The Dumbing of Age Book 10 Kickstarter continues! We’re still at $50k, essentially same as yesterday, because this is Week 3 and as such is the Slow Times. Essentially relaxing on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Just chillin’! Some day, in the far future (but hopefully not too far), we’ll reach $55K and unlock the Conquest magnet! Until then, binge some favorite television shows!
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*hasn’t had that experience, if anything I fell deep into the doodle*
Not everyone’s mind works the same tho.
“Fell deep into the doodle” sounds like a dirty euphemism.
Not everyone’s mind works the same tho.
Just the good ones.
That’s another pint Clif. Skål
….
“Hello Father.”
**wonders if that small quote in association with the word doodle is enough to convey the reference**
**chooses not to care**
Slap in the face actually.
I think that’s “fell deep into the canoodle”
It worked for me at least. Knitting worked better but some of my professors didn’t like me knitting in class. Gotta keep my hands busy so my brain can do stuff.
See when I look at an old doodle I can go back to when I was making it in my mind and remember the context of the environment. like doodles connected to time that took up my attention.
I vaguely remember *where* I drew *one* doodle, and kinda sorta what class it was in
otherwise I remember rather vividly details I was working out around the doodle
I’d already assumed Wally meant “Keeps my mind from wandering” AWAY from the doodling.
As in, from being distracted from the doodling by that silly lecture.
I mean it’d be more impressive it wasn’t the same comic slightly altered every time
It’s a time tested method. The key to long form storytelling. And at an outstanding 5 bucks a strip honestly what would you expect. You get what you pay for.
It worked for LAWsome, Willis’ greatest comic ever.
And Dina Sarazu comics
Wait no I think that was Ryan North
I used to think that way, and almost wound up in summer school. But, i did crank out three issues of an indie comic before graduating high school!
What was your means of reproduction.
(Other than impressing chicks with your indie comics, I mean.)
Maybe they pulled a George and Harold: They relied on an unattended office copier.
It was for fanzines, not a comic, but I abused many a copier, and sprang sometimes for offset. I had friends though that did their own comics and my SF club occasionally ran a “Horrifying True Tales” strip that a friend drew.. Used ditto and at least once memeo, but never hectagraph. Those were the days when an IBM Selectric with selectable font wheels was the ultimate in technology you could aspire to. I was just curious what kids nowadays used (other than electrons) to reproduce their work.
How about this:
Comics.
But they’re educational.
Yeah those won’t fly.
A comic about how to fold paper airplanes can be both educational and can fly!
An important point.
My philosophy is that almost anything will fly if you launch it hard enough.
If Walky says he’s got this in the bag then I have total confidence in him! Smart to use class time to crank out some comics. Very efficient!
I share your optimism.
Good to see you Lucy, welcome to the board.
Lol Sirksome wyd xD
Hm maybe the “Walky having ADHD” idea is carrying more weight now. I remember a video of someone discussing a section in the book “The Animators Survival Kit” where they referenced a Cartoonists named Milton Kahl and how one time when he was asked what music he listens to when he works he replied back saying “My mind isn’t capable of thinking of more than one thing at a time.”
It makes sense that some people need to use the “Unplug method” in able to have enough focus to work but then someone brought up a point that I didn’t think of. that some others are the exact opposite and that their minds need to be stimulated with something else when it’s trying to dart back and forth between more than one thing while working on a task.
I’m not an expert and all this is theory but I think but maybe this is all connected in a way.
Yep. (connectedness) Another study a while back showed that people who doodled or figeted during lessons or meetings retained more informtion from the interaction than those who appeared to be paying attention.
n.b. that’s ‘doodled’ not “completely ignored the teachers instruction in favour of paying full attention to plot, character, framing, layout and drawing a comic”
Yep, in my personal experience it works same as Walky’s. And, well…
I love in Lucy being the Joyce to Joyce in panel one.
The only thing she is missing is that triangle smile of Joyce’s.
The only scenario I can think if where drawing during class would help him pay attention is if he had ADHD.
Now, I know how much erroneous labeling he would receive as a result of this suggestion, so I’ll say it right now:
Clinical psychiatric labels are NOT toys!
Chances are he has something. That’s pretty much a safe bet for like 99% of the cast. This comic is like My Little Pony as in every main character is actually insane.
And all of us commenters fit right in.
When asked if Dina had Aspergers Syndrome (due to her displaying alleged symptoms), David said that he modeled her off of how he used to act as a kid. Joyce also displays a few compulsive behaviors herself.
Whether it’s possible that he actually had such some kind of undiagnosed condition which was eventually used in the creation of his characters, erroneous use of clinical labels of ANY kind is not without reprocautions.
I’m not trying to label anyone with anything. I’m not a psychologist of any sort and that would be assuming a lot. Plus I doubt any depiction of mental or socialogical disorders in this comic are accurate or that Willis would ever claim they are. That being said these are fictional characters so I’d like to think it would be okay to theorize especially since a lot of readers relate certain traits to their own experiences.
I relate to Dina a lot because, though I’ve never been diagnosed, I also seem to have a lot of the symptoms of Aspergers.
I was diagnosed AS and ADD in middle school, and worked with other kids with similar diagnoses years later. Dina and Walky absolutely exhibit some of the traits I’ve seen, looking back on it.
(Luckily for them, they weren’t actively rejected by their peer groups. Apparently a LOT has changed in the last 20 years.)
Drawing a comic strip? Maybe not.
Drawing geometric shapes to keep his hands busy between note-taking while listening in a lecture? Maybe.
I mean, Mike literally said Walky has undiagnosed ADHD. Mike wasn’t a great guy and armchair psychology from a teenager doesn’t count for much, but generally he was right about those kinds of things. Besides that, basically everything Walky has ever done fits with the diagnosis. At several points Willis has basically screamed it in our faces.
My son has ADHD and autism. He was doing pretty well in school before COVID – but now, especially on days when the teachers aren’t doing Zoom, he’s knocking out assignments left and right. Far as I can tell, this is related to the fact that while he’s doing them, he also has a minimum of two YouTube videos playing on different screens in his room (usually DanTDM on one, and dangmattsmith on the other).
So yeah, I think saying Walky’s probably ADHD would not be off the mark here.
Glad to hear he’s found an environment that works for him 🙂
Walky…CLEARLY has ADHD. Like. He has literally so, so many of the signs. Like all of the signs. He is a fucking walking posterchild for ADHD in boys.
In fact, I’m fucking shocked he wasn’t already diagnosed at a young age, and I can guess the only reason he wasn’t is that his mother browbeat teachers who tried to talk about any behavioral issues he displayed instead of ever considering getting him evaluating by a psychiatrist. Or she just blamed any problems he had on Sal. Or both!
Oh well. I tried. At least you’re not one of those dimwits who believes that ADHD is a scam created by “Big Pharma” so they can “drug up our kids”.
At the very least, I don’t think it’s unfair to say Walky exhibits some ADHD-tracking traits and an evaluation earlier in life could have done him a lot of good.
That and he was doing well academically. Good old ‘but you’re so smart! Obviously you can’t have something Wrong with you!’
Certain characters definitely show signs of neurodivergence, some of them because Willis is writing aspects of themself into the characters and says they’re likely neurodivergent themself but undiagnosed (Dina and especially Joyce get this a lot,) and some of them having grown over time – Amber and AG being alters wasn’t the original plan, and Willis was iffy on doing it for a while for fear of playing into the Scary Violent DID stereotype, but after various plural commenters discussed how familiar they found AmbG (and how she’s ultimately a flawed but heroic character,) he started writing her more and more intentionally like that. It’s been pretty undeniable since the Evil Dads, even though as Walky says, she’s not diagnosed. Dina’s also become more and more distinctly autistic, rather than the debatable but clearly present neurodivergence we get from Joyce. (Could be she’s autistic. Could be she has OCD and a boatload of trauma. She’s the one where I’m like ‘yeah there’s clearly too much of Willis in her for me to be comfortable guessing.’)
It’s also worth noting that a lot of the commenters who think this – not all of us, but many – are ourselves neurodivergent. Cerberus’s discussion of Amber and AG as golden alter/terrible alter (and how those self-assigned labels are absolute bunk) has long informed how I read the characters, because she was pulling from experience. My read of Dina as very clearly autistic, and Joyce as definitely neurodivergent, is from being autistic myself and recognizing so much of myself in the two of them. Walky’s ADHD has been called out by name in strip as something that’s likely going on, and he shows a lot of signs of the undiagnosed gifted kid who struggles hitting college. (I give VERY good odds of him actually getting a workinng diagnosis in some point in the comic.) The characters aren’t diagnosed formally in-comic, but they show so many traits that commenters with these conditions relate to in very specific ways that it’s worth discussing, and we’re not going off stereotypes or jokes when we mention it – we’re drawing from life.
They also by and large have things that are wildly underdiagnosed in the real world, especially for people in certain demographics (with the possible exception of Walky, but again, he has good grades and that lets a lot of really blatant learning and developmental disabilities slip under the radar.) Joyce and Dina are both women, Dina an Asian woman, and both of them managed to make it out of early childhood without anything formal – you could do an arc lasting in-comic years of them dealing with psychologists insisting that since Dina is speaking, she cannot possibly be autistic. It’s still controversial among psychologists as to whether or not systems actually exist, and even among those that think it does you’ll get a lot of questionable ideas about ‘treatment’. They’re conditions where self-diagnosis is generally allowed and even encouraged in our communities, because we know the medical gatekeeping and stigmas attached to formal diagnosis are massive barriers to a lot of people and it shouldn’t preclude them from getting support and community. (The major advocacy groups run by autistic people ourselves and not ‘Autism Parents’ tend to acknowledge explicitly that autism is frequently misdiagnosed as something else or underdiagnosed among women, people of color, and adults who slipped through the cracks as children, and that as a result formal diagnosis can be such a financial and time drain because of doctor biases. I once had a psychiatrist try to change my diagnosis – that I received as a kid, from about the most reputable source you could get – because I was ‘too social’ to be autistic.)
“Walky’s ADHD has been called out by name in strip as something that’s likely going on”
Relevant link.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/technically/
Dont @ me like this, lol
I’m Fixin’ A Hole
Where the rain gets in
To stop my mind from wondering…where it will go~wo!
I predict that one way or another, by the end of this semester Walky will, indeed, be boned.
Luckily, at the rate time passes, that’s anther decade away.
Honestly, I’m expecting them both to become comic writers for the newspaper. I’m pretty sure the paper doesn’t have any at all right now – “Two decent comics? Great. We’ll print both half/normal size instead of just one normal/huge size.” (I have no idea how newspaper editing works).
Plus, continuing the thread of “competing” comic artists is a good storyline. 000
And we’ll pay them each half the rate we advertized the position at!
This will be a great lesson to them in capitalism and what to expect in the future as a cartoonist
I would not be surprised if this is what happens.
Yeeeep, I suspect that’s where we’re going.
The Cougar, my college’s paper, always ran four comics. This was true in the early ’70s and again during the late ’90s.
Watch the paper cram both comics into one strip space by squashing them 50% vertically, ruining readability and the aspect ratio. The graphic design major in charge of page layout sheds a tear, for the decision is beyond their control but it’s their job to execute it.
(My area’s local newspaper actually tried this with the comics page for a while, when they made a “daily tabloid” out of the sports section and TV listings. Strips were about five different sizes, and the crossword was too small to fill out with a ballpoint pen. That lasted a couple months before the backlash compelled them to revert to the old layout.)
…I mean, for me it depended on the subject. Some subjects it made worse, others it made better. Though in the latter cases it may have just been a placebo.
If a placebo works, it works.
Walky you really need to admit you are fucking up and need some help. Because at this rate, you’re going to fail so hard they’ll need a new letter grade.
Also I just had a thought, what if part of the reason Amber and Walky broke up is because of Amber changing his grades? After all we never got a scene regarding that, so maybe?
I highly doubt that. Frankly speaking Amber changing Walky’s grade was such a small blip on her life that I doubt Amber even remembers she did that compared to all the other shit that happened last semester. Narrative wise it means even less since the paper trial has been cut off and the guy who would be responsible for grading or reporting that was fired.
The shoe would never drop on that because there is no shoe. There’s literally nothing anyone could do to change that situation so why even bother revealing that? And most people have mentioned before that one bad grade in your first semester in one class ultimately means nothing academically.
On the other hand, “I changed your grades after you said you didn’t want me to” sounds like something Amber would rattle off in the middle of one of her self-deprecating tirades.
at one point, Walky said you get an A if your roommate dies, so maybe it didn’t even come up between them
That isn’t actually a real thing, but Walky believed the urban legend.
Why do you think he’s failing so hard? He obviously passed last semester’s math somehow. And not through Amber changing his grades before the midterm, unless she did it again.
Idk Man that’s a pretty common thing amongst students with adhd, which walky clearly has
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Not only does this work for me, I literally do better “taking notes” by doodling shit because looking back over the unrelated doodles reminds me of what was said when I drew this or that part better than the few standard note-taking methods I’ve tried. Also, my handwriting is very slow and shitty so I tend to spend more of the lecture *catching up* and processing what I need to write down and trying to scribble the whole thing fast enough than I do understanding what was said, and then all I remember when I look at my notes is “oh god this was stressful”.
But no, psych, I don’t have ADHD, I’m not literally unable to sit for more than half a minute like the four year olds you use as a reference…
I don’t know if you’re complaining that the psych thinks you don’t have ADHD when you do, or if you’re complaining that the psych thinks you do have ADHD when you think you don’t, but if it’s the latter you should know that ADHD can present without the hyperactivity.
Yup. It used to be referred to as “ADD” but I think it’s “ADHD-pi” (primarily inattentive) now?
(Also, agreed that “standard note-taking methods” are bullshit. I can never get “note taking apps” like Evernote to function the way I work. If anything they just become repositories for stream-of-consciousness text dumps.)
Yeah, I’ve got motor dysgraphia that made my elementary school OT give up and put me on Type To Learn in third grade. I feel your pain. It’s hard to explain to teachers and the like sometimes that my handwriting CAN be legible for short periods, but the effort and general fine motor issues mean my hand starts hurting after about three sentences so I start cutting corners to be done with it.
Even with a laptop, I just wrote what the lecturer or Power Point said in a Word document, it’s hard to process the words and decide what’s actually important when you have to be Focused On Listening And Taking Notes. Did way better when I could be writing something irrelevant while listening, or playing Solitaire or something.)
Eyyy! You’re the first person I’ve met outside my family who also has dysgraphia! Shitty hands high five? ✋
I haven’t physically written anything much longer than a grocery list item in years (aside from that one time my university waited months to tell me that my evaluation was outdated, and thus forced me to painfully write out an incomplete essay for my sociology exam)
Bonus points if you also have dyslexia and dyscalculia lol
You better believe I always drew in class to keep from losing focus. 😛 If I didn’t draw during class I’d end up dozing off.
I hope it works Walky, for your sake when you see Linda.
*doodling an elephant made of feet*
Checks out.
Math classes I drew constantly, nothing as complex as a comic with a story, but vines and flowers, sometimes geometric designs but that did really help me focus, until I ran across a teacher who LOVED to abbreviate EVERYTHING…most of her own design (even some symbols I have not seen before or since). I became distracted trying to keep up with the “words” that explained the math itself…total fail, and she was quite unsympathetic…saying that I shouldn’t be in an advanced class if I couldn’t keep up, in front of the whole class…not a fan of public confrontation…
I remember I sometimes used to doodle whole patterns of geometric shapes in my notebooks in school, usually on the sides around my actual notes.
This. There is literally none of my high school notebooks that hasn’t been doodled all over.
… okay, Panel 3 sold the “Walky’s suddenly hot” premise for me.
I just figured that it was the wet hair from the underwater Martian Embassy finally drying out.
I was actually just wondering today if Walky’s academic existential crisis had actually somehow resolved during the time jump
The answer is a big fat honking NAH
HOMPK!
Fixed that for you.
Something tells me that Joyce kind of liked having an excuse not to pay attention in class!
That sweater is cute on Joyce.
I like the cross-universe synergy with Dexter on her shirt here and Head Alien II coming back into the plot over in the Joyce and Walky! reruns.
I didn’t draw but I did origami with scrap paper or began fidgeting with whatever I had at my disposal during lectures. I found keeping my.hands occupied with doing something made it easier to focus. That might be the A D D at work but it worked a lot better than trying to only hyper focus on lessons. I tended to zone or just flat out fall asleep.
Actually, i used to draw to pay attention. My friends mocked new teachers when they told me to stop drawing to pay attention because i actually listened to everything they said while drawing. Well i did, up until like, third year of highschool (where i just stopped paying attention)
for sure, there was no guarantee in school that I’d be drawing to pay attention, or just drawing because I had no interest in the class. Had a math teacher test that once, which sucked because I genuinely did not pay any attention in math class. In science class I’d read the science textbook when the teacher was talking, so in that way at least I was still learning. Same with English.
Panel 1: Sarah suddenly smiles, while arguing with the lunch lady.
Haha I see what you did there
“It keeps my mind from wandering… to the subject of the class”
I know that Willis said that Danny is autobiographical… but I feel like all the characters are autobiographical. Well, except maybe A-girl … unless Willis actually IS a superhero! (obviously he is, just not the one we deserve)
This brings up old memories. In high school, I used to draw all over my notes to help me pay attention.
Walky, I’m sure is the other way around.
walky being undiagnosed adhd relatable to me yet again. I’ve started playing sudoku or free cell when I actually want to listen to what people are saying, but of course before that it was drawing.
Relatable ADHD thing! I remember a comic someone made where their character was doodling in class but the teacher’s lecture was coming through loud and clear. (The teacher’s speech bubble had doodles in the margins or something like that to illustrate the effect.) Next panel, the teacher snaps “PAY ATTENTION” and the doodle bubbles burst. Third panel, the main character is disinterestedly facing forward, holding their head up with one arm, as the lecture bubble degrades i to faded gibberish.
(It was probably an adhd-alien comic, but I can’t find it right now thanks to the transient nature of social media and its random file names.)
It’s interesting the way something that seems like a distraction is actually just occupying processor cycles that would otherwise just groan “I’M BOOOORED!!!”. I bet that’s why we can listen to music while driving without giving the radio our undivided attention.
Doodling DOES help me focus!
I love the range of Walkyfaces here. I had no idea the self-assured guy in panel three would have the pinpoint pupils at the end.
HOW DARE these glasses be a good idea *grumble*
everybody wearing head alien merch~
My boyfriend was like that as a kid. The teacher would let him draw things related to the lesson during class and it would help him focus. Much like Walky, he has several symptoms of ADHD but has yet to be diagnosed
That’s always the danger, though, Walks – sometimes it does help, sometimes you get so invested in what you’re drawin that you tune out the lecture entirely.
That being said I always found the best thing to do was to try to keep my doodles related to the topic at hand if I could. I drew a lot of portraits of mathematicians to desperately try to get myself to like math.
Panel 2 Walky actually does look pretty attractive. I’m buying into this hot theory.
Not drawing but playing games like bejeweled or candy crush. Just as long as it doesn’t have words I need to focus on. It engaged my right side brain so it kept my left side brain focused on the lecture/audiobook.
May not work for everyone but it did for me. Only now it is difficult for me to NOT multitask. I always need to be doing SOMETHING while watching tv.
Drawing actually helps me listen crazy much
Once a teacher called me out in class and shamed me
Guess who got a 105 on his next test and was allowed to doodle the rest of the year
Our teachers at school did the thing where they first explained the material and then dictated notes we should take.
Considering I took notes while they were originally talking, because it was much easier to focus on what they were saying that way… well, I always had two copybooks open. The one with class notes and the one for doodling -_-
I don’t think a single teacher has ever had a problem with me doing this lmao
Have said it before and I’ll say it again: Walky is probably the best-written ADHD character I have ever seen in fiction.
Doodling definitely helps me focus, until I get TOO into whatever I’m doodling and block out everything else, that is.
ADHD is a heck of a thing.
Oh Walky…
he really went ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Yuck Friday classes