The final round of Wack’d’s Best Dumbing Of Age Character poll is TODAY! Round 5 pits our two finalists, Dina and Sal! Velociraptor versus Pachycephalosaurus! WHO WILL REIGN SUPREME?!?!?
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The final round of Wack’d’s Best Dumbing Of Age Character poll is TODAY! Round 5 pits our two finalists, Dina and Sal! Velociraptor versus Pachycephalosaurus! WHO WILL REIGN SUPREME?!?!?
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wait, that’s all? I thought she was implicating Blaine somewhere in all that
…
maybe it’s a separate thread
(hindsight thread lololololol)
I mean, she had no idea that her dad was dead when she scheduled those tweets. She did implicate Blaine as Toedad’s accomplice earlier on.
I meant address and all that, wrote too fast oh well
Well, she did refer to Amber O’Malley’s dad in there.
Yeah I don’t know if she knows Blaine’s name.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/bluff/
She does.
She did. In one of her earlier tweets, she mentioned that “Amber O’Malley’s Dad” was involved in the kidnapping, which I think implicates Blain in all of this.
Way back in the 2nd tweet.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/thread-2/
And as far as regards an actual address: besides the in-comic reason of Becky assuming she wouldn’t be there long – it could be the same reason that I recall Willis stated for not giving room numbers for our Dumbing of Age characters. Namely, that these are real locations, and Willis doesn’t want untoward attention toward people actually living in those rooms.
I’m going to assume that it was included in-universe, just not shown for that reason. Becky does even say that she was including the address.
Where?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/bluff/
Ty! Hmm, I guess she could have been bluffing. Or, it was the room number thing. Though he could have just made up an address.
“Oh yeah BTW this all went down at 374 Woodlawn Drive in Bloomington. 21/20”
(We know the real kidnap house location but I just made this one up. If you want to know where it actually is, you’ll find the info in the comments for the May 31st comic. Rotunda did the sleuthing, look for their comments.)
Rotunda is amazing. I missed the posting the first time, but then saw this thread and went back to check it all against Google Maps. I was blown away, not only by Rotunda’s accuracy but by the tenacity shown in locating the house.
I live in DC, so walking up and down the same streets I see on the TV news all the time is Shrug City to me. But seeing the kidnap house on the Street Map was just nuts. The only other time I felt as giddy in encountering a cultural landmark was when I came up out of a NYC subway tunnel and mindlessly turned the next corner, only to find myself standing in front of the Ghostbuster firehouse.
Heh. I lived half a block away on North Moore Street when they made that movie. When their truck came barreling out of the firehouse to go to midtown, they were actually driving down Sixth Ave toward the Battery.
Yeah, that was a pretty useless string of tweets, but I guess it’s in keeping with the tone of this arc, where nothing makes any goddamn sense.
I realized yesterday what’s really going on here. This isn’t a call for help. These are her last words, in case no one ever hears from her again.
I think you’re right.
Yuuuuup.
Everyone here complaining that Becky didn’t include an address in her tweets has forgotten that she made these tweets very shortly after Amazi-Girl told her “no cops”, right?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/ninest/
The address would have brought the cops and she had no idea that they wouldn’t still be locked up at the time these tweets went out.
As is, these tweets would likely get police involved in someway.
Anyway, it looks like (based on Robin’s Twitter account) there are a couple more tweets with names and the address coming.
“very shortly after”
I mean, that was probably like 10 – 15 minutes of tweet-writing and release configuring. I know you mean “before she started tweeting”, but I feel the amount of “sitting typing while friends are in danger” has to be highlighted 😛
Also, not really seeing your point. The entire purpose of reserve-contacting authorities is in having an eventual backup. Kinda kills the point if, y’know, they don’t come to back you up? She vented a lot, emotionally, even covered things from a political/social perspective, but she really didn’t yield much attention to the, y’know, active kidnapping.
So, what’s your take on why it’s better to vent and distract from an emergency, than to publically present concrete details about said emergency and potentially get assistance? I mean, it’s definitely more in line with what the level of utility I expect from twitter comments, sure- but even so.. 😛
Well, putting aside the usual risks of bringing American police into things. At least the ones in this comic only work for the mob, so they’re probably a lot less corrupt than the ones I’m used to~ /notjoking
That said, we’re talking a public forum here, so there’s a good chance of pulling in media, which’d do a lot for helping cover the bases on both sides of the matter. Conversely, not having any clear backup- or even just impending distractions- is always a severe danger when dealing with risky situations involving other humans.
I don’t know about ‘complaining about it’, but it sure feels weird at a glance.
Typing?? Or talking stream of conscious Becky style while on the move?
Cause a lot of this sounds to me like she’s talking herself in doing the thing that is scary as fuck.
And no she doesn’t have phone right. But that doesn’t mean that she had to stash it at home.
I meant talking into a voice to text
“And no she doesn’t have phone right. But that doesn’t mean that she had to stash it at home.”
Good point.
“I meant talking into a voice to text”
Also maybe a good point? I’m not really familiar with newer phone features, so not sure if that’s really to the point where it can work with something like smoothly creating 20 consecutive tweets with minimal effort.
Appreciate you broadening my perspective. 🙂
I’m assuming she tweeted on the move and then ditched the phone. And she’s pretty much leaving testimony, but the last thing she wants is to send the cops to storm the house while she thinks her friends are still in there. She trusts Amazi-girl to get them out. Then the police can get involved.
What would happen if you dropped a phone into a postbox? Would the USPS check for the address (assuming it was unlocked) and deliver it?
If you have a shipping label on it, they’d mail it [though you’re supposed to remove batteries beforehand, as it’s a danger due to heat and impact risks]. USPS also wouldn’t guarantee the phone would arrive safely, so you’d be pretty screwed popping it in without protective packaging.
But no, USPS wouldn’t apply labeling to it. That just isn’t a thing they do, for any circumstance (though, conversely, if you have the right labeling, you can ship off anything they haven’t explicitly prohibited or restricted. Really, some of the things you can ship are amazing, go give Google a search).
As far as opening the phone up, they wouldn’t check address (and is that even a thing people put into their phones nowadays? Heck, I wouldn’t even think to look for that, and I don’t imagine I’m alone in that regard), but maybe you’d get lucky and they’d make a call to try and find the owner of the phone. If not, I guess your next best hope is that the local office has a “lost and found” box, and that the person who picked up the phone bothered to deliver the phone to it.
Still not inherently rational, but definitely in line with what I’d expect of Becky given her established character. So I’m not really in line with your initial post, as it applies more broadly [ie, “considering the ideal approach for a rational person”], but I definitely’ll yield it as making prefect sense for Becky.
Hi
Cool shot….hope they don’t die….well hope one of them doesn’t die.
Fuck that, I hope they are all excused from the exams!
I hope only Blaine dies, for all that he had done to Ross (and the youngsters.)
I hope neither of them die. Yet.
Let the Gramps Mafia have their way with whatever’s left of Blaine after Amber’s finished with him.
Amber gets another 70-80 DoA years.
So the comic will run until when, 3000 AD?
And cyber-willis will be churning out comics and suffering from robo-butts disease
Tbf I think Jeph Jacques had the robo-butts-disease market pretty well cornered
The year is 3006 AD. Centuries of horrific war have split the Earth into two bitterly opposed factions: the Dumbites believe their folklore built around college superheroes is true, the Walkyans believe in a supernatural alien origin. Both see the other as heretics.
One remaining independent rebel group is preparing to send their last healthy member back through time to correct the record, heal the schism, and prevent untold suffering.
Her name… is Ana.
[Music swells, roll movie title sequence]
Gaaaaahd I cannot wait to see his face when he finally understands that his daughter really did beat beans out of him.
Either he’ll refuse to believe right to the end, or nobody will believe him because he sounds stark raving mad
Of course he’ll never understand what it means that he got the beans beaten out of him by the Amber alter, rather than the alter whose job is beating the beans out of people.
He’s likely never going to, even with Amber’s face floating right in front of him. If the Walkyverse’s have anything in common, it’s that Amber never gets the closure she deserves, dammit!
Anybody who waits for, or depends on, external feedback for closure, will rarely get it. Blaine is the sort who would refuse to give acknowledgement purely out of abusive spite.
Amber/AG needs to find her closure through having turned from Blaines gaslighting and BS. She has to the one to make him not have power over her. He certainly will never give it up.
But for us, that entrance is AMAZING!
I think the word ‘Dad’ has just become another cuss word for Amber, at this point.
“That Dad-fucking, Dad-sniffing, Dad of a Dad!”
Mother dadding
“Dad it! The Dadding Dadder’s Dadded.”
Maybe not as good as “fuck”, but it’s kind of got a ring to it.
Daddaddit! I got dadded like a dad today, when dealing with my dad-dadding boss, that daddified son-of-a-dad. -.-
I like how the tags just include Amber, even though she’s in Amazi-girl mode.
I don’t know any other webcomic that can make me feel emotions just from a tag.
Holy crap maybe I SHOULD start paying attention to the tags that’s amazing
Or Amber.
I think after yesterday’s installment, Amber and A-Girl may just be ‘ONE’ at this point.
IIRC, Cerb has noted in her past analyses that full integration (as in, “re-merging” of the alters) is neither common nor recommended, so I don’t think that’s what happened. Besides, we’ve seen Amber put on the Voice before.
It doesn’t rule out Amber and Amazi-Girl working together in concert, however.
Now I’m picturing them as partnered pilots from Pacific Rim.
That’s not a terrible way to think about it.
Kinda wish she had her own ‘voice’ color then to show the progress.
In-comic, it’s been noted that the blue speech bubbles are basically the sound of Amber/Amazi-Girl doing their best Christian Bale Batman impression.
This. It’s a disguise/cool-factor thing both alters use at will.
I’ve always assumed Amazi-Girl ‘nor,ally’ has Amber’s natural voice (since they share a larynx), but maybe uses different inflection and emphasis.
“This is not recommended” is basically Amber’s motto, so…
Well, from what I recall of what she said (memory could be faulty of course), the chief reason “reintegration” is not recommended is because it seldom ever works and usually instead results in the alters growing further apart – if not outright bringing some new ones into existence…
Hence, cooperation being the better alternative.
No, but they’ve come to terms.
Amber’s working with that louse, Roger Smith?! :O
(I made that joke in my head BEFORE I clicked the link and saw you were referencing the same thing)
She has her cheek blushes here, which is indicative of Amber mode.
SAME T_T
Cheek blushes are there, Amber’s driving.
Becky’s tagged because the tweets are her words, but Robin isn’t even though the Twitter avatar is her picture. That’s consistent for finding characters by their tags, but still a little confusing.
I guess it’s time for a…
…Throwdown.
I’m hoping more for a throwOUT, but Paramount might take issue with that bit of Raiders reenactment. (sorry if the Indiana Jones gag has been thrown around a lot lately, I haven’t checked the comments in a week or more)
I’ve got the popcorn.
Ah, the irony of that last post.
So unless one of those tweets was truncated in such a way as to still make visual sense in the excerpt we saw (not impossible given Twitter’s newer 240-character limit), did she just not identify Blaine by name anywhere in that thread?
She did not name Blaine, but did say that Amber O’Malley’s dad was her dad’s accomplice earlier.
Tweet #2: “Amber the Hamster O’Malley’s Dad” … anyone should be able to figure that one out with next to no investigation needed.
She may not even know his actual first name … so that’s as close as she could get to identifying him.
She knows his first name.
She knows it now. She may not have known it when she set up the tweet. (Maybe she only learned Blaine’s first name when she got to the house.)
she did ID amber (“the hamster” o’malley) and mentioned her father’s involvement. Anyone can dig up that Blaine is his name.
Eat sole food, dickweed.
No heel deserved it more.
Talk about a face-heel turn.
Your comment seems laced with bitterness.
To the alt text:
I’m sure Amber wants to ensure Blaine doesn’t have a nice trip and won’t be back next fall
*blows out the speakers on the van’s radio*
OOPS.
Shouldn’t we be playing “Show Yourself” from Frozen 2, given the alt-text?
I saw that, too. Of course, I’m a Frozen nut. Or more accurately, an Elsa nut.
Consider also, in the context of Amber, “You are the one you’ve been waiting for all of your life.”
Now she needs to do the next right thing.
Right in Blaine’s right ribs.
She was shakin’
Snappin’ her fingers?
She was movin’ round and round
That girl was shakin’ !
There she was just a-walkin’ down the street,
singin’ “Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do”
Swingin’ from her fingers and stompin ‘ with her feet,
singin’ “Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do”
She clocked him, (clocked him), in his jaw (in his jaw)
She clocked him in his jaw and he died a little more.
Live with integrity.
No regrets.
Kick Blaine in the face with integrity.
No regrets.
If he’d looked before turning, he would have seen her in the mirror.
The mirrors don’t show stuff on top of the van…
Look at panel 1 again.
True, but that is the action of s rational person. Blaine is so far removed he could every cop chasing him and would insist they’re an escort.
Furthermore, you don’t need to look to your right to make a right turn from the right lane. Especially if you don’t care about hitting pedestrians.
Is the hovertext a Pixies reference? It kinda reads like a parody of the song “Hey”, but not quite. Is it something else?
After a bit of googling, apparently it’s a reference to Frozen. Well, I though I was maybe getting a reference… but no.
I thought it was a basketball reference with yeet refering to a violent throwing or snapping motion.
It’s a reference to Frozen II. “Show yourself, I’m dying to meet you.”
Pappa can you hear me..?
No, wait… that’s yentl…
Never mind…
Tommy can you hear me?
No, wait, that’s the Who…
Looks like the two personalities are merged now.
At least they’re working together.
No. That’s Amber. Integration is not the be-all, end all of every system’s recovery.
Say goodbye to your teeth, Blaine Bastard.
The rest of, you mean.
Devil-Dad will be enjoying applesauce for life, if he lives.
Why can’t you be nicer to applesauce.
Two things never happened after that day. Amazi-girl and Amber never were seperate again and Blaine never walked again. They sent him to a hospital prison. Last I heard he’s still having all his meals through a straw.
youve just been booted!
Alters… unite to form Superion! I mean Amazi Girl!
I remember that anime…
I hope Joyce is at the other side of the van giving Blaine Bastard a chokehold of death.
Or even better, Sal.
She’s in the back, and there’s a solid partition wall between the cargo area and the front seats.
Lay on the floor with your back against the partition, Joyce! You’ve got no restraints so you need to spread any impact forces out as much as possible.
Oh good, now I can stop ignoring the completely unrelated tweets.
Unrelated? Or ‘unintended’ commentary?
Unrelated, irrelevant, whatever word works. She threatened a bunch of tweets that would expose Blaine and then did all this rambling nonsense that basically boils down to “My friend got kidnapped and that’s bad”. She provided no location, no names, not even a call to action.
It’s just nothing, and if you read these last few strips without the tweets, they’re actually improved by their removal due to lack of relevance.
agreed, they’re super distracting and I don’t think they add to the action
She didn’t threaten. She told him she’d already done it.
And she did identify the culprits.
No, she said her dad and Amber’s dad kidnapped Joyce.
Now, outside of the main cast, do you really think literally anyone knows who those people are?
Hell, the main cast can’t even recognize Blaine because of his stupid-ass domino mask.
She gave her name and identified her father as the man who came to campus with a gun just a couple of weeks ago, and Robin has been using that as part of her campaign strategy. Who her dad is has been made quite clear repeatedly. Not so sure of Amber’s dad, but there were some tweets skipped during the arc that probably had Blaine’s name as well as the address of the house.
No, I don’t think there were any tweets skipped. They are noted, in order, as 1/?, 2/?, and so on. It’s only the last one (marked 20/20) that would indicate she’s at the end of her Tweetstorm.
Gosh, there’s no way law enforcement could figure out who Becky’s dad is.
Or “Amber O’Malley’s dad”, for that matter.
Bold of you to assume Willis would let law enforcement do literally anything here.
“Weird how good a decision that was, considering he made it a good while ago.”
There we go, that’s where this comment was meant to be.
I said it upthread and I’ll repost here. This isn’t a call for help. These are her last words, in case no one ever hears from her again.
Dark, I can’t help thinking you’re missing something.
Won’t lie. Been trying to find a point for this whole arc pretty much since it started.
Everyone else seems to have figured it out. I got nothing.
Weird how good a decision that was, considering he made it a good while ago.
Care to explain then, the point of this arc?
Because I can’t think of any reason for it to exist, other than to give us completely convoluted and painful to read superhero bullshit, with a layering of “religion bad!” sprinkled around the edges.
Huh. I somehow attached that comment in the wrong place.
Honestly it’s weird that you’ve written a retort instead of making fun of me for writing in tongues.
And it’s… part of the story? It is a story? I don’t know what a “point” would look like.
They’re pretty related. Maybe you didn’t notice because you were ignoring them.
They are posting in real time, giving a sense of the pace of the events in the van.
The police may arrive whilst all this occurs, leaving us to see only the aftermath…
At least that’s how it seems to me…
The posts were pre-made. Bringing the cops was not the intent. They had already decided the cops were a bad idea. This is kind of witness testimony in case she’s not around later.
Yeah. The way the real world shook out while this plot was ongoing was… interesting.
Is the van heading for Blowjob Cat? I’m gonna cry if all this ends with Blowjob Cat being a casualty of war.
It’ll be a nice way for Devil-Dad to meet his fate in the mouth of Blowjob cat…on account of he is a dick.
First panel: Wide shot of the crash site in front of the elementary school, with Blaine’s legs dangling out of BJC’s mouth.
Change camera angles to Amber and Joyce for the second panel.
Middle panel, their conversation is interrupted by an audible “P’TOOEY”. Preferably in drippy blob letters.
Second to last panel we cut back to a dazed Blaine sitting on the ground in front of an unscathed BJC.
Last panel we cut back to the disgusted, confused looks on the girls’ faces.
In the first panel today Blaine is making a right-hand turn off Woodlawn onto Atwater Avenue, which is a one-way going east. Blowjob Cat is located at Fairview School at the corner of W 7th and N Rogers, and is WEST of the main campus.
Ah, someone else checked before me. Uninteresting note, they just passed a Subway.
Ducks eat for free at Subway!
Your link got borked and takes us back to this page
Dangit, that’s twice this week.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yamc6Y7dgac
This might be weird to say, but a small part of me is worried about Danny. Now I don’t expect it to happen, but considering things from the Walkyverse, and how much him dying would fuck Amber up, part of me fears that Danny is going to shove Ruth out of the way and die in her place. As some sort of cosmic balancing.
To the people saying “wait, Blaine hasn’t been explicitly named??!” – would Becky necessarily have known his first name? Or would he have been “Mr O’Malley (another jerk dad)” to her? I know she calls him by his full name here but she could have learnt it since scheduling the tweets…
I’m sorry but it would be fucking amazing if Blaine took his mask off and it turned out to actually be Carol.
I agree, gonna need this to happen.
And she would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids.
Oh hey, the alt-text is a reference to the best song in the movie. Good.
Man, now i really want to know what her voice sounds like. If it’s like the difference between Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne/Batman voices, then now all i can hear is Batman gravely spitting out “Hey Dad!”
The blue speech bubbles have explicitly been compared to Christian Bale’s Batman voice in-comic in the past, so that’s something.
…. but what if you don’t know what Christian Bale’s Batman voice is supposed to sound like?
So, we’ve got like two weeks of fight.
Even if Amber/AG takes off her mask, Blaine will say any desperate thing to feel ashamed for her, so it is better if that surprise attacks damages his throat and he can’t speak ever again. That would be a blessing.
As much as I admire a good boot to the head, distracted driving can have unintended consequences.
Especially noting her stated reason for wanting to handle this quickly.
Based on the first panel his driving is already reckless enough that ending it fast is more important.
Point.
No Regrets Senses tingling.
I’m not using Twitter. Is there still a twitter account for doa out there with these actual tweets?
Well there’s the feed on the right…
… and there’s the real twitter feeds of several characters, found on this page.
Becky doesn’t have one listed. Neither does Robin. But @repdesanto does exist and appears to be the (fictional) Desanto account. You can even see some of what Becky posted there before she got hired, but this twitter thread isn’t there. Yet.
… holy carp Mike posted something on Twitter the morning after his “death”. Had anyone else noticed that?
Curse you html. This page: https://www.dumbingofage.com/twitter/
He is risen indeed!
Because your mom is there.
And she has a nickel.
I had forgotten I was following Robin’s Twitter. I guess I’ll see a tweetstorm from her account PDQ if that thread gets posted.
It’s all there (and more!) now.
Address given in the tweet is 1322 W. Lincoln Street.
Bloomington has a N. Lincoln and S. Lincoln, but no W. Lincoln.
So I guess the whole “no using peoples’ addresses” policy still holds.
Shame about those ribs.
Real shame.
“save my friends, even if I have to face my bigoted dad. 2020”
Holy shit.
Dave Willis
Thanks for the Becky running commentary, it fit the comic ‘in universe’ and the real world politics at the same time. Pretty smooth reading of the future three months out.
Can you tell me what the winning powerball number will be next week?
Thx!
God I love Amber.
Best AG panel ever.
May the 2020s have the peace after the storm.
Oof. Right in Blaine’s sore ribs. He’s gonna die. Is AmaziGirl’s belt always that loose?
Welp, looks like the climactic fisticuffs have started!
yeet yeet yeet yeet
it’s time to
ye-ye-ye-yeet (yourself, feet first, at your dad)
“Kraslam” 😀
Hmm I’m not sure hitting the driver of a speeding car in the ribs is a particularly smart thing to do. The probability of crashing just increased dramatically. And the count of “people wearing a seat belt” is somewhere between 0 and 1.
Where Amber and Mazie are, emotionally speaking, probably doesn’t much allow for rational thinking. They want the van stopped so that Joyce can get away and crashing it into a wall or utility pole is a good enough means as any.
No, I don’t think that their personal survival is currently an issue in their minds.
I mean, Joyce’s chances when she’s unsecured in the back of a crashing van aren’t great, realistically speaking. A lot of room back there to go flying and slam into metal walls. If that van gets into a violent crash the Joyce is the one worst chances of walking away right now.
And that’s not even getting into the chances of a high speed out of control van hitting a bystander, like it already almost does in panel 1.
Amber climbing along the van and jumping in the window to kick Blaine is making me think of the Indiana Jones truck chase scene.
Amber: is a badass
Blaine: literal shocked pikachu face
I was reading that as the same face Walky has made in the past (I’m forgetting exactly when), but you’re right, it really, really is the ol’ S.P.F..
Pika Pow!
Come on and SLAM, and welcome to the KRAS
Ohhh I hope she hits the breaks and pulls the keys out of the ignition or this might end BADLY for Joyce… and them too
I hope they are not on a bridge of the edge of something. But that was an awesome kick
I think I’ve found my all time fave face in all of DoA in panel two. Bravo Mr. Willis. Bravo.
Ah. Panel 3. Miscounted. Screen’s kinda dark at work 😛
Fittingly his dot eyes make him resemble the surprise emoticon.
You’re in jail
Hello dad you’re in jail
You’re in jail
Jail
I LOVE Amber more and more every day.
I am assuming this vehicle doesn’t have power door locks, because they usually lock automatically once the vehicle starts moving. And again, I am impressed with her grip, because there is nothing on the roof of that van to hold onto.
They didn’t always. That’s a relatively recent feature.
It looks like a relatively recent van.
Off the top of my head, I would say at least 10 years, not relatively recent in my opinion.
Haiku
Amazi-girl has
Kicked her father in the ribs
Crumpling the cage
Very satisfying last two panels.
The raw core strength it takes to do the flip through the car window feet first trick is inSANE when does she find the time to work out?!?