Dumbing of Age

Dumbing of Age is a webcomic about college freshmen in the girls wing within a co-ed dorm at Indiana University, learning everything about life and themselves usually in the most difficult ways.  It stars a Christian homeschooled girl and her atheist best friend, and also a disgraced cheerleader, a misanthrope, a rebel, and a caped vigilante.

Content warnings: There are also themes of depression and parental abuse, some utterances of homophobia and transphobia, and an instance of attempted sexual assault and a depiction of attempted suicide, so please be mindful.

Dumbing of Age currently updates all seven days of the week, Monday through Sunday.

Quick FAQ for commenting and other stuff:

1) Dina’s name is pronounced “Dee-na.”

2) First comment attempts by people must be approved by me!  After that first approval, all your comments are automatically allowed.  So what I’m saying is, like, if you comment for the first time ever, and it doesn’t post to the page?  I just haven’t approved it yet.  This is not a conspiracy and you do not have to then attempt to submit increasingly irate comments about me and the sexual activities of my dead mother.  Also, If you change your email address or try to comment from a different IP address, this can mark you as a new not-yet-approved commenter.

3) Please be nice to other people!  You don’t have to agree with them, but don’t call them, like, morons, y’know?  Thankfully, this happens very very rarely because this isn’t YouTube, but I think I should establish this as a ground rule, regardless.  A good rule of thumb is that comments should be about the comic, not the other comment makers.  This doesn’t mean at all that interacting with other folks and having fun is off-limits, but if you wanna start a dissertation about whether or not other specific folks are awful, stick it on Tumblr.  If your post starts using words like “idiot” or “dumbass” or similar directed at other specific people in the comments, you’ve gone too far, and I’ll probably either erase that part of your post or the whole thing.  Sarcasm is often fine, but, you know, just don’t be overtly hostile.

4) Please don’t proselytize in the comments.  To this you may respond, “But you get to preach on your website!”  To which I nod and say, yes, you’ve figured it out.

5) Please please please don’t do “test” posts or “first”s.

6) Dumbing of Age is not set in any particular year.  I only say this because every time some pop culture reference shows up, someone is all “OH HEY HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE AREN’T WE STILL IN 2010???”  Nope, sorry, but we ain’t!  The comic moves slow, but it operates on comic book time.  This webcomic is not gradually going to become a period piece.  Just assume the strip is always set in whatever year it is right now.

7) This is important: Joyce is autobiographical.  Like Joyce, I believed in the complete inerrancy of the Bible — Earth is 6000 years old, Noah’s Ark, gay folks are evil, everything — and our family attended multiple churches of various persuasions, from Methodist to Baptist to Evangelical Free.  But not shallowly, no.  We spent years climbing up the social hierarchies of those mofos until we uncovered assholes and/or corruption and had to move on.  I went to youth group every week, attended every sermon (because there was more than one) every weekend, and went to church summer camp (at Anderson University).  My dad was routinely a Deacon.   At one point he even tried starting his own church.  Consider this information before goin’ off on me about how I don’t know anything about Christians or whatever.  And like Joyce, I was raised as a nondenominational fundamentalist (nonaligned Protestant), which means she’s not Catholic.  She doesn’t own a crucifix, she doesn’t believe in saints or have pictures of Jesus anywhere, and she thinks the Pope is more likely to be the Anti-Christ than someone she should listen to.  I say this only because folks really like to yell at her for all sorts of Catholic stuff she wouldn’t do.  Get your kinds of Christians sorted out!

8) It’s kind of offputting when a majority of posts can basically be reduced down to “woooo, take it off!!!!”  If this is an actual sexy scene being responded to, that’s one thing and totally okay, but if somebody’s just bein’ that somebody in an ordinary context, that’s a whole other thing.  Try to keep your objectification down to a minimum?  Sex is fun, but don’t make the comments section a solid wall of lecherous leering always and forever.  It can make other people uncomfortable.

9) If you have an urge to post something along the lines of “man where are all the straight people in this comic” or “ugh not another gay person GAWD,” just save us all some time and instead stop reading the comic forever and go away.  It’s not clever.  It’s not insightful.  It’s obnoxious and it’s insulting and it’s embarrassing and it makes you look like a tool.

10) I mean, I will delete comments.  Maybe it’s because I have a thin skin, maybe it’s because somebody’s not entirely interacting in good faith, maybe you dared me to and I’m spiteful, maybe it’s because you posted 16 slurs in a row.   But don’t worry, it is your god-given right to go start a blog or twitter account about how I suck.  Probably a much healthier way to interact with the strip than coming to yell at me in my house!  It’s cool, I understand, I have the same toxic relationship with 9 Chickweed Lane.

Here is your “Walky Performs A Sex” FAQ!  You can apply most of it to any of the other Slipshine comics I’ve produced.  tl;dr: no, you cannot buy my Slipshine comics separate from a Slipshine subscription.