There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
This is Not Fiction
Nicole Mannino
What do you do when the person you're in-love with is an anonymous romance novelist? Get your best friend to hire your worst enemy for help!
Headless Bliss
Clover
A story about story-telling, and other metaphysical themes such as Nightmares! (Failed) Teamwork! Comedy! And more!
The Substitutes
Myisha Haynes
What happens when three roommates accidentally acquire otherworldly and powerful magic weapons destined for someone else?
Astral Aves
Moon Cabal
A fantasy coming-of-age following the adventures of Astra The Black and friends, as they navigate the mysterious world around them. It's politics, adventure, and the supernatural; oh, and crazy hair.
The End
August Brown, Cory Brown
Two aliens crash a sci-fi convention and accidentally take seven nerds on an adventure that spans the galaxy!
Gzhel Guardian
Atla Hrafney, nushanchel
The Railway World is a complex, mysterious network of trains, towns and mechanical monsters. Leo is a Guardian of one of these towns, and although their burn-out and depression has taken hold of them, they have one last job to finish.
Within
Verena Loisel
A young hitman meanders between a reality that seems to happen without him, and his dreams where he is lost in an endless house. When he makes an accidental friend, his world is shaken up and he realizes there are things he can't remember about himself.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Cassiopeia Quinn
Gunwild, Psudonym
A cute, pantsless thief is pursued across the stars by a buttoned-up military officer in the spacey, laser-filled future.
The Last Diplomat
Cat Farris
Samma and Tark didn't ask to be stuck together, but now they're partners on the adventure of a lifetime.
Little Tiny Things
Clover
What are the little things that move us? The simple joys that warm our bodies and hearts? The micro life of insects that influence our world more than we think? The tiny steps we make everyday to have a happier tomorrow?
The Forgotten Order
Christy
A young witch for whom every spell is a misfire finds solace and friendship in her new companion - a cursed doll.
Sleepless Domain
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
In a world where magical girls and their battles are commonplace, loss has become all too common as well.
Goodbye to Halos
Valerie Halla
Cuddles, gay flirting, weird feelings, and magic-fueled knife fights - it's an adventure across the queer multiverse!
Aquapunk
Lo
In an underwater world of unknown coordinates, inhabited by aliens, ghosts, and robots, a young member of a warrior underclass is framed for a crime and goes on the run. Little does he know he is part of a grand design that only gods and ancestors could choreograph.
Augustine
Winter Jay Kiakas, Windy
August and her ragtag group are just like everyone else, simply surviving in the treacherous Crater... When they stumble into what may be an artifact of the ancient past, their lives are thrown into a much bigger loop as they trifle with bounty hunters, monsters and gods.
Scape
Lauren
Sula has always preferred to forge her own path, but before she knows it, she is pulled into the middle of a civil war between man and monster!
Lies Within
Lacey
Lysander's aimless and carefree life is turned upside down when he accidentally discovers that the cute boy next door, Simon, is a literal monster
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
How to be a Werewolf
Shawn Lenore
Malaya Walters was bitten by a werewolf as a child. After being raised by her human family, she faces the chance to learn what being a werewolf is really like as an adult.
Edison Rex
Chris Roberson
The adventures of the world’s greatest villain who, after defeating his superheroic nemesis, decides that he’s the only one left to defend the world.
Alice and the Nightmare
Misha Krivanek
Alice finally attends University to learn to collect the dreams of humans, meet new friends, and deal with a pesky reflection along the way.
Widdershins
Kate Ashwin
A series of light-hearted Victorian-era adventure stories featuring grumpy bounty hunters, accidental thiefkings, and more, in England's magical capital city Widdershins!
Ride or Die
Mars Heyward
Ride or Die is an LGBTQ webcomic about two street racers who team up with a demon-possessed muscle car in the search for a missing woman, while being hunted by a deadly religious cult.
Darkling Bright
Chris Hazelton
Kieran Bright is a college student home for the summer and roped into an online reunion with his old neighborhood friends in the most recent update of their favorite childhood MMORPG.
At least, he was, and that was the idea...
Join Kieran and his friends as they are pulled into another reality that may or may not be real and are forced to confront their own identities, the nature of simulated universes and reality itself.
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
The Weave
Rennie Kingsley
A young woman pursued by bad luck is witness to the murder of the Fairy Queen of Summer. Can she get to the bottom of this mystery?
Monsterkind
Taylor C
Wallace Foster, a young, bright-eyed human social worker, has his entire world view rocked when he's suddenly relocated into a city primarily inhabited by monsters.
Trying Human
IntroducingEmy
Two women separated by over half a century are brought together by an alien-filled conspiracy involving murder, mystery and romance!
Alexander, The Servant & The Water of Life
Reimena Yee
The 21st century retelling of the life and legends of Alexander the Great.
Not Drunk Enough
Tess Stone
Logan Ibarra is possibly the unluckiest repairman in the world. A late night job should not have landed him in the middle of a mad scientist's squabble, but he soon finds himself surrounded by monsters and further madness with little tools to get out.
Quick$ilver
Crypto
The flirtatious, directionless, and ever disastrous Luci searches for excitement in a life of crime, and finds himself caught in a web of messy romance and bad blood.
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
Nigh Heaven & Hell
Scotty
Heather Vodihn is on a simple mission: find her father. However she becomes entangled with two strangers with mysterious powers being stalked by a group with bizarre demands. Heather must learn to trust her new traveling companions, even if she is untrustworthy herself.
ARISE, YE SKELETON KING
Brian Clevinger, Escher Cattle, Lee Black
A troupe of wandering "adventurers" down to their last silver "acquire" a map only to find the real treasure was the fiend they dug up along the way.
Empowered
Adam Warren
A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
Star Impact
Jack McGee
A young, energetic woman fights her way up in the world of super-powered boxing after discovering the mighty gloves of her missing idol!
Beeserker
TJ Cordes
This comic is about a robot powered by bees, but it's also about the kind of people who think filling a robot with bees is a good idea, and why they're wrong.
Missing Monday
Elle Skinner
Two girls fall in love through a magic door connecting their worlds. When Monday suddenly goes missing, it's up to Foyle to find her. How she's going to navigate an entirely unfamiliar world is another matter.
Barbarous
Ananth Hirsh, Yuko Ota
A crummy wizard and an anxious monster have to get over themselves and bring order to an apartment building full of misfits.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Love Not Found
Gina Biggs
Abeille is on a quest to find someone who wants to do it the old-fashioned way in a time when touching has become outdated.
Sakana
Mad Rupert
Our heroes must navigate a hazardous dating scene, overcome personal anxieties, and wrangle unruly seafood in order to find love, peace of mind, and a paycheck.
Kochab
Sarah Webb
A YA F/F fantasy comic about Sonya, a lost skier trying to survive a snowy wilderness and find her way back to her village; and Kyra - a fire spirit trying to fix the home that she let fall apart around her.
Freakshow
Scotty
A festival of broken people, blood flows in the center ring. Come one and come all, to the greatest show in all of Paris.
The Golden Boar
Magnolia Porter Siddell
A young woman joins a group of summoners who call forth Guardian Beasts to protect their isolated magical island. Unfortunately, her Guardian Beast is nothing like she'd imagined, and he's about to change her life, and everything she thought she knew about herself...
Saint for Rent
Ru Xu
Saint Halliday runs an inn for Time Travelers. Unfortunately, he seems to attract other supernatural "guests," too.
Stand Still, Stay Silent
Minna Sundberg
A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
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I mean she’s done her best to protect her homies in the past, and that was really good.
Without any motherfuckers to fight, she’s basically Mermaid Man huh? Well I’m still SpongeBobing for her. Once she gets back into SOME kinda super hero action, it’ll make perfect fan game material! ^^
Okay, so, I looked up both “SpongeBobing” and “SpongeBobbing” on Urban Dictionary because I have no idea what the hell SpongeBobing is supposed to mean in this context, and… uh… I’m still fairly sure those definitions are not what you mean here, even so…
(There are a bunch of UD definitions for just “SpongeBob,” but only the one each for adding “-ing” to the end of it.)
In SpongeBob (the cartoon series) there is a character called Mermaid Man, who is basically Adam West’s Batman.
SpongeBob (the character) is the biggest Mermaid Man fanboy there is.
So from context ‘SpongeBobing’ would mean being the biggest fan / obsessing over her.
What is she even doing here that’s worth getting mad at? Not asking confrontationally or something, I just am genuinely not sure if I am missing something.
She’s always been a square about underage drinking, with Joyce and Dorothy but also she almost broke up with Danny over it. They’re largely adults, this isn’t really a big deal, but AG is Amber’s projected sense of control so we get “that’s illegal people can’t do that”
Person with DID here to confirm that it is not possible – the alter may THINK they’re sober because they didn’t engage in drinking/drugs, but they’re still going to be impaired by it. In other words, we’re very likely going to see drunk Amber AND drunk Amazigirl, and if Walky is there by any chance, things will get *messy*
I’m really amazed at all the underage drinking happening in this comic lately but, eh, I didn’t have my first actual sip of alcohol until I was 21 so clearly I’m the outlier here.
Same, I was also a goody-two-shoes on that front. I didn’t go to enough parties in college to get much of a sense of how strictly that rule was followed.
As a Brit it amuses me greatly to see all the agonizing about 18 year olds drinking. The first week of university here is historically drunken carnage.
It’s way weirder to me that such a thing is viewed so positively anywhere.
Like, I get drunk and party too. It’s the absolute worst possible use of my time and I kinda dislike how casual everyone is about kids getting sloshed just because it’s normal in most of the world. Like, adults make horrifying decisions under the influence, teens have way less impulse control already and most people I knew who partied in HS ended up in very dangerous situations because of it. And it’s not just a US thing; German teens came to my school and did enough drunken property damage that they had to fill in the pool permanently.
(Mind you, not that I’m against seeing it in the comic because it happens and I enjoy seeing the hijinks and it’s a good narrative tool, I just think that drinking with the primary intent to get trashed in real life should be viewed as the concerning behavior it kinda is.)
It’s more the “Everywhere else, we expect people to do this at 18, so it’s just precious to see Americans get all worked up about it until the kids are 21.” In much the same way that Canadians find it hilarious American high school students come to Canada and feel so daring because they’re going to drink, because it’s LEGAL, and get drunk on one American beer, which is… well, anyway. Colored water.
It’s not really about positive or negative; it’s more about… well, wait, why are you not allowed to drink when you’re allowed to vote? You’re adult enough for this, but not for that? (And, while we’re trading in stereotypes, wait, it’s legal for you to have a gun, but not to drink? I mean, I’m happy you’re not currently drunk while wielding your gun, but still…)
Add to that the argument that the later you make the legal age, the more likely it is that people will go overboard once they have the right, because they’re not used to it…
To be fair, the only consequence of alcohol in a still developing brain is more than the poor impulse control. It’s simply bad for your brain. Which is probably true for all ages, but particularly when your brain is still developing (latest studies suggest until 30-35 years of age).
When I grew up the legal drinking age for beer was 16, btw.
When the drinking age was 18 in places, there were a lot more young people in drunk driving accidents, so it seems like people were still going overboard. But also, when young people drive to Canada to get drunk because it’s legal there (which a ton of people do at 19 here)– that doesn’t seem like a great setup.
I don’t really know people who get worked up about underage drinking; it seems more like it’s expected, honestly. Which is also a weird general viewing of breaking a law, but I do agree it’s a weird law, so.
In the US we have the driving age at 16 and the drinking age at 21 which means people have 5 years to get used to driving everywhere before learning how to drink without getting drunk and also how to get around without driving.
I grew up in a border town. Oddly enough I didn’t go across to the Rocket or the Frontier until I was 21. And really I’d rather go into Montreal and go to Hurley’s.
I’m a lifelong teetoal Brit who only ever went to the pub in uni because that’s where the SF&F club met (Shout out to Edinburgh Skiffeysoc if anyone’s out there!) and America just strikes me as fundementally weird about alcohol. It sometimes feels that on some level they still wish making it completely illegal had actually worked, rather than making everything worse.
I hear ya. Just because harm reduction works to reduce harm, doesn’t mean the substance isn’t still harm.
That didn’t make much sense.
For me, alcohol, loud noises, crowded rooms full of people talking, fluorescent lights… they basically all just mean the same thing: migraine. So I have a hard time thinking of alcohol as anything other than poison.
That didn’t make much sense either. I just meant that, for a person with TBI who’s prone to migraines, lots of things that other people don’t think is a big deal (such as the sound of overlapping voices from multiple conversations at once, or fluorescent lighting, or the smell of whiteboard markers) provoke a visceral revulsion and fear. And so does alcohol. For me, anyway.
I grew up in a progressive house. I never had a lot to drink, but it also wasn’t some huge mystery. I drank all of a handful of alcohol from 19 (canada legal age) until my late 30’s when I started drinking a very little more socially.
I didn’t have any from when I turned 21 until about a year later. Just didn’t have time at that point.
I’d been drinking occasionally since I was about 16, I made and sold fake IDs in high school, they weren’t great but the drinking age had only been 21 for a few years at that point and nobody really cared or looked closely, the fakes were good enough to give them plausible deniability.
I still think the 21 drinking age is idiotic and should be repealed.
Admittedly my college experience was decades ago, but I’m kind of amazed by how little underage drinking there is in this comic.
We have 2 serious alcoholics, one of whom isn’t drinking anymore. Other than them we’ve had maybe a dozen occasions with drinking?
i think i tech had a sip of wine when i was a kid but overall i’m not into most alcohols, maybe like half of a margarita before you taste an alcohol but i can see the temptation of doing things you were never allowed to do as a kid if you have the opportunity to live in a dorm. if anything i’m surprised (legality aside) that hte older students wouldn’t resell alcohol to the youner ones at a huge markup lol
Is this the first time we’ve seen them talk to each other aloud? As in, one of them says something and the other responds? I don’t remember any others.
Congrats. I’m on year 43. It’s weird, seeing all these commenters talking about not getting drunk until college. I started when I was sixteen. Sobered up 6 years later in the Navy. They were a tad concerned about my operating a submarine nuclear power plant under the influence. Go figure.
As someone who’s never successfully managed to choke down enough of the revolting slop to get even a mild buzz going in the past thirty-nine years … I’m still a little surprised by the number of people talking about not getting drunk until college or later.
I always got the impression I was the odd one out by a wiiiiiiiiiiiiiide margin.
Yeah, Liz has been making up for lost time in the get drunk and make bad decisions department lately. And like Amber, she’s short, about this age, and dark haired.
Here Becky feels guilty about getting Ethan to dump Joyce, apparently.
Additionally, right now we’re being reminded that underage drinking is something AG almost broke up with Danny over, highlighting booze’s explosive potential in this college webcomic
Kegs gotz the stuff that makes you go what? OOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
And the letters in OOOOOO!!!! are shaped like what? CIRCLES!!!
So what it’s actually saying is….
During the keg party, there’s gonna be a break-up during the drinking circle!
The Voice has always been a disguise, not a reliable clue to AG. AG’s talked without it plenty of times – usually to people who already know her secret id. Amber’s also but it on a few times when in costume.
Looking back, we haven’t seen it at all lately. Not when AG came to walk Joyce and Dorothy home. Not at roller derby. Not since the kidnapping.
Why do people think that’s inherent to AG? It was always just a Batman thing to better mask her identity. She doesn’t do it anymore bc she doesn’t have to, and it probably hurt her throat. It’s as necessary to AG as the mask, which is to say it isn’t. The only inherent difference to clue the audience in is the cheek blushes.
I think Dina’s grammar is off, which is out-of-character for her. Instead of “such that”, her sentence would run better with “seeing that” or simply “since”.
lol well, Dina may speak formally but i’m sure she can still make mistakes unless she went outta her way to be an english major/take extra classes or so
Sure, Dina is allowed a few mistakes, maybe especially when repeating a common one. The thing is that she would have analyzed that construction, concluded that it didn’t make sense and decided against repeating the error.
I really like Amber; it’s nice to see someone else deal with an unwanted guest in their head.
Not that I enjoy the fact that she has to deal with it, but it is nice to see someone else fighting the same thing, or something similar, and making it through life.
It is not really that unwanted. Amber and AG has come to a pretty amicable state after the time skip. Right now it’s an exception because Amber is not very well emotionally. (More that usual I mean)
There are documented cases of different alts having different allergies and you could tell which one was “driving” by what made them break out in hives.
Not surprising really. Neurodivergencies by very definition go as deep as the central nervous system and fundamental chemistries therein, autism and DID are no exception.
Hi, I have a question. Why is there no longer the dark blue speech bubbles when “Amazi-girl” is speaking? I always thought that was a visual cue of when it was Amber’s alter ego, and the normal speech bubble color is for Amber. But in these comics, it looks like it’s Amazi-girl speaking, but with normal color? Is that a change in style, or is it meant to have significance, like that Amber and Amazi-girl are slowly re-integrating? Or, that since the speech bubble color is normal, it’s “really” Amber, sort of larping as Amazi-girl?
I’m late to the responding party, but nobody else did. Amazi-Girl used to do a “Batman” voice to conceal her identity. (and probably because she thought it sounded cool) Since the kidnapping everybody knows she’s Amber, so the voice is no longer necessary. Also, Amazi-Girl has been trying to be less of a narc lately, so that may be part of her trying to chill out.
….it’s been like that for like almost a decade or smth now? And anyway do what? It’s not a well understood condition academically, psychologists are debating whether it even exists (it does). Getting treatment isn’t exactly as easy as rocking up to the campus counselor.
I mean, walking up to the campus councilor could probably get her a therapist, which is probably what she basically needs? (also, we should ask whether or not integrating the personalities is a goal. It could be better to just get these personalities to cooperate nicely, which they seem to almost be doing already)
Yeah, let’s forget for a second about quality of therapists specifically near IU here for a second.
The majority of alleged “therapies” for DID are literally the doctor gaslighting you into thinking you don’t have it.
An analogue to CEASE therapy (that tries to “cure” autism) which is also very factually and VERY morally wrong, it puts patients into an unwinnable war with their own brain, with devastating, catastrophic outcomes. T_T
the “college kids are drinking” thing is like… even if you’re american they do that in basically all college related media ever besides promotional things by the colleges themselves
it’s part of the conceit, if nothing else
not sure how well alcohol mixes with dissociative disorders though
yeah I’m from a hard drinking country myself and it feels like a lot of americans online seem to think that every teenager who drinks is getting blackout blitzed every time and endangering their lives continually, but that this somehow doesn’t happen to anyone who leaves it for a legal age
like, yeah, there’s plenty of irresponsible kids, but there’s also plenty of irresponsible adults
at least in the comic nobody is driving (in this timeline)
What is with all the people only just now realizing amber has DID??? Have you been reading the comic? Booster literally identified them as plural back in their introduction. Walky clocked it like years before that. They don’t even do super hero stuff anymore, what did you think ag was sticking around for??? You think amber needs an alter ego for roller derby or smth????
Tbf DID isn’t rly something that many ppl are aware of unless they encounter it IRL but the “superhero being a separate persona” has been a trope for years as opposed to actual examples of disassociating
We also can’t assume that just because someone read the comic, they’ve cared about the same things we have and committed the history of every character to memory. There’s thousands of strips, from like 14 years of almost nonstop daily publishing. Some of the locals (pejorative) forget things from literally yesterday on occasion, come to think of it.
if theres one thing i tell all college frosh with dissociative disorders & abusive dads and who are in mourning for their dead childhood friend that is now haunting them, it’s that they should definitely add alcohol to that equation
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*plays “Low Rider” by War on hacked muzak*
When you fall asleep watching TV and George Lopez reruns wake you up at 2:30 AM.
Lopez + French Roast = Perfect Morning <3
Hacked Muzak is going badass this week
Called it
alternate title, Dumbing of Age Book 14: I Suspect I Have Already Made the First Bad Decision of the Night
You beat me to it
This one is better, for sure.
Absolutely agree
Amazi-girl: Civil War
Them cussing each other out doesn’t seem particularly civil.
That is good. Thanks for the smile.
Ugh, Amazi-Girl sucks so much.
I mean she’s done her best to protect her homies in the past, and that was really good.
Without any motherfuckers to fight, she’s basically Mermaid Man huh? Well I’m still SpongeBobing for her. Once she gets back into SOME kinda super hero action, it’ll make perfect fan game material! ^^
drunk AG calls Mike, ruining his witness protection. She then has to fight the Park(?) crime family.
Park most likely. That’s a Korean surname, it’s established Asher’s grandpa is an alleged organized crime figure.
Okay, so, I looked up both “SpongeBobing” and “SpongeBobbing” on Urban Dictionary because I have no idea what the hell SpongeBobing is supposed to mean in this context, and… uh… I’m still fairly sure those definitions are not what you mean here, even so…
(There are a bunch of UD definitions for just “SpongeBob,” but only the one each for adding “-ing” to the end of it.)
In SpongeBob (the cartoon series) there is a character called Mermaid Man, who is basically Adam West’s Batman.
SpongeBob (the character) is the biggest Mermaid Man fanboy there is.
So from context ‘SpongeBobing’ would mean being the biggest fan / obsessing over her.
What is she even doing here that’s worth getting mad at? Not asking confrontationally or something, I just am genuinely not sure if I am missing something.
She’s a superhero who hasn’t seen action in months, and it’s getting to her.
Soon she’ll be fighting a billionaire’s combat robot and discovering the truth about oversimplified logos.
She’s being a hall monitor.
Truuuuu
She’s always been a square about underage drinking, with Joyce and Dorothy but also she almost broke up with Danny over it. They’re largely adults, this isn’t really a big deal, but AG is Amber’s projected sense of control so we get “that’s illegal people can’t do that”
She used underage drinking as an excuse to fight Sal, so it didn’t make her look good when most of her social circle thought it was fine.
She’s trying to change and not managing it completely and instantly. Around here, that’s the ultimate crime.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/hostage-2/ reread car chase and think about your words and deeds
Im sure thats fine
drunk knife game
also; not a keg
The room is getting more and more crowded. They will regret they needed it keg-sized.
Oh, this will end well.
It would be interesting if Amber got drunk and somehow “amazigirl” is sober (I mean id on’t htink that’s physically possible but who knows)
Person with DID here to confirm that it is not possible – the alter may THINK they’re sober because they didn’t engage in drinking/drugs, but they’re still going to be impaired by it. In other words, we’re very likely going to see drunk Amber AND drunk Amazigirl, and if Walky is there by any chance, things will get *messy*
I’m really amazed at all the underage drinking happening in this comic lately but, eh, I didn’t have my first actual sip of alcohol until I was 21 so clearly I’m the outlier here.
Same, I was also a goody-two-shoes on that front. I didn’t go to enough parties in college to get much of a sense of how strictly that rule was followed.
I just never had an alcoholic drink, but it was pretty common around my college… amd many colleges.
I mean, Billie and Ruth in the first semester set a high bar, and no one’s gotten anywhere near it since.
As for me, quite a few people I knew drank as early as halfway through highschool, so in a way, a lot of this seems pretty unsurprising by comparison.
As a Brit it amuses me greatly to see all the agonizing about 18 year olds drinking. The first week of university here is historically drunken carnage.
It’s way weirder to me that such a thing is viewed so positively anywhere.
Like, I get drunk and party too. It’s the absolute worst possible use of my time and I kinda dislike how casual everyone is about kids getting sloshed just because it’s normal in most of the world. Like, adults make horrifying decisions under the influence, teens have way less impulse control already and most people I knew who partied in HS ended up in very dangerous situations because of it. And it’s not just a US thing; German teens came to my school and did enough drunken property damage that they had to fill in the pool permanently.
(Mind you, not that I’m against seeing it in the comic because it happens and I enjoy seeing the hijinks and it’s a good narrative tool, I just think that drinking with the primary intent to get trashed in real life should be viewed as the concerning behavior it kinda is.)
Agreed. My friends engaged in underaged drinking and it wasn’t exactly a great thing for them.
It’s more the “Everywhere else, we expect people to do this at 18, so it’s just precious to see Americans get all worked up about it until the kids are 21.” In much the same way that Canadians find it hilarious American high school students come to Canada and feel so daring because they’re going to drink, because it’s LEGAL, and get drunk on one American beer, which is… well, anyway. Colored water.
It’s not really about positive or negative; it’s more about… well, wait, why are you not allowed to drink when you’re allowed to vote? You’re adult enough for this, but not for that? (And, while we’re trading in stereotypes, wait, it’s legal for you to have a gun, but not to drink? I mean, I’m happy you’re not currently drunk while wielding your gun, but still…)
Add to that the argument that the later you make the legal age, the more likely it is that people will go overboard once they have the right, because they’re not used to it…
To be fair, the only consequence of alcohol in a still developing brain is more than the poor impulse control. It’s simply bad for your brain. Which is probably true for all ages, but particularly when your brain is still developing (latest studies suggest until 30-35 years of age).
When I grew up the legal drinking age for beer was 16, btw.
When the drinking age was 18 in places, there were a lot more young people in drunk driving accidents, so it seems like people were still going overboard. But also, when young people drive to Canada to get drunk because it’s legal there (which a ton of people do at 19 here)– that doesn’t seem like a great setup.
I don’t really know people who get worked up about underage drinking; it seems more like it’s expected, honestly. Which is also a weird general viewing of breaking a law, but I do agree it’s a weird law, so.
In the US we have the driving age at 16 and the drinking age at 21 which means people have 5 years to get used to driving everywhere before learning how to drink without getting drunk and also how to get around without driving.
I grew up in a border town. Oddly enough I didn’t go across to the Rocket or the Frontier until I was 21. And really I’d rather go into Montreal and go to Hurley’s.
I’m a lifelong teetoal Brit who only ever went to the pub in uni because that’s where the SF&F club met (Shout out to Edinburgh Skiffeysoc if anyone’s out there!) and America just strikes me as fundementally weird about alcohol. It sometimes feels that on some level they still wish making it completely illegal had actually worked, rather than making everything worse.
I hear ya. Just because harm reduction works to reduce harm, doesn’t mean the substance isn’t still harm.
That didn’t make much sense.
For me, alcohol, loud noises, crowded rooms full of people talking, fluorescent lights… they basically all just mean the same thing: migraine. So I have a hard time thinking of alcohol as anything other than poison.
That didn’t make much sense either. I just meant that, for a person with TBI who’s prone to migraines, lots of things that other people don’t think is a big deal (such as the sound of overlapping voices from multiple conversations at once, or fluorescent lighting, or the smell of whiteboard markers) provoke a visceral revulsion and fear. And so does alcohol. For me, anyway.
I grew up in a progressive house. I never had a lot to drink, but it also wasn’t some huge mystery. I drank all of a handful of alcohol from 19 (canada legal age) until my late 30’s when I started drinking a very little more socially.
I mean if it counts, as a teen I would sneak extra sweet wine at every passover when i still celebrated traditionally XD
i drink sometimes, but cannabis is my go-to on account of leading to FAR less body burden :/
I didn’t have any from when I turned 21 until about a year later. Just didn’t have time at that point.
I’d been drinking occasionally since I was about 16, I made and sold fake IDs in high school, they weren’t great but the drinking age had only been 21 for a few years at that point and nobody really cared or looked closely, the fakes were good enough to give them plausible deniability.
I still think the 21 drinking age is idiotic and should be repealed.
Admittedly my college experience was decades ago, but I’m kind of amazed by how little underage drinking there is in this comic.
We have 2 serious alcoholics, one of whom isn’t drinking anymore. Other than them we’ve had maybe a dozen occasions with drinking?
i think i tech had a sip of wine when i was a kid but overall i’m not into most alcohols, maybe like half of a margarita before you taste an alcohol but i can see the temptation of doing things you were never allowed to do as a kid if you have the opportunity to live in a dorm. if anything i’m surprised (legality aside) that hte older students wouldn’t resell alcohol to the youner ones at a huge markup lol
The alt-text beat me to it.
Start as you mean to go on, Dina.
What bad decision do you suppose Amber has in mind?
Foursome!
Threesome with Walky and Dorothy?
Wrestling match with Sal?
Drunkenly hit on Ethan?
Drunkenly chat with Ethan?
Drunken nighttime parkour?
Fist fight with AG
there’s an “AA” joke I don’t think can work until more bad decisions are made around alcohol
Hasn’t every college student ever already taken that title, Mr Alt-Text?
Yesss, I want to see Amber hang out with the gals
Is the next slipshine getting six protagonists in the same room?
Oh good, they’re talking to each other. /j
They’ve been communicating for some time now.
Is this the first time we’ve seen them talk to each other aloud? As in, one of them says something and the other responds? I don’t remember any others.
Well, there was “Friends?” “Friends.”
From my quick look earlier, that “Friends” was the last time we saw AG doing the Voice.
And that’s a shame, because it’s a banger.
The next couple pages have Amber doing the Voice.
I wanna see drunk Amazi-Girl
If they’re anything like that drunken batman meme earthlings were so fond of, count me in! XD
(69th comment, yall know what to do)
as a recovering alcoholic (5 years clean in July!) lemme tell ya, I sure am excited for this storyline!
Congrats. I’m on year 43. It’s weird, seeing all these commenters talking about not getting drunk until college. I started when I was sixteen. Sobered up 6 years later in the Navy. They were a tad concerned about my operating a submarine nuclear power plant under the influence. Go figure.
As someone who’s never successfully managed to choke down enough of the revolting slop to get even a mild buzz going in the past thirty-nine years … I’m still a little surprised by the number of people talking about not getting drunk until college or later.
I always got the impression I was the odd one out by a wiiiiiiiiiiiiiide margin.
In the general population, probably! I don’t drink, never have, so I feel that. But in this comment section, not as much.
If the cast decides to try pot I might have to skip a storyline for the first time.
Or they could just do a crossover strip with QC for a few days. They’ve been vaping up a storm over there for a good week or so.
Yeah, Liz has been making up for lost time in the get drunk and make bad decisions department lately. And like Amber, she’s short, about this age, and dark haired.
I can only think that Amazi-girl’s decision is a double-edged sword.
The tag for Parti was taken off of the last comic! Weird.
It turned out that she couldn’t get out of her contract over at Lackadaisy after all.
also weird was how Willis misspelled “keg” as “peg” in the alt-text….
WAIT….
keg party -> peg parti
it’s like that puzzle in lemony snicket books!
the spelling mistakes in order spell PI
Pi is the mathematical ratio of a CIRCLE’s circumference to it’s diameter.
3.1415 are the first 5 digits of Pi,
and what my brothaz is the comic at the date 3/14/15?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/noodle/
Here Becky feels guilty about getting Ethan to dump Joyce, apparently.
Additionally, right now we’re being reminded that underage drinking is something AG almost broke up with Danny over, highlighting booze’s explosive potential in this college webcomic
Kegs gotz the stuff that makes you go what? OOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
And the letters in OOOOOO!!!! are shaped like what? CIRCLES!!!
So what it’s actually saying is….
During the keg party, there’s gonna be a break-up during the drinking circle!
If this is real I will be both amazed and giving a lot more attention to Illuminati conspiracy theorists.
It’s Black Dynamite Deduction
(mind you I was rather high when i wrote this)
Well that doesn’t look good
“Have problems?” Drink.”
NOW I have seen Amber and Amazi-Girl at the same time
I thought their first decision would have been how to sneak this past Ruth.
This is the first BAD decision of night. An effective way of getting this past Ruth would probably be a good one.
Actually, Dina is wrong. Becky made the first bad decision of the night.
I suppose Amber is now comfortable enough with Dina to have out loud conversations with Amazi-Girl. This is going to end well!
Except ol’ A-G has a pretty loose grip on Amber right now. Notice the absence of the “growl” when A-G is speaking.
The Voice has always been a disguise, not a reliable clue to AG. AG’s talked without it plenty of times – usually to people who already know her secret id. Amber’s also but it on a few times when in costume.
Looking back, we haven’t seen it at all lately. Not when AG came to walk Joyce and Dorothy home. Not at roller derby. Not since the kidnapping.
Why do people think that’s inherent to AG? It was always just a Batman thing to better mask her identity. She doesn’t do it anymore bc she doesn’t have to, and it probably hurt her throat. It’s as necessary to AG as the mask, which is to say it isn’t. The only inherent difference to clue the audience in is the cheek blushes.
I think Dina’s grammar is off, which is out-of-character for her. Instead of “such that”, her sentence would run better with “seeing that” or simply “since”.
I was going to ask if such that means “because” now, and if so, why Dina is suddenly the first to go with the fashion!
It’s a pretty common use of the phrase in my experience, but that doesn’t make it correct, which Dina generally is.
lol well, Dina may speak formally but i’m sure she can still make mistakes unless she went outta her way to be an english major/take extra classes or so
Sure, Dina is allowed a few mistakes, maybe especially when repeating a common one. The thing is that she would have analyzed that construction, concluded that it didn’t make sense and decided against repeating the error.
That’s what you believe she would have done, sure. But she’s not a robot, she can make imperfect choices as easily as making a grammatical mistake.
I will be using the final panel as a reaction image. Thank you.
Amber making drunk bad decisions sounds interesting so I say full speed ahead and I wholeheartedly endorse this plan.
It is not that different from usual bad decision making but with more cursing and slightly less a acrobatic maneuvers.
Absolutely nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan, and I unreservedly endorse it.
also amazi-girl you have a right to exist and to do so under your own terms i am just saying
“Ms. O’Malley”
“I’M AMAZI-GIRL”
“Ms. Amazi-Girl, we’re gonna have to take you in for Superheroing Under the Influence”
Panel 3 Dina is the sweetest Dina.
And Dina hasn’t even started drinking.
Amber hugging the “keg” : My precious!
Amazi-girl: NO!
Amber chugging down the “keg” : “Leave now and never come back”
now THIS is the plural content we love to see
I really like Amber; it’s nice to see someone else deal with an unwanted guest in their head.
Not that I enjoy the fact that she has to deal with it, but it is nice to see someone else fighting the same thing, or something similar, and making it through life.
It is not really that unwanted. Amber and AG has come to a pretty amicable state after the time skip. Right now it’s an exception because Amber is not very well emotionally. (More that usual I mean)
I thought that was Amazi-Girl’s Amber impression. The tags say it’s Amber.
Amber has cheek blushes; Amazi-Girl doesn’t.
Amber is incredible: her indentity change is so hard that her second persona is able to lower the amount of blood on face.
There are documented cases of different alts having different allergies and you could tell which one was “driving” by what made them break out in hives.
Not surprising really. Neurodivergencies by very definition go as deep as the central nervous system and fundamental chemistries therein, autism and DID are no exception.
Maybe there are berserkers in her family tree.
Dumb question…how do you see the tags
Tags are at the bottom of the (usually empty) “blog post” box under the comic, the same one that has the title in it.
Hi, I have a question. Why is there no longer the dark blue speech bubbles when “Amazi-girl” is speaking? I always thought that was a visual cue of when it was Amber’s alter ego, and the normal speech bubble color is for Amber. But in these comics, it looks like it’s Amazi-girl speaking, but with normal color? Is that a change in style, or is it meant to have significance, like that Amber and Amazi-girl are slowly re-integrating? Or, that since the speech bubble color is normal, it’s “really” Amber, sort of larping as Amazi-girl?
I’m late to the responding party, but nobody else did. Amazi-Girl used to do a “Batman” voice to conceal her identity. (and probably because she thought it sounded cool) Since the kidnapping everybody knows she’s Amber, so the voice is no longer necessary. Also, Amazi-Girl has been trying to be less of a narc lately, so that may be part of her trying to chill out.
her second persona is leveling up into a full on dissociative personality, I feel like you should do something about that…
Hi, welcome to like Book 5?
….it’s been like that for like almost a decade or smth now? And anyway do what? It’s not a well understood condition academically, psychologists are debating whether it even exists (it does). Getting treatment isn’t exactly as easy as rocking up to the campus counselor.
I mean, walking up to the campus councilor could probably get her a therapist, which is probably what she basically needs? (also, we should ask whether or not integrating the personalities is a goal. It could be better to just get these personalities to cooperate nicely, which they seem to almost be doing already)
Yeah, let’s forget for a second about quality of therapists specifically near IU here for a second.
The majority of alleged “therapies” for DID are literally the doctor gaslighting you into thinking you don’t have it.
An analogue to CEASE therapy (that tries to “cure” autism) which is also very factually and VERY morally wrong, it puts patients into an unwinnable war with their own brain, with devastating, catastrophic outcomes. T_T
oh god they’re talking to each other now
Yeah, that’s happened a few times. They had a really weird argument back when Amber stole all the privacy chairs and put them in a big cube.
Amber – Putting the “dis” in dissociative identity disorder.
the “college kids are drinking” thing is like… even if you’re american they do that in basically all college related media ever besides promotional things by the colleges themselves
it’s part of the conceit, if nothing else
not sure how well alcohol mixes with dissociative disorders though
In Poland it’s basically a tradition that high schoolers try to sneak alcohol for… basically our version of Prom for the third/last years
yeah I’m from a hard drinking country myself and it feels like a lot of americans online seem to think that every teenager who drinks is getting blackout blitzed every time and endangering their lives continually, but that this somehow doesn’t happen to anyone who leaves it for a legal age
like, yeah, there’s plenty of irresponsible kids, but there’s also plenty of irresponsible adults
at least in the comic nobody is driving (in this timeline)
Oh, God, they’re tagged as separate characters. We’re in trouble.
They always have been.
They… always have been? Even in the beginning when Amazi-Girl was basically just Amber playing dress-up?
This isn’t even close to the first strip where they’ve both been tagged, even.
That’s at least three people acting like anything is really unusual or new between Amber and Amazi-Girl, all on the same comic.
What is with all the people only just now realizing amber has DID??? Have you been reading the comic? Booster literally identified them as plural back in their introduction. Walky clocked it like years before that. They don’t even do super hero stuff anymore, what did you think ag was sticking around for??? You think amber needs an alter ego for roller derby or smth????
not to mention the “we’re in trouble” part, ableism as usual manifests itself in common long-standing stigmas, including those against DID 9-9
Tbf DID isn’t rly something that many ppl are aware of unless they encounter it IRL but the “superhero being a separate persona” has been a trope for years as opposed to actual examples of disassociating
Amber’s also spelled it out pretty clearly multiple times, is another thing about it. And Amazi-Girl, unless I recall incorrectly.
We also can’t assume that just because someone read the comic, they’ve cared about the same things we have and committed the history of every character to memory. There’s thousands of strips, from like 14 years of almost nonstop daily publishing. Some of the locals (pejorative) forget things from literally yesterday on occasion, come to think of it.
Well, yes. But we can’t have someone being wrong on the Internet.
if theres one thing i tell all college frosh with dissociative disorders & abusive dads and who are in mourning for their dead childhood friend that is now haunting them, it’s that they should definitely add alcohol to that equation
I don’t know why, but panel 5 really made me laugh.