It’s the final 48 hours for the Dumbing of Age Book 10 Kickstarter! And look, it’s Eric Schuptenstein, the twelfth (and final??? probably) character magnet!
Let’s go over the stats for the second-to-last time: This book will collect “Year Ten,” spanning the four storylines that start on August 18, 2019, and complete on September 9, 2020. This includes new commentary, behind-the-scenes artwork, and new character designs into an 236-page tome with luxurious glossy paper all bound up into a sturdy presentation. Our biggest book yet! And there will be a foreword by Seanan McGuire!
The book is titled Renounce Magical Thinking and Embrace Empirical Evidence, and it’s the culmination of a full decade of Dumbing of Age stories! This is the big one! With kidnappings and van chases! The Ending With A Huge Timeskip one!
Loading ...
and now she won’t look at it again, ever
…ironically I haven’t seen Pidgeys in months, it’s Trubbish for some reason
for EARTH DAY (week)!!
Yes, pick up the garbage pokémon to beautify the area.
Hey, be nice to Garbodor and Trubbish and Muk and Grimer and Mewtwo and Koffing and Weezing.
And Lickylicky, that’s on that list too.
Yeah, and it’s not like catching three pidgeys would be a bad thing, anyway. I’d just call that “catching 300 stardust.”
Pidgey are just cheap exp that you gather to evolve lots of Pokémon at the same time when you crack a lucky egg!
Don’t forget Trubbish is 750 Stardust!
You can get a shiny Trubbish, too!
And another one falls!
Also I just got to rant on this but Eric??? Eric made it into the magnet club?! We scraping the bottom of the barrel with that dude.
We’re getting Conquest though, which I like even though she hasn’t had a single appearance in over 5 years.
You’ll know Willis is underneath the barrel when we get Guns.
You gotta shoot the fish somehow
I mean, we know there’s a Roller Derby plotline coming up, and Guns would work pretty well in the role of a jackass rival player.
I could see it happening. If it does I’ll have to scrounge up a replacement avatar.
My theory is that Guns was Agatha’s original, never-seen, evicted roommate.
Willis has indicated that that was his intention.
Agatha’s ex roommate can perfectly well play Roller Derby. It isn’t either/or.
Yes, we agree with you.
I was thinking that too.
Well we got Eric, and Eric does finger guns, so halfway there?
He does? Next slipshine there then.
It could have been worse — he might have done “Professor DeSanto”, complete with window-pane glasses and fake pipe.
Personally, I still think we needed a small, ‘Fudge-Face’-sized “Hompk!” voice balloon to go with the Raptor-Attack Dina from a couple of Kickstarters ago.
Nah that’s next kickstarter.
Odd definition of worse.
I wanted Drew, but alas.
Only one remains: Danny.
We’ll get magnets of Danny’s hat and banjo first.
Fuck, I can see it now. Walky is very hot rn.
Yeah, I admit, I do get the appeal, but I mean, a ton of the cast are pretty hot if we’re being real.
stupid sexy co-eds
With the exception of Dina (no offense to Becky) and *maybe* Danny, I’m yet to find a character my bisexual person doesn’t find hot
Ha! You’re into Mary!
them’s praying words!
I’m not into Mary, but physically she is hot. I like her style of dress as well.
I get it but sometimes the cost is too high. Malaya is hot and Joe is indeed a stud but the personality cost for enjoying them is steep. Same goes for Mary.
Oh hell yeah. I’m happy appreciating her aesthetic from a distance (especially the distance of fiction.) I wouldn’t want to hang out with her or anything.
I reserve the right to find people hot and still despise their personality v:
Danny is so much my type I almost wonder if there’s some causation there. I’ve been reading this comic long enough…
…okay but why shouldn’t they though?
It’s unfair to all the other people to have 2 of the hottest people in the school date. 😛
Realistically there might be a few viable reasons. One was that Walky was and maybe still is holding feelings for Dorothy. Two, is Amber has never really been very emotionally available, she was looking at her phone basically until just now. Three, their whole ship was about how they were both terrible people. But honestly they do seem to understand each other pretty well so I’m not sure why it didn’t work.
Dorothy had Joyce and Sarah to remind her who she was. And so she is probably going to pass, even if she doesn’t want to.
Amber knows she is garbage (even if she isn’t) so this should be interesting.
Why it didn’t work?
Although they had the mutual self-hatred going, its not exactly something to build a relationship on.
Plus, what else did they have in common? Although they both like ‘cartoons’, the interests of Walky centered on Dexter and Monkey Master, while Amber was more into the super-hero sub-genre. Amber seemed to have at least some dedication to her studies, Walky had almost none. Amber’s field of study was computers, Walky probably knew little about the field.
I get it now. Amber & Walky did the do, and Amber is freaked. But now she’s forgotten to be freaked.
I don’t see how them banging would’ve freaked her out. We know they’ve at least dry humped and survived. It was probably something really petty and they both have personalities where small things can cause tension. Walky did breakup with Dorothy over pajama pants and Amber is well…Amber.
I’d argue that was more petty on Dorothy’s side than Walky’s. The pajama jeans are silly, but the point of that arc was Dorothy trying to control how Walky dressed, which isn’t a good sign in any relationship.
Previously, it was the Sal issue (even if that was more than a little self-inflicted, since Sal cares less so long as they SHUT UP ABOUT IT.) Since Halloween, hard to say if Sal’s still a factor or if it’s something else, like Mike, or Dorothy, or Sal realized she wasn’t as heterosexual as she previously assumed and hooked up with AG and suddenly it was all Very Awkward. (Which would still be Sal, but ‘we can’t date because my sister’s dating your alter and it’s weird!’ is different enough from the previous issue to count separately. Sal and AG would beat Walky and Amber’s dating seniority by actually saying outright they wanted to date and not have an awkward dance around each other for weeks again, or maybe a coin toss.)
… I don’t THINK it’s that last one, and I don’t actually ship Sal/AG per se, but like. It COULD be that.
Halloween, apparently.
Can we hear a half hearted Damn You Willis?
Darn you, Willis.
Oh will.
Apparently something happened at Halloween. Personally I still think some other group of students made some tasteless reference to the kidnapping or Mikes death or something (because Halloween and college students/people who barely have entered adulthood and a taste of freedom have an even higher likelihood than others of just being stupid/thoughtless like that) and Amber was hurt while Walky shrugged it off. Like idk someone walked around dressed as dead Mike or something. It wouldn’t surprise me anyway.
I’m still convinced it has something to do with Walky either showing up in his Nightguy outfit or asking Amber about where her AmaziGirl outfit was during Halloween. It seems like the quickest way for Amber to shut somebody out has been to (in her mind) disrespect the Amber/AmaziGirl barrier.
The slow transformation of DoA into a Harem Anime claims another victim.
Slow? How many weeks did it take the League of Evil Dads to start chasing Mike to the point they were both dead, and you call this slow?
At this point, it was a mere three weeks ago that Walky noticed people were staring at him and well over half that time has been spent with Robin and Ruth and Daisy and Dina on other plot threads.
So I dispute the “slow.”
People who irrationally hate Walky and want him out of the comic (I don’t like him much either, I see too much of the old me in him and cringe, but he has an important role in Willis’ vision here) have to complain about something, and any time spent on Walky is too much.
I don’t have anything against Walky, I’m just joshing.
I’ll have you know it is completely rational.
Walky bad.
I find this hilarious considering the fact that there are predecessor comics such as the one literally titled “It’s Walky”
Hey! That’s MY job!
*WAP starts playing in Amber’s head.*
Wet-Ass Pidgey.
Specifically the Kidz Bop version.
Please tell me that this is the thing that really exists
“Yeah ur drinkin’ up some WAT-ER-BOTTLES
Bring a bucket and a mop for that WAT-ER-BOTTLE
Cause it fell right on th’a floor! Look at WAT-ER-BOTTLEs”
There are some songs where I don’t understand why they even bother to make them “kid-appropriate”, since you’d have to pretty much change the entire meaning of the song to do so. WAP is definitely one of those.
Yeah, those aren’t kid-appropriate. Kids may not understand the full implications of why the song is dirty, but they figure out damn fast what the mask lyrics are covering up.
The songs are produced so that a version can be heard for
bettermore air-play time on radio stations, restaurants and elevators.WAP can’t play after church in the local ihop/waffle house, waterbottles though… that’s ok.
Pidgeys are like AOL disks from the days of yore – you get like, SIX of ’em every 3 days whether you want them or not.
Amber is a Pidgey magnet!
It was better when they were actual floppy disks, because you could erase and reuse them.
ah, the memories.
… but how do you use pidgeys as drink coasters?
NOBODY LOVES PIDGEYS.
I love Pidgeys… ^_^’
Me too.
But I was never into Pokemon growing up, and I always like the unfashionable ones best. Bulbasaur 4 Lyfe.
Also, my favorite Pokemon in general is Eevee. Not any of its evolutions, just Eevee. All the evolutions are less cute than the original.
everyone loves bulbasaur and eevee nowadays, honestly.
I will say, of all the normal/flying types, pidgey(and by extension pidgeotto and pidgeot) is my favorite.
I dunno about this.
Its reminding me of the trope in movies where the girl takes off her glasses and suddenly shes hot.
As a story line “Walky is suddenly hot” isn’t one of his better ones but then I prefer the more grounded, realistic story lines
I have faith that we’re going somewhere with this. I’m just not sure where yet.
Yeah hopefully
I don’t know if this is really that he’s suddenly hot as much as everyone is discovering the hotness that he’s had all along. Especially since he hasn’t changed in any visible way since the start of the semester. I do admit it feels a little abrupt, but each girl has had plausible reasons not to notice until now. Joyce was blind, Amber never looked up from her phone, Sarah is antisocial and not really Walky’s friend, Lucy was thirsty from the start, Dorothy…doesn’t really have an excuse…and Sal and Jennifer are essentially related either by blood or circumstance.
*plays Justin Timberlake’s True Blood on the hall speakers*
Love is in the air, and it’s all coming from Walky.
Beat me to the draw. :/
Apparently he was feeling lucky, punk.
*plays 10cc’s “I’m Not In Love” on the hacked Muzak*
Excellent choice.
amber and Dorothy should form a Walky’s exes support group
That’s how the plot to Scott Pilgrim started.
and?
We’ve already had a League of Evil Dads, you want to start a League of Walky’s Evil Exes?
It occurs to me that Walky could use an actual, factual friend these days. Lucy is kind of his only close friend right now.
Yes, thank you. alt text. We noticed.
Alt-text being all “we are helping” like … I think.. Megabytes minions in the original Reboot. (which is now a painfully oxymoronic thing to say.)
So it’s affected Amber as well? Curious. Well the only thing left to do in a situation like this is gamble on who Walky will sleep with next.
I’ve got 20 bucks on it being Amber.
Sure, Amber, it’s the Pidgeys you love.
Maybe she wants to turn into a bird pokemon trainer. With 3 pidgeys and a spearow.
I don’t think it’s Pokemon that have her attention at the moment. 😉
“Why do Pidgeys suddenly appear, every time that you’re near”
And now I’ve got Shonen Knife’s version of “Top of the world” stuck in my head. 🙂
I think I figured it out.
It’s the sideburns.
Somebody get the clippers!
Nah, it’s because he cut off his bangs with his mom’s good meat scissors.
I have no idea HOW that’s the secret to hotness, but genius is often mysterious.
I’m still waiting for the shoe to drop on “attractive Walky”
I choose to believe that Walky is a vampire now. That’s my legitimate in-universe explanation for his sudden hotness.
Impossible – he hasn’t started sparkling yet, nor has he started draining everyone’s happiness to make himself more cheerful.
Hey, he could be a sexiness vampire instead of a happiness one. Have any characters suffered a dramatic loss of attractiveness recently?
Depends whether or not folks are into Joyce’s new glasses.
…And we edge closer to the entire campus bursting out in song about Walky…
hes not hot, he looks like a corgi
You wouldn’t date a corgi?
If you replaced every corgi-like quality of the corgi with something else, I might consider it. For example, replace the canine body with that of a semi-tallish freckly Canadian redhead, and replace the canine instincts/brain with that of an irritable recovering(?) alcoholic who’s also possibly got a soft spot for extreme underdogs. Just as an example of datable traits one might find in a corgi.
Sounds like the Queen’s corgis might be right up your alley, just so long as you’re willing to get them addicted to alcohol yourself and also you wouldn’t mind Welsh as a substitute for Canadian
Corgis are better than people.
*snuggles his*
I have trouble liking corgis, but that is likely because all the ones I have met were dumber that a fencepost.
Um… bearded ginger nordic Canadian raises his hand. Definitely known for being intense, but not necessarily /irritable/. Also light on freckles and not an alcoholic, though I have a fondness for scotch. And something tells me you’re not into people who can grow beards, even if it is a corgi-esque trait.
So what you are saying is that he is irresistibly adorable?
Walky needs to get his hair cut.
Strike that.
Everyone else needs Walky to get his hair cut.
I’m wondering if this chapter is going to be all about the downsides of being attractive?
Aside from unwanted advances, what downsides are there to being attractive, though?
It’s like being a rusty and ill-maintained swing set.
You know, an attractive nuisa- *vaudeville hook*
If you can manage to stay grounded, not a lot. 😉 The danger i find is that people who are attractive can let it go to their heads. They start finding it difficult to tell the difference between actual praise and brown-nosing because after a while, that’s just “the sounds people make when they’re in my vicinity.” People have a tendency to be nicer to you, to overlook your mistakes, and you can start to buy into your own hype after a while, believing that you can do no wrong and that your little entourage of yes-men are always correct. When you DO get actual criticism or pushback, it can then feel like a personal attack. This happens a lot to people who are rich and famous too, or any sort of social position where you have the benefit of prestige and clout.
You also have ‘getting promoted/opportunities based on looks and not merit’, ‘being considered a superficial person because of your looks rather than actually being talented’, and ‘may cause the occasional traffic accident’.
It’s usually lucky to be considered hot. But here are some potential downsides:
– You get a lot of attention, especially sexual attention, especially if you’re a lady. You may not like that attention, as it may be anywhere from reductive to personally dangerous, but you can’t really hide from it ever. Ever ever ever.
– If you don’t realize that you’re usually considered hot (and it’s super easy not to realize this!), you’re likely to foolishly believe that everyone else gets the exact same attention, graces, and privileges that you’ve gotten.
– If you DO realize that you’re usually considered hot, then you may feel that everything you get is because of your body, not through your hard work or other merits. (Others will definitely think this of you, whether it’s true or not.) For example, you may have imposter syndrome, or you may need to maintain your beauty lest you lose everything.
– You may have seriously neglected developing other social skills (since you can subconsciously coast on your appearance, and people come to you). This is a major problem for forging deeper connections, as being hot probably won’t get you deep friendships and the like, and a problem again as age and gravity come for us all…
– Once you *finally* get accustomed to how most people perceive you, aging hits you and suddenly you’re gonna be a whole lot less visible. (Though, my mom found her middle-aged invisibility relaxing, so your mileage may vary.) Hopefully you’ve developed enough other qualities that will outlast our culture’s obsession with your youth, because you’re about to find out whether you’re actually interesting or not.
Walky will have to put up with wolf whistles from the construction women and inappropriate comments from Robin.
[Careless Whisper intensifies]
I think Carla’s going to figure this out and show up with some hair clippers.
Nah. Blowtorch maybe, but honestly I doubt she’d care.
If Carla, of all people, joins the harem, I’m gonna call this a fever dream.
Carla’s canonically homoromantic sex-repulsed ace, so I think the chances of her joining in are about as high as Becky suddenly announcing that she’s straight and going back to Anderson.
Becky actually doing that, no. Announcing she is to freak Joyce out, maybe.
To be fair, catching and evolving pidgeys is a great way to level up in pokemon go
I’ve always been an iconoclast who packs out his team with unusual species because I like the way they look. The Pidgey evolutionary chain is pretty much my original sin in that area.
oh god I can see it too he’s too handsome
Looks like the SS Garbage Scow is not as sunk as I’d thought.
She was sunk, yes. Now she’s been in the drink long enough, she’s a wreck worth excavating…
*waits for the previous song to end, then plays Stan Rogers’ Mary Ellen Carter on the muzak*
The return of a great couple? PLEASE YES!!!!
lmao by the end of the chapter, the whole world has turned Cronenberg
Oh so this really is the chapter’s plot.
Great.
HOMPK!
Finally Marigold has paid attention to Walky.
*Amber
They are pretty much twins anyway.
Amber is definitely more fit and has more assertive attributes. Marigold has come out of her shell some, but has a long way to go to be as socially adept as Amber.
LEARN THE TRUE POWER OF PIDGEY, AMBER, AND YOU WILL BECOME A GOD
*cackles like a madman*
“SHOULDN’T”, YOU SAY, AMBER, LIKE A FOOL
WILLIS, I DEMAND SLIPSHINES. MULTIPLE. “AMBER LOVES PIDGEYS A LITTLE TOO MUCH.” LET THEM ALL GIVE IN TO THE HORNT.
Good, good! Embrace the hotness, let it flow through you! Give in to the hotness, and your journey to the Harem will be complete. It is unavoidable.
You catch those pidgey! I recall having a small army of Raticates all named Spartacus.
It seems to me that Amber may be the character to finally tell Walky why everyone has been suddenly staring at him, rather than just, you know, not saying anything and then walking into lamp posts and the like
I find Walky too annoying to find him attractive.
Giving me these vibes: https://www.girlswithslingshots.com/comic/gws-chaser-34
Walky became attractive by turning into a mini-Asher.
Is that… is that a ‘stache?
Well now I want to know why Walky and Amber broke up.
Gotta say, love the concept of Amber having a pidgey who she loves but always feels insecure about and then eventually it evolves into a super powerful pidgeot that pecks Blaine’s eyes out
Ok NOW I see it.
lmao, I just realized that the “I love pidgeys” is referring to when Amber and Walky were trading pokemon and all he had to give her was a pidgey. IDK if that was obvious and I was just dumb or not lol