits your creativity. Besides, alignments can change over time, so it’s not some constricting mechanism.
If I had a character that’s defined as chaotic good, how is that hostile to realistic character creation? I happens all the time in TV shows and anime:
Ichigo Kurosaki (Bleach) is pretty much Chaotic Good, does this mean he’s unrealistic as a character?
Roy Greenhilt (Order of the Stick) would be a solid Chaotic Good, is he also unrealistic?
And there’s Rhea Snaketail (Slightly Damned) who’s alternating between Chaotic Neutral and Neutral Good, as she tends to be somewhat mean, but caring at some times.
Really though, I just think that if you believe that classification is a limitation, you’re probably actually limiting yourself by believing that. It’s only a system to determine how you appear to people (like judging appearances. I wouldn’t sell to or party up with a Chaotic Evil character, would you?).
I also wanted to write something long, because I’m bored, so very, very bored…
@Neospecter: I wouldn’t call the first two good examples of your point. Rhea had been given the alignment chaotic neutral at the beginning, whereas if the other two were introduced by their alignment’s being stated, we would judge them by it thereafter.
For Rhea, you simply proved the other side of the argument, Rhea will be considered something close to chaotic neutral well after she has grown beyond it, simply because she was sentenced to the ‘ring of the slightly damned’ for being just barely not true neutral. I don’t think she is anything close to that initial definition now but I still think of her as ‘chaotic good’ because of that slight damnation.
The main reason ‘alignments’ are annoying is they add the stigma of definition, I personally would prefer D&D had adopted a ‘personality’ section instead of the black vs. white vs. grey [times] contrast ‘alignment’ section. Six options doesn’t give proper stereotyping, even with the ‘true ___’ options nine sets of stereotyping doesn’t give an accurate definition of any character, too many people will still assume that ‘their’ definition of ‘good’, ‘evil’, ‘neutral’, ‘chaotic’, and/or ‘lawful’ is the one that defines most of the character.
It makes it quite difficult for character growth to happen, because stereotypes stick for far longer than they are true.
@miyto
To other characters they stick because that’s just how we are, we label things and we’re reluctant to change them. If you’re looking at the story from third-person view, you can see their change. That’s what causes all the “bullying” conflicts in movies about teenage angst. Since I’ve never played D&D, I can’t say personally for that, but for movies, books, and comics/manga/graphic novels, it’s a good plot device that drives the story along.
So in terms of plot, if you’re playing a game, it’s a good thing, as it generates internal (character struggle) and external (resentment held by NPCs or other characters) conflict. If you’re just playing around and you’re unconcerned of any plotline, well, I suppose then that’s when the limitations start popping up. Still, it’s incorrect to say that it limits “realistic characterization”; just because people see you as one alignment doesn’t make you that one alignment within the plot.
Well, would you look at that, 9th grade English actually was useful!
I’m going with Creative Good.
Amazi-Girl is the gritty superhero of the 21st century.
Amazi-Girl is nonviolent now?
Violence in response to violent crime is one thing.
Violence in response to nonviolent crime is a little more frowned upon.
Tell that to Disproportionate Response Man.
aka The Punisher.
She’s only violent in self defense.
Funny thing it’s not really legal self-defense if you goaded them into attacking you. They might have thrown the first punch, but your actions weren’t “as necessary to dispel the immediate threat of violence” – in fact, they were “as necessary to cause an immediate threat of violence”.
And when (if) the police arrive, they will usually determine the defender/victim by looking at who lost. That’s if they don’t summarily arrest everyone, because everyone was fighting …
The crime they were doing was nonviolent in nature unlike what happened with Joyce and Ryan.
Did Amazi-girl do anything violent to Ryan?
No, he just looked that way.
Clumsy guy, tends to fall down the stairs a lot. Often lands on somebody’s fists.
…he fell down the stairs on somebody’s fists nine times.
HE HAD IT COMING! HE HAD IT COMING! HE ONLY HAD HIMSELF TO BLAAAAAME!
*pop* *six* *squish* *uh-uh* *Cicero* *Lipschitz*
It’s Amazi-Tits. They clarified that in the last strip (or two strips ago?)
No, but only because she couldn’t find him.
It’s like the Warners, or Bugs Bunny. Physicality is only permissible in retaliation or for the protection of another.
Bugs Bunny definitely instigated some violence in his day.
I always thought the Warners saw being annoying as being a crime. I might be misremembering — Slappy Squirrel definitely did, though.
First, do not harm. Unless you mean to do harm, give them lots of harm.
Did she actually give him back his can? I figured a blast of spray paint to the face was in his future. But I guess there’s a limit to how far she’ll bend the law.
She never had the can.
She has some nice cans.
Amazing, even.
AMAZI-CANS!!
AMAZI-CAN-CANS!!
Can it!
Yup, pretty much the comment thread I have learned to love from you people.
Yeah, that’s the chief thing you can expect from DoA comment threads: dumb pun chains and perving on teenage girls. Two chief things: dumb pun chains, perving on teenage girls, and repetition of tired memes. Three chief things: dumb pun chains, perving on teenage girls, repetition of tired memes, and an almost fanatical dedication to referencing pop culture. Amongst the things… I’ll come in again.
You definitely shouldn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition, though.
You forgot the partridge in the pear tree.
It kind of looked like she took it yesterday but that’s actually his hand
That is like preventing a purse snatching by kidnapping the owner of said purse.
Or preventing a school fight by beating everyone up first.
or preventing a war by blitzkrieg.
Preventing alcoholism by getting them addicted to crack.
something something a something something
Try to save a drowning person with a fire hose.
Try to help a burn victim with leather.
Trying to diet in a Cheese Cake Factory.
Lighting a match in a dynamite room.
Curing a man’s arachnophobia by strangling him to death.
Launching a smear campaign against a much-beloved public figure so that no one feels sad when he gets kidnapped.
Stopping the robbery of a jewelry store by stealing the store.
Preventing someone from taking over the world by destroying the world.
Giving to charity by robbing a bank.
Stopping child abuse by killing all the children.
I have a No Parking sign in my room. Amazi-Girl and I are best friends.
Got a Yield sign on the inside of my bedroom door. Was actually stolen by one of my uncles when he was a teenager, so it’s officially a family heirloom.
Sharing time! Who else has state property adorning their living spaces?
I have a 30mph speed limit sign that fell off in a storm on the wall over my bed.
Because road traffic innuendo is awesome.
Also we have a stop sign. This one is too darn big by about a half inch to actually fit on a bedroom door.
I have a shield I made out of a yield sign.
Actually, I have several shields and armor pieces made out of road signs… it’s a good supply of cheap or free metal plate; DoT will often just give retired signs away to anyone willing to haul them off rather than going to the hassle and expense of scrapping them. And I’m keeper of the shire loaner gear, so everyone’s crappy first armor ends up in my garage.
But usually they’re cut up and shaped and used so that the sign side is on the inside, for appearances’ sake. The yield shield is just an unmodified yield sign, face-out, with edging and straps attached.
Don’t know if I got any of them left (I would have to check in the basement), but we did “find” the odd sign or other during my time in the boyscouts. Some of which at least temporary made it to my house.
My roommate gave me a traffic cone that his friend stole and snuck in his room once.
Those guys were obnoxious.
I’d like to see where this is going.
Calling it now – the fact that there’s no “Dead End” sign at that juncture will come back down the road.
Amazi-girl, responsible for the deaths of dozens of people.
I thought that too, but much more likely she’ll just be caught with/have a hard time disposing of the sign.
Hmmm, you could be correct I would not put it pass Willis to set up a Chekhov’s Gun out this strip.
Ooh, good call!
Might end up with someone driving down the road then someone else needing to crash into them, sacrificing themselves in order to save that first person.
Or you know, something like Mike leading them down that way for laughs.
…in a future episode, a ‘main’ character WILL DIE…
Tonight…..YOU!
See, now I was thinking “Convenient that it’s a ‘dead end’ sign. Worst that can happen as a result of removing it is somebody has to turn around his car.”
Maybe next time the taggers should try a stop sign. Or, you know, a wall.
Or they drive off a cliff. More than one kind lf dead end, after all. Maybe the road stops because there’s a parking lot, maybe because there’s a canyon qhead.
In which case shouldn’t there be some sort of fencing up?
Or a bunch of dorms.
I know it wouldn’t fit with the overall theme of the comic, but I really wanna see a strip where random people are driving through and end up hurtling off a cliff, and we never see them again.
I bet Danny’s parents will be killed as a result.
Going off of your calling, with this calling. It will involve Ruth driving. Either in a tragic irony when she dies or a comedic irony when she narrowly avoids death. In the former case, it will be as a set-up for Billie realizing her feelings for Ruth right before the big accident and taking her death as yet another example of college life being very unhappy times for her. In the latter case, it will be a wake-up call for Billie when she realizes how afraid she was for Ruth (because she will be there) and this will be the springboard that their relationship leaps from.
Ruth and Tony agree to give Dina driving lessons! What could possibly go wrong?
Hey, throw in Green Biker Dude and Sean Bean and you get a party.
Has Tony shown up yet? I don’t recall seeing him.
Danny told him he was gay and liked dicks and stuff (That Dann did, he didn’t accuse Tony of it) in an attempt to get attacked so Amazi-Girl would show up and save him again. Tony’s disgusted by the assumption that he’d care Danny was gay.
Billie tried flirting with him for booze, too.
Just be glad it’s not Toonces.
Yes, yes this is EXACTLY what I was thinking… Either nothing happens and this was all an unconnected joke, or there is a joke next week with tons of people getting stuck at a dead end…
or someone dies a horrible splattery death (or gets badly injured), causing pain to lots of people in the campus, causing Amazi-Girl to doubt herself and feel bad, etc
The ends justify the means?
It’s not such a bad thing to do. I’m sure she plans on washing it and putting it back later.
Dead Ends justify the means?
Dead End knows that someone would vandalize his signs. Dead End also knew that the end is nigh.
Someone should change their name to Dead End in real life. I can’t because I’m going to change mine to Xaos, but it would be cool to have someone out there named Dead End.
Hmmm, might make a good band name.
“Oh no, how will we ever find another traffic sign at this hour!?!”
The comic then focuses on these guys going to the Traffic Sign outlet to purchase and install a sign so they can vandalize it before morning.
Amazi-girl then returns with the freshly cleaned sign she took, only to find the new vandalized sign in its place. This storyline writes itself.
she switches the vandalized sign with the clean one and takes the vandalized one back to her dorm to clean it, saving it for when the vandals return to vandalize the sign again, etc.
What’s the expression? “Cutting off your nose to spite your face?”
Seriously, outright stealing a road sign is somehow better than tagging it? At least the latter way people can still read it. Really, I don’t see what’s so wrong with grafitti.
It’s…disrespectful. It’s a way to stick it to the man!
Sure, if by “the man” you mean the poor schmucks whose taxes pay for the repairs.
They’re often men! It counts!
My guess is she cleans it, then brings it back.
Well, while some graffiti are a work of art, some of them is just an eyesore.
Tagging isn’t true graffitti, it’s like writing down ‘BOB WUZ HERE’ in marker on a wall. At this point just post a picture on Instagram if you want to show off your claim to a piece of urban land or something.
What’s wrong with graffiti is, every piece of it that isn’t on the highest level of genius artistic achievement (i.e. 99.9999% of every graffiti ever) looks worse than whatever was there before.
“Art”, my butt.
and here come a billion GRAFFITI ISN’T EVEN ART UNLESS IT’S SOMETHING CLEVER LIKE BANKSY posts
Can I go the “It doesn’t have to look good to be art so all that birdshit on my car is art so shut up” route instead?
It’s called “found art” in that case.
*groooan* for real, and you were right
…all that over spraypainting a sign? >_>
It was a slow night *shrugs*
Buddy, I’ve seen a guy flipped out over a penny. I’ve seen a guy who loses his shit just because of a fast food joint that served mainly burgers didn’t have pizza in their menu. This, this is small potatoes.
Hell, I saw a guy leave a cart full of groceries and walk out of a store because a cashier didn’t have a pen, so he could fill out his check, and had asked him to ask the other cashier behind him.
I’m sure she’ll just clean off the sign and replace it in a timely fashion.
Spanner in his works!
I think this falls under “They’ll never believe you”
LOL!
“Well that was annoying. Come on, there’s another one the next street over.”
They later discovered that all the signs are missing. Next morning, they discovered the missing signs……in their dorm rooms.
Along with a few annoyed cops.
“We didn’t do it, officer! It was a masked vigilante!”
“Uh-huh. We have traffic cam video of you tagging this sign, which mysteriously cuts off for a while in the middle, and then the sign was gone. And look here it is, and there’s the paint can in your hand.”
That would be awesome!
What a minor inconvenience!
Does the fourth/second-to-last panel look kind of creepy to anyone else?
IF it just ended there it’d look like she killed them and began to fix the sign.
Never doubt that a superhero has a wrench at her disposal.
No Badass Normal superheroine can be complete without a utility belt.
Also no plumber…But then again…Aren’t they the REAL heroes?
They are heroes….of the Mushroom Kingdom.
It is kind of striking that she happened to already have the right socket on there and everything.
Particularly as those things usually have security fittings on them.
I’m half expecting Amazi-Girl to respond with “I’m Batman!”
This is like flipping the chess board over.
Well, based on my experience, flipping the chessboard also include a fist to the face.
i get the feeling that Willis read all the comments in the last few strips and got to wondering… “uh… how am i gonna resolve this without her breaking her code of honor?”
Willis has Dumbing of Age already drawn through at least the first week of May. He posts preview teaser panels on his Tumblr occasionally. Nothing anyone says in these comments is going to affect anything that goes down in the strip for at least a month.
Just the first week of May? Hell, I’m almost done with May!: http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/47761639435/may-23
And for good measure, an Amazi-Girl from next week: http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/45816045867/amazinglyadorable-girl
0.0 the illusion… IT IS SHATTERED…
not sure whether to be all “AWW MAN, i like the idea of the creator reading feedback and taking/rejecting ideas from it.” or go all crazed fan and be like *holy s**t, he commented on my post HE CARES! wooo! make Dina a sidekick!” xD
not that i really want to influence someone elses creation, but i think im going to draw “Amazi-tits and Clever Girl! (Dina in a velociraptor costume.)”
Oh… I’m disappointed that my first thought was ‘Clever Girl? Shouldn’t it have something to do with dinosaurs?’
It does.
Jurassic Park (the first one).
Is it bad that I instantly got that reference?
But I think you already know this, now that my 3:30AM still awake brain actually delievered the rest of your comment to me.
S’why I said “at least”! … ’cause I was too lazy to dig back through the Tumblr to find the latest, but I knew I’d seen May dates.
Darn it Willis, you just screwed up a perfect chance to mess with your audience big time. All you had to do was say that you prepare the pages just ahead of posting, and hint that you follow the comments and let them influence your plotlines. Then just sit back and watch the forums explode.
Nonviolite that sucka!!
Yeah, go Yazan Gable on their asses….oh wait, Yazan would violate them.
First I was gonna go violate them but now
I’ll just violate them.
Yazan only knows to violate.
Someone’s been playing Scribblenauts.
Alexander the Great would be proud.
Ah…that’s odd.
Congratulations. You stopped a crime by committing a worse crime on the same victim.
All hail Amazi-Tits !!!!!
“I WILL BUST THE FORCES OF EVIL!”
Maybe they will. And then what will you do, Amazi-Girl?
Stealthily return the sign just before the cops arrive, tag still intact and paint can still in their possession.
I expected violence. This is somehow better. Why am I not disappointed?
Panel 3: Guy with glasses gets a faceful of the Amazi-Crotch.
With a side dish of Amazi-Boobs on top of his head.
If that didn’t make him an instant convert, nothing can.
It certainly explains his face on Panel 5.
I was WONDERING when someone else was going to notice that!
Me too.
Eat spandex, you villainous vandal!
teehee
I like the possibility that she’s carrying around all sorts of mechanical gear in her pouches, like a walking toolbox.
Amazi-Girl clearly subscribes to the broken window theory.
like a Boss
Well played, Amazi-girl. Well played.
I see what you’re doing here, Willis.
Nicely done.
D-did…Amazi-Girl just climb up that guy’s face?!
This was just odd. She’s wearing a mask and has a repautation as a crime-fighting vigilante. What made him think she wouldn’t use violence?
Because at that point, she’s committing a worse crime than she’s preventing, while ALSO turning the “evil-doer” into a a victim.
So they go tag another sign.
I love DoA, but I think Amazi-Girl should have been left behind.
If Joyce is right, she will be.
But Sarah will have a single!
Amazi-Girl is more of a character here than she was in the original.
She also threatened them (raising her fist, asking for them to give her an excuse to “get her hands dirty”… coupled with her reputation for violent vigilantism, I think it qualifies), so that’s misdemeanor assault. She then climbed over Shaggy to steal the sign, which could qualify as misdemeanor battery since she touched him in a “deliberately rude, angry, or insolent” manner. So we can include battery.
So, theft, vandalism, assault and battery.
Man, Amazi-Girl, you sure showed those vandals who has the upper hand, morally.
I’m going to pretend my legal eagle Google skills from back when Ruth and Billie were fighting influenced this story decision.
I have a company that sells anti-graffiti wipes and an anti-graffiti-proofing spray. Clean that sucker off in 30 seconds.
Oops. Spam. Sorry.
Now we just have to wait for the sign to show up in someone’s dorm room, and we will know who Amazi-girl…
…planted the sign on.
I had some sort of theory about that, in which Amazi-Girl realizes she can’t just dump the sign somewhere (for reasons of I don’t know) and brings it to her room. When an accident occurs in the street where the sign used to be, the school board realizes the sign has been taken from its place. The sign winds up being passed from person to person like a hot potato, bringing with it guilt and deceit.
I don’t know how things are down where you live, but in MY school stolen street signs wind up being passed passed from person to person like a prize, bringing with it fame and pride.
And I’m in an engineering school ….. hey wait minute !
I meant guilt and deceit ’cause the person caught with it by school staff will be assumed to have taken the sign down, thus inadvertently causing the crash.
(That’s what school staff do, right? Kick down doors in raids for traffic signs?)
Well it’s a good punchline because she proved herself more clever than him, but at what point was violence on her part ruled out as an option? All he said before was she wasn’t going to goad HIM into violence.
Still, spoiling their fun one way or the other is probably satisfaction enough for her. Although, can’t they just walk a block down and have another sign to deface?
Assaulting someone for vandalising a sign is going overboard. If they won’t attack her she has no excuse to use force.
The only tag is for Amazi-Girl. I was sorta hoping there’d be tags for the other two guys too which might hint at their return in the future. Which could still happen, but still.
They would have tags, but Amazi-Girl interrupted them in the middle of tagging.
They just wanted to be notable recurring characters, Amazi-Girl!
Amazi-Girl does need a re-occurring Rogues Gallery though
University Jones, the mad archeologist! Biker-Girl! The Fun-Damentalist! (Joyce as Joker…except not being suggestive, or extravagant, or extroverted. Just reading aloud from a joke book while looking awkward.)
This is just a ‘minor’ edit of this comic.
Maybe I just don’t understand how it works, but your pictures are always so tiny I have to zoom way in to read them, and they get all blurry.
I wish I knew why it happens myself, the picture was bigger and clearer when I edited it.
I have fixed the picture in my Tumblr page.
The nosebleed on the human ladder… nice touch. Very nice touch.
Kiitti! ^_^ You don’t watch as many anime as I have without picking up a few of their visual cues.
I figure she probably intends to clean the sign up and put it back.
Can you like a comment? Because John’s response to the alignment issue was great and I just wanted to tell him that he is probably the smartest/coolest person in this entire comment thread.
Thankyoo, thankyooverramuch.
MAN that last panel just keeps looking like a flying crotch to the face!
Y’know… one would think that she’d heard of a “camcorder.” Most cell phones now can take video. The prospect of being recorded would have given those guys hesitation. If they’d have attacked her, she would be justified in planting her foot up their asses. If they kept going, their faces would be recorded. From there, it’s just a matter of turning it in and/or laying them on their asses.
Amazi-girl just made shit get real. I think it’s genius that she could come out of that still winning and without the possibility of getting busted for it. Because, let’s face it, nobody in engineering is going to going to make the “hey, I was tagging a sign and some chick stole it right off the post, you gotta bust her man!” call.
Still think this dude should just count his freaking blessings. Outcome could have been:
“Oh, hey, good point.”
::starts some violence::
Alternatives include ripping the paint can out of his hands and spray painting his clothing, putting gum in his hair, or throwing stink pellets at him.
Can’t be arsed to look it up but I believe theft of street signs is a surprisingly serious crime. Possibly federal.