The Dumbing of Age Book 10 Kickstarter is live!
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!
6 days to go!
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Becky: “I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE”
Ruth: “to the paperwork, or to the being eaten?”
Becky: “… 🤔”
“Help! My loins!”
“My arms! My legs! My everything! AAGH!”–The Doctor faking his death (DOCTOR WHO: Nightmare of Eden)
*also plays Weird Al’s “Jurassic Park” on the hacked Muzak*
*also plays Weird Al’s “Jurassic Park” on the hacked Muzak*
Sorry for the multipost.
To be fair, you can never experience Weird Al just once. He’s like lays, but much better.
The best part of the music video is when the arm re-lights the gate torch with a cigarette lighter.
I would respond to that, but unfortunately Nightmare of Eden is one of four Tom Baker serials I somehow haven’t seen, so uh… yeah.
You have missed very little. It’s not the show’s finest moment, by a long margin. Which is a shame, because it tries very hard to be.
Wow. Carla’s being generous today.
“You have to do some paperwork” is a pretty small price to pay for “Person you despise is dead”
I dunno, sometimes paperwork makes me envious of the dead.
Carla might not have spent much time with paperwork.
Carla has the new Rutech Paperwork-Master AI.
TBF, Carla also has no incentive to do it CORRECTLY
By doing it herself she guarantees that she’ll have the opportunity to fill out the paperwork in a way that makes Mary a (further) object of ridicule.
Every line just says, “Carla is great”.
I can sympathize, but never having to deal with Mary again might just be worth a little paperwork.
Clearly, not many of you have ever worked for the federal government.
Purgatory has nothing on government paperwork, and hell is sitting through the training on how to do it.
And then there is the premium level, doing military paperwork.
Are we talking, “Don’t forget to file the ‘Paper Work Reduction Compliance’ forms along with these blank form request forms,” levels of paperwork?
Clearly, you’ve never dealt with someone like Mary.
It IS Ruth’s birthday. Her and Dina teamed up for this gift.
She never said that she’d do the paperwork well, just that it would be done.
Well… filled out. Not well filled out, just filled out.
Date: Today
Reporting Person: Entertained audience member
Location: This floor
Incident Summary: It was so awesome. A small raptor-esque dinasaur attacked and ate a small pray animal. The prays foul bleating was blessedly drowned out by the call of the raptor. (in 4″ pt letters:) HOMPK!
See? Carla can be nice!
Well it is Ruth’s birthday, after all.
Carla can be nice if there’s something in it for her. What’s in it, though? Just the end of Mary, or is she hot for the bloody rending?
Both actually. Carla canonically hates, Mary, is into watching, and might be a sub or into watching other people be domed and or abused. This is like a win-win-win for her. I haven’t made any of this up by the way. Carla had a pretty revealing moment while Sal described stomping Malaya into a pulp.
“Promise?”
I don’t remember “stomping into pulp.” I recall it as “I’ll step on her neck.”
I was thinking third-panel Carla seemed to be biting her lip…
You mean this one?
Maybe she just likes doing paperwork?
She IS the product of engineers. While they like creating most, documenting what they have done and will do is pretty high up there.
In my experience with engineers, documenting is a large part of the work, but it’s usually done under protest.
You got that right, doing paperwork gets in the way of the fun stuff, like building or breaking stuff.
Both! Carla wants a Bloody Mary.
It’s okay, Ruth. It’s not that much paperwork.
Yeah, turns out the university doesn’t actually have a form for when one student righteously devours another.
I never knew I needed this as a quote until now. Thank you from the bottom of my hompkf.
I feel like Dina would resent being called righteous because of the normal connotation even if it is relatively accurate in this context.
‘Justly devours,’ perhaps?
Perhaps, but what if she hears righteous more in the california surfer “righteous waves, mahalo” form, rather than “his righteous pompousness”?
Ruth: What happened to Mary?
Dina: I’m afraid that’s a rather tender subject.
Not with ketchup!
Why not?
Rocky Horror Picture Show references.
Are you sure that’s ketchup?
I’ll take another slice!
Ruth no
Dina’s just being a good friend
But if Dina eats Mary, won’t she be cheating on Becky??
Only if Becky’s into vore.
Becky’s a Vor? Funny, she doesn’t look Barayarran…
*applause*
It’s not like Mary was going to use that arm, anyway.
As long as it’s not her drawing arm.
It’s not technically cannibalism if Dina is a DINOSAUR!
But then, I do consider to be closer to a cold-blooded lizard than a human being sometimes, so…
“I do consider Mary to be”, that should say.
Well the theropods that Dina likes to emulate were more like warm-blooded birds than cold-blooded lizards, so….
If we can gather enough data on prehistoric climate and migration patterns, we might just find out whether dinosaurs were cold or warm blooded.
We have found out. They were warm-blooded.
And they still are.
She’s a Dinasaur!
“Hmmm…. what a lovely day. I want to be eaten by a dinosaur!”
She wishes.
“POUNDED IN THE BUTT BY A HOMPKING VELOCIRAPTOR TRYING TO TEACH ME ABOUT EVOLUTION”
Your gravi always makes me wanna draw more butts
drawmore is actually my first name
Chuck Tingle’s newest book perhaps?
Can confirm, nothing sucks more than filling out injury related paperwork on your birthday
Having injury-related paperwork filled out in regards to you on your birthday.
Filling out paperwork related to your own injury on your December 25th Birthday.
I raise you with “spending your birthday in the ER, waiting for a doctor for 7 hours.”
Some are born HOMPK
Some achieve HOMPKness
And some have HOMPKness thrust upon them.
Here. I believe you dropped your Internet.
Dina can have an arm, but not a femur.
Those are for Ruth. It’s her birthday, after all.
*Dina trots over to Ruth, drops bloody femur at her feet, goes back to devouring the rest of Mary*
I hope you also thank Dina when you catch up with her. Just think of all the self-righteous bullshit you’d have been forced to listen to if she hadn’t.
Also, yay Carla, I was missing her.
Carla gravatars, unite!
By your gravatars combined, I am Captain Carla
Willis, can you use your almighty powers to delete this?
If Dina eats Mary, then Mary might discover she LIKES it, which would make Jesus cry….
Well, if Mary does like it, I only hope she has the wisdom to use safe words.
Hey, filling in the paper work sounds like a good birthday gift to me.
Get rid of Mary and pass the work off to Carla? What more could Ruth hope for on her birthday? Except a good date, maybe.
And thus almost as quickly as she appeared she’s been shooed away! So long Mary! See you again in *checks time between this appearance and Mary’s last”….six months! *Checks appearance between that one and the one before it for consistency*….a YEAR! Yeah that seems about right. Once every six months to a year is about all we can handle. Don’t want to get spoiled on a good thing!
Of course she is not going to eat Mary, it would really upset her stomach; Dina does care for her wellbeing when her loved ones are not in terrible peril and Mary is not yet terrible enough
Ruth should just let Dina chase Mary to another dorm; then whatever happens is out of her hands.
Dina shouldn’t eat Mary, her toxicity would give her food poisoning.
Hope springs eternal, Ruth.
Or a femur
If Dina devours Mary, the comic will need to have another time-skip to give everybody time to mourn off-panel.
Maybe a couple of days.
I thjnk you overestimate how much people like her. I imagine the mourning won’t take longer than the party they’d throw to celebrate. So a few hours at most.
It’ll take longer to set up the party than the mourning will last. I’m pretty sure it takes more than a couple minutes to set up for a party.
Especially with how big the party is gonna be. Like, we’re talking a full scale parade, “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” on a boombox provided by Meredith, the works
I mean it takes a while to cover up a murder
Not if the whole wing pitches in. Many hands make light work!
The time skip will be a month long, and the entire thing will be covered in a slipshine about how everyone was so happy Mary was gone they descended into an orgy that would make the Romans blush.
Walky’s haircut is blamed, and he is never allowed to grow it out again. Luc, Dorothy, and Amber are pregnant. With the same baby.
Luc? When’d the Enterprise captain get here?
Ruth and Carla’s colors look great together.
Ruth’s outfit is pretty cool, especially with her jacket and shirt complementing her hair.
Carla always looks great. That’s all I can say to that.
Carla is indeed eternally beautiful, worthy of worship.
Mary’s safe enough, provided she’s not made of cereal.
Ruth: “Dina, stop! If you get food poisoning from her awful garbage flesh, I’ll have to sign a bunch of medical forms and I’ll feel terrible! Why do you think I let her keep her femurs?”
I’d be entirely okay if they broke realism and Dina straight up killed her.
🙂
Even with the other deaths, it would be taking the comic in a rather darker direction. On the other hand, if Mary was simply never heard from again… maybe Dina will always have a supply of nuggets.
Carla is helping
…. of course Mary is also abelist.
In another context, I’d agree, but it’s not really an unreasonable reaction right now.
I mean, she probably is*, but she’s being attacked by someone pretending to be a dinosaur. It’s not really ableist not to take that in stride.
*IIRC, she complained that the roommate agreement prohibiting ableist language was lame.
Yeah, this situation is in fact unusual enough I could see even relatively reasonable bystanders calling Dina a weirdo for it. (People who know them both, much less so. No one likes Mary and this is pretty clearly Dina weaponizing her usual dinosaur impersonation to cut off Mary being hateful in a way that impacts DINA personally as well.)
Found the strip in question, and does have her referring to Roz as a ‘crazy socialist or something’ as well. (https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/05-media-rumble/dumb/ ) So yeah, pretty sure Mary still has some distinct ableist attitudes in addition to still using ableist language. (Which frankly is so common I’m not certain we’ll ever get a couple of them out of the cultural lexicon.) Wouldn’t be shocked if she also has one of those specific flavors of ableism where disabilities in general are things you ‘must have done something to cause,’ or that firm enough belief in God can overcome. There’s hints of it in ‘maybe Ruth would feel less terrible if she made better choices’ but that’s garden variety misunderstanding of depression and generalized bigotry. I’m talking ‘maybe if you believed in God harder you wouldn’t have cancer’ levels of offensive dreck.
It’s also quite possible and common to use ableist language without even thinking about and without still having the attitudes to go along with it. A lot of the language is old terms that we don’t even think of as referring to disabilities.
The very title of this comic could be considered ableist.
See also: “prohibiting ableist language was lame.”
yeah, though that was intentional. Reference to the strip, though I misremembered it.
Oh, yeah. I had a long potential aside about ableist language and how a couple are so commonplace and evolved just enough past their origins people don’t think about it. I’ve seen disability activists basically prioritize active slurs or insults versus ‘yeah I’m not challenging this one unless it’s used on a person, and honestly without pointing out the underlying attitude there it’s meaningless so how much time do I have today.’ (For instance: ‘Well what should I use when I want to call someone unintelligent?’ Ultimately the issue is ‘don’t use people’s perceived lack of intelligence as an insult’ and then it ends up getting drawn into a lengthy Thing probably including a digression into well what about if it’s a DECISION that’s more subjective anyway and once you get past that second quote I think it’s mostly a waste of time and effort on the whole.) Discarded because I have to put SOME limits on my long potential parentheticals or the comment completely gets away from me.
I’m not even sure the Dinasaurus’ diet is anything be cereals
Species is also known to eat pizza.
Mary might well be as poisonous physically as she is socially.
Nice work trying to stop a goose in frenzy, Ruth.
I enjoy how Carla narrates what’s going on around her. She did that before when she scored the free cookies.
I’m reminded of Matt Frewer’s time-traveling character Dr Rasmussen on ST:TNG when he confidently strolled out of a scene, stating, “LaForge remained below,” knowing it had already happened in his timeline.
Assuming Rutech doesn’t invent time travel, Carla has a future doing spoken-assist narration in theaters for the visually impaired.
I really appreciate Carla’s willingness to help. But I’m a little skeptical of her ability to fill the paper using the correct, cold, technical language instead of an accurate description of how Dina chewed Mary’s bones until they were white and shiny.
She is the product of engineers. I am sure Carla could be accurate and poetically descriptive while still adhering to the precision and cold correctness of technical linguistics.
I’m also not convinced it’s clear that correct and accurate act as opposing adhjectives for what I think is meant to illustrate the dichotomy of quantitative versus qualitative measurement of the trauma inflicted upon Mary’s body.
However I am sure that Carla would know to describe how Mary’s remains were masticated upon by an unknown assailant. After the period of mastication was complete, the remains consisted only of the skeletal structure. The remaining bones exhibited a high albedo and a correspondingly high degree of reflectivity.
See, Mary, that was your mistake. You spent too much time preparing for the Rapture and not enough preparing for the raptor.
There’s no like button, so please accept this emoji: 👍
👍Moar! 👍
No no no, Ruth, don’t stop her. We’re simply recreating Mary’s beliefs that man and dinosaur once walked the Earth together. Let’s see how it turns out for humans.
You can’t stop now, Dina. The paperwork is all filled out and everything.
I love helpful Carla. Let her do the paperwork. Win-Win.
And now Mary is legally dead
The end
Anyone else having serious Carla/Ruth vibes or is it just me?
And there was much rejoicing.
Oh to see someone be hompk’d to death
Let dina eat mary