DUMBING OF AGE BOOK 11 KICKSTARTER UPDATE
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Sarah: *now regrets not saying, “new social life, who dis”*
if the comic is over, can we have the Second Dumbing of Christ
How on Earth do you remember comments from 8 years ago? I can’t remember what happened in the comic a week ago.
Are you a god?
Ana exists outside of time. How do you think they always post first? They’ve already posted tomorrow, next week, and three million years ago.
Makes sense. It is after all in the name.
Aha? Yes, she is. At least, she got omnipresence.
Google remembers EVERYTHING
Looks like we have an encounter on our hands!
I just wanna see one of them roast Raidah like a sausage right here and now!!! 😠
*plays “Elite Gym Battle” from Pokemon Kanto CD on hacked muzak*
Raidah is being needlessly cruel, but I understand her dislike of Joyce and Sarah (they did sorta try to steal her boyfriend – I think its been a while since I read that part of the comic).
PS. I have returned and finally figured out how to change my Avatar picture.
Did sorta try and succeed.
I think “stole your boyfriend” and “Accidentally convinced your boyfriend that You’re really not the one for him while simultaneously ruining any chance of dating him themselves” are legally distinct.
The former was Sarah’s plan, the latter was Joyce’s execution of said plan.
The funny part of their plan was how effective it was when Joyce wasn’t even trying. She got distracted by the baby then was unable to correct Harrison’s mistake.
Jacob unknowingly laid the groundwork by constantly gushing about Joyce and managing to avoid even the smallest detail about his girlfriend.
Did Raidah know anything about Sarah’s plan? She might be assuming it just because Joyce was Sarah’s friend, I suppose.
I think Walky roasted all of them pretty well with “Sonic the Hedgehog”.
That’s why nobody’s addressing him. They’re all “shit, I can’t match that level of wit, better aim for an easier match-up”.
Wit? Pssh. More like, “He’s clearly the village idiot. Just ignore him.”
Maybe Joyce’s getting a comic and her bad state are connected.
She’s not suffering from feminine issues, she’s going through the early stages of metamorphosis. Soon she will form a cocoon, go into a deep slumber, and emerge as the next form of a comic strip creator.
Joyce: Internet Pornlord.
And then KUTV in Salt Lake City will call her a satirist who is “a little bit edgy.”
Wait, Willis was on KUTV?
Yeah! She will undergoe a Shinka Hentai!!! ✌️😈
That’s a weird statement even from Raidah. There’s not much bizarre about being happy you have a comic published.
I mean she has very valid reasons for not liking Joyce, it shows impressive restraint on Raidah’s part that she’s only being passive aggressive right now
I mean she does but she doesn’t dislike Joyce for those reasons. She dislikes Joyce for who she is.
And this is based on…?
I guess this? I dunno, I feel like Raidah has pretty valid reasons to dislike Joyce and Sarah. Doesn’t make her any less of an asshole, but she does have a Casus Belli here.
Probably her perception of Joyce as a Christian conservative from earlier in the comic, not everyone is going to be immediately aware of someone else’s character development
Raidah doesn’t dislike Joyce because she’s a fundamentalist Christian. She dislikes her because she views her as an intellectual and social inferior. Which I think is a very different beast. Raidah’s every other statement is basically snobbery against everyone else. Its entirely okay to dislike characters who exist to basically be the Rich Mean GalTM.
Raidah called Joyce “MAGA-ass”, so I’d definitely say that the fundamentalist Christianity is part of it—consider that Raidah herself is Muslim.
The context should also be kept in mind: Raidah called Joyce “MAGA-ass” when Jacob was breaking up with her because Joyce had managed to drive enough of a wedge in their relationship that he knew that he was being unfaithful and needed to do right by Raidah.
I think she’s allowed to be a bit pissy in that circumstance.
I think it’s fair to say that a Muslim woman might have reasons to dislike someone she perceives as an evangelical christian conservative that go beyond typical mean girl shit. Especially if that person successfully sabotaged a previous romantic relationship.
I’m inclined to think she mostly hates Joyce because she’s of a perceived lower social class. Raidah being the Draco Malfoy to Joyce’s Weasley.
That’s a really interesting comparison given the books are British; the Weasleys are in the same social class as the Malfoys, explicitly. The Malfoys think they’re better than the Weasleys because of politics and racism primarily, though making fun of them for being on hard times is a thing.
Nah, Raidah doesn’t hate Joyce for being a perceived lower social class.
She pities her for it. Her attitude towards Joyce before Jacob broke things off was never hatred, it was bemused condescension, after all, she had no issue being around and trading snipes with Joyce, because she felt that there was nothing Joyce could do to keep up.
That changed.
(for the record: this is absolutely a way that Raidah’s an asshole. She’s an asshole in a lot of ways, but people tend to see her being in asshole in all the ways, and that’s… rarely been supported by the comic)
@WRaithy2773: She had no issue being around Joyce and trading snipes because that was defending her territory. All of it aimed at putting Joyce down to limit the risk of losing Jacob to her. She played it off as if Joyce couldn’t keep up, but she was worried.
Raidah deserves all the bad things, she shouldn’t have been an asshole to Dina
I dunno, not much passive about “you look like shit”.
Add another vote for taking the passive out of passive aggressive.
Also, does Joyce look like shit? I know there’s been a thing or two going on, but really?
Not in their context, since Raidah isn’t remotely sympathetic, but Joyce is obviously sick, so the “you look like shit” isn’t coming out of nowhere or even necessarily hostile. Except it’s Raidah, so it is hostile.
She might have valid reasons, but saying someone looks like shit isn’t passive aggressive, it’s just normal aggressive
I think its more the “Joyce looks like shit” situation right now that she’s talking about. Raidah’s no doubt holding a hell of a grudge against her, for entirely understandable reasons, hence the half-hearted way she said it.
Well she’s also implying that ‘being a cartoonist’ is a medical condition that requires treatment, but yes, mainly building on the fact that Joyce very obviously should talk to a doctor about this.
Wait. Are you trying to imply that being a cartoonist isn’t a medical condition that requires treatment?
She views comics as something that you shouldn’t concern yourself with. Like, having known people like Raidah, they legitimately see “child activities” as a sign of mental illness.
🔥 👿 🔥
I ought to send my parasite spores straight into that insolent, repugnant brain of hers.
Too bad I’m lazy.
Remember that Raidah is kind of a classist, so for someone like her , being a comic artist must be some of the lowest of the low.
Do you wanna think about something other than what a dick Raidah is being? 😤
Do you wanna win a free HD art commission that’s as erotic as you want it to be? 😏
Do you want to just help me make a DOA game anyway?
If you or anyone you know has experience in modding 3D models in Blender, don’t hesitate to reply!!! If you could help me this way, I’d be SO GRATEFUL!!!
I don’t know what to say here honestly. I don’t want to hate Raidah but she is not aging well.
Serious question: Why don’t you want to hate Raidah?
I know you didn’t ask me but personally I don’t like hating people. I don’t derive pleasure from it. I derive displeasure from it. If I can help it I’d prefer to not hate anyone, fictional or not.
Well if you have hatred anyway, at least you can turn it into something. Like turning lemons into lemonade!
It’s what Willis does with hate-reading 9CL.
I don’t know what some people get out of hate-reading, myself. I just find it emotionally draining.
There are certain kinds of badness that are deeply entertaining, and also sort of mesmerizing, in their badness – if I watch Riverdale I’m not expecting it to be a GOOD show, but I am expecting whatever absolute bullshit the writers have come up with this season to be so completely OUT THERE I walk away feeling like this was a solid use of my time. (I don’t actually watch Riverdale. But I AM watching Birdie Wing: Golf Girls Story this season, and it is definitely the kind of show you start watching on a whim and then cannot look away from because the Golf Crime Syndicate ISN’T the most ridiculous thing here, somehow.)
And sometimes it’s an elaborate form of self-harm and obsession.
I could not tell you which one 9 Chickweed Lane is for myself, much less Willis.
I had to look up “hate reading.” And I agree: why bother. Go do something that feels good. Read a book.
you can learn from what you hate. Notably what not to do, and how not to do it unwillingly.
You realize that the term hate reading is often talking about books, right?
I hate-read out of a sense of morbid curiosity to see how bad it gets and a feeling of obligation that I have to give a book a fair chance before giving it a bad goodreads review.
I imagine Hate-reading is entertaining for the same kind of people who love to watch Bojack Horseman and find it entertaining. or similiar shows that just show suffering ,small bits of hope that get squashed and than alot more Suffering.
Raidah’s not a person, tho, she’s a character. I’m perfectly fine hating Raidah in the same way I hate Sasuke from Naruto, except less. He is the worst, and will always be the worst.
I don’t think she’s a terrible person. I used to enjoy disliking her, but a lot of the comment section has slowly changed my mind on her. Joyce and Sarah have done their share of dirt against her completely sabotaging her relationship with Jacob. That’s not right. I don’t know how invested in Jacob she was and maybe them splitting was ultimately for the best, but it was still an effed up thing to do.
Some of the commenters seem to side with Raidah, saying that she’s justified and even a victim of Joyce and Sarah and maybe that’s true, but then she says stuff like this and it makes me question everything, but much like my former Walky hate, I don’t like trashing on characters people enjoy.
I think literally everyone agrees that Raidah is an asshole, even the people who defend her. Hell, Raidah probably agrees.
Right, she’s perfectly aware she’s a Girl Boss, to grab a meme-y way of putting it.
She is a girlboss
She is gate keeping
She is slay queening
She is doing it in the name of Allah of course
But she is doing girlboss shit
Kinda fun to go back and read the comments and listen to all the terrible things some people thought Raidah was going to do in response to the breakup.
Cut her some slack. It hasn’t been an entire semester yet.
She was definitely the wronged party in the Jacob issue.
Given the going out of her way to harass Sarah, she was definitely in the wrong there. (Even if she has concrete evidence Dana being sent home was actively harmful to Dana – and I don’t think she does – the way you make sure your ex-friend knows she fucked up is NOT ‘harass her in the cafeteria like a petty middle schooler repeatedly, nine months later, with maybe one veiled comment about the actual issue.’)
There’s also clearly some elitism Raidah’s got going on (yesterday’s strip in particular… there’s a reason I skipped entirely, though not unexpected given her reactions to Harrison and hearing Joyce wanted to be a teacher,) and some casual ableism though much of the cast also deals with that. Regardless of all other conflicts, a lot to unpack there.
But Raidah’s also like, nineteen or twenty. If prompted, I think she’s just as capable of growth as anyone else in the cast… though I don’t give her great odds at the moment, when she thinks she’s so much more mature than most freshmen for being a whole year older. Unlike Jennifer, I’m not AS certain it’s about to come crashing down on Raidah prompting some self-reflection. (Mainly because to our knowledge, Raidah’s not dating a mobster’s grandkid and doesn’t have a pattern of reinvention to avoid her problems.) But seeing that disaster whenever it DOES go down might make Raidah question herself as well, since Jennifer and Asher seemed so put-together. Or maybe not. Who knows.
I don’t have much sympathy for Raidah in the Jacob situation. She latched onto him for purposes of social climbing and didn’t give one furry rat’s ass about him as a person.
Eh, while yesterday’s comic was suggestive, we didn’t see enough of their relationship for me to say conclusively she didn’t care AT ALL about Jacob beyond status and competition with Joyce. We got VERY brief glimpses, and they were dating for like a month.
But also, just because you’re dating someone for The Wrong Reasons doesn’t mean other people are justified in knowingly trying to break your relationship up to get back at you because they dislike you personally (Sarah) or do things like, I dunno. Lie to your datefriend’s older brother that THEY are dating them out of jealousy and also somewhat furthering the previous revenge plan (Joyce.) Jacob is not The Bachelor, thank god, and Joyce’s decisionmaking there was just… profoundly terrible. Which to her credit I think she realized pretty quickly.
You could make an argument that Raidah was the wronged party, but if so she was wronged by Jacob, not Joyce or Sarah. People can agree to belong to each other, we call it marriage. Beyond that, people are not possessions. People can have understandings and violating such an understanding can be wrong. Making a move on someone a friend has feelings for is being a bad friend. Joyce and Raidah were never friends. You can’t steal what isn’t owned. Joyce may have done a number of things that were wrong, but flirting with Jacob wasn’t one of them. If Raidah goes after Walky, Lucy has every reason to be unhappy about it, but it isn’t wrong. To quote an old saying, all is fair in love or war.
Jacob did not belong to Raidah. Walky does not belong to Lucy.
There is much in what you say.
Yeah, we went through this a whole bunch of times during that arc and I eventually accepted that there’s just a fundamental gap in understanding here that neither side can bridge.
I do believe that trying to break up a couple in order to get one of them for yourself is wrong. That has nothing to do with ownership or people being possessions.
If you believe that the one you are trying to “get” will be happier and you don’t consider it a form of theft, then on what basis do you consider it wrong. From whence comes the wrongness?
It’s massively disrespectful to both people in the relationship. It’s disrespectful to the person you want to be with, because you’re essentially making the point that they chose wrongly and should have chosen better. It’s disrespectful to their partner because you are disregarding their feelings and trying to make the object of your affection do something that will hurt them.
No, all’s not fair in love and war. Certainly not since the Geneva convention anyway 😛
IMO, it’s wrong to try to get with someone in a relationship. Unless it’s an abusive or otherwise toxic relationship, you should respect their choice to be with the partner(s) they’ve chosen. And while you may not be friends with their partner, their partner is still a person with feelings and it’s a shitty thing to do to try to get their partner to cheat on them, especially if you’re doing it to hurt them by deliberately sabotaging their relationship (which is what Joyce was trying to do, this was not an accident).
As I said, there’s a fundamental chasm here. Towards the end of that arc, I gave up trying to bridge it.
I just wanna give my perspective as someone in raidahs hypothetical peer group. Raidah is just, the stereotype of a law major at my school. Down to the elitism bc law is the most insanely expensive faculty except maybe med. So if you get in you’re either mad smart or upper crust. On top of that like half my country is just built on the concept of “links” and hiring people you know as a favor, so every student is obsessed with “networking” in an uncomfortable way imo. So Raidah is basically like, the worst type of person at my university. The type of person you’d have a brief conversation with, get condescended to when you say you’re majoring in anything but law, med, or engineering, and then when she’s gone turn to your friends like “fucking law students man…”
So that’s basically how i permanently view her. Just, an annoying rich social climbing law student who you try to avoid (luckily here the law students are pretty insular). It makes it hard to sympathize
Perhaps I just like good villains. Villians with plausible motivation. Like human being.
Perhaps I just adore mean girls, that goes beyond ”the cute and useless women” I’ve used to see in TV.
Or just, Raydah’s eyebrows.
I don’t see how this is any worse than her previous behavior. She’s always been a bongo.
It kinda feels worse because no one’s fighting back. In other appearances, it’s a fairly even exchange and even if someone comes off worse, both sides were throwing jabs at each other. When onay one is being mean and the other apparently just wants to get on with their day, the one being mean seems worse.
Like I mentioned in a post in the lower section of the comments I don’t hate her, I just find her annoying at times.
Raidah has given me no good reasons to like her, and in pretty much every appearance so far she keeps giving me more reasons to dislike her. I don’t think there’s anything wrong about hating a character who acts like Raidah does.
https://imgur.com/a/AAfrqOG (NSFW)
New day. New page.
Lotta Suk.
Looking good, can’t wait to see them all in a row. Great work Yotomoe.
🤣🤣🤣
MARVELOUSLY NAUGHTY!!!
Usually your comics are so good, but that one kind of suks.
Hehehe
You could even say it blows
You seem to have gone straight from 10 to 12.
I noticed that too, but it seems to just be a typo since the full version is down below and there does not appear to be any missing pages.
i finally caught up with this and
this is Extremely good and the way you draw her body type is uh.
it’s hot.
How do we see from the start?
https://imgur.com/a/9Ob1cy3
Just for you.
Noice.
hooray, boyparts! <3
Boffo!
Watch Raidah be the one to tell Joyce that her symptoms are worth going to a doctor for.
Wouldn’t shock me. One part just being someone newly exposed to this with a different point of view and isn’t just treating it like the same old, same old.
And one part her not caring about sparing Joyce’s feelings to bring attention to it, because she’s got that grudge about what happened with Jacob going on.
I think it’s more likely Billie will but I could see Raidah doing it
Raidah’s brain headline: Heartbreaking: One of Your Archnemeses Clearly Has a Serious Medical Issue, And You Feel Duty-Bound to Tell Them.
Speaking of which, forgetting about Raidah for a sec,
How’ve you been Regalli? Nice to see you here as always!!!
BTW in case you haven’t heard, I just got an ADHD diagnosis!!! 😁
*plays “Mysterious Girl in Labyrinth” from Pokemon Heroes CD on hacked muzak*
Eh. I try not to use the comments section as a totally generalized forum, or at least am trying not to right now, and right now in particular there’s a lot going on. Not all bad, but way more personal details than I’d want to go into.
Congrats on your diagnosis! Having the things you already know on paper can be quite freeing. (As can ‘hey, there’s treatments that are an option here.’)
Thanks Regalli! Glad to know you’re doing alright!
Having folks around here like you who share my neurodivergent stripes I can relate to really helps. 🥲 Also Ritalin.
*plays “Miracle Tears” from Pokemon Movie CD*
Given the topic, I would have thought “A Diagnosis” by Rachel Bloom would have been the more appropriate song.
And no, I’m not going to attempt to HTML in the chat (the results would be a disaster). Highlight/Google it if you want to hear it – the official video is the first result.
Oh, yeah the first time I told you all a few days ago, I played “The Circle of Life” because I thought the lyrics beautifully reflected the condition and my feelings of finding people who know what it’s like after all these years.
“Mysterious Girl in Labyrinth” for some reason is the music that plays in my head whenever I see Regalli’s alias. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I want this to happen, but I also wonder if it would make Joyce *less* likely to get help because it was Raidah telling her, and I do want to see that plot too.
Raidah snobishly: you should be drinking more water, also here’s some really good therapist and I’ll drive you there if it gets hard
Can’t believe a loser like you is trying to take on more than you can handle, guess I’ll have to help bear some of that weight for you I guess
Raidah: You’re such an immature, backwards-thinking naif to have hangups about going to a gynecologist, guess I need to tell you you’re wrong and then prove my superiority by taking you there, staying with you in the waiting room until you’re called in, and assuring you that you’re not going to have any issues a halfway competent specialist hasn’t seen before. You loser.
(I don’t think that’s where the story’s going but I find the image hilarious.)
Yea it’ll be probably not happen, but it would be a delightful pairing, like Valencia in my crazy ex girlfriend becoming one of Rebecca’s best friend
This is Billie. You are all just describing a slightly snobbier Billie.
@zee it’s not the same cause dynamic, gotta be former romantic rivals, though Billie does have the spirit of it
Sometimes, Joyce’s friends are so lazy to check each other…
I dunno, I just find it funny that Raidah is passive-aggressive with Sarah and just plain out antagonizing Joyce here.
I mean her beef with Joyce is over stuff that happened more recently, and I don’t know if she’s aware of Sarah’s role in the Jacob situation
An old hate versus a new one. I also think it probably annoyed her to not get much of a reaction out of Sarah, so she probably went right for it with Joyce as a result. Gotta get some satisfaction here.
…Sarah isn’t even answering sarcastically. It’s just an honest, almost happy answer.
Who are you and what have you done to the old Sarah !!
I think that she might just unironically think, shit, that’s actually true, they’ve stuck around. With that, she gives a whole lot fewer fucks about Raidah, I’d imagine.
Well, it’s also easier for friends to stick around with Raidah and her crew undermining every possible connection she made – which was at least implied to be happening last year.
This sounds like a doompost and it’s not really supposed to, but it’s easier for Sarah to say it and mean it because she’s being presented the question by an antagonistic force.
She threw out a real passive aggressive “I love you” yesterday before Liz arrived. She does love Joyce, but she’s only gonna say it in that circumstance to get leverage over her. Here now, though, someone she doesn’t like is questioning whether she is friends with these people (which is something Sarah herself questions repeatedly) so it’s easier for her to say it without any stipulation or cost, she can just say it and mean it.
You can’t touch her, Raidah, Joyce is too powerful now.
She is not at her full power she lacks fuckface but the poor lizard would literally die in this weather Raidah should count her self lucky.
Raidah, I hope you DON’T find the help you need.
When one of your many grievances inevitably runs you over with their car.
Raidah in panel 1 was going for a backhanded compliment but forgot that Sarah being a misanthropic loner isn’t an insult; it’s a statement of fact. So she ended up just saying something nice by accident.
OK so Raidah is being polite enough today that being said, I’ve had enough of this shit from these two.
I’ve never hated Raidah like I have other characters, but I found her reason to hold such a grudge with Sarah to be annoying. Yes maybe Sarah biggest motivation at the moment was to make sure Dana didn’t drag her down at the time but since Raida is so keen on being an “adult” then maybe she should come to terms with the reality of the situation that she could not help Dana.
Raida did her best to support her but the reality of the situation was that Dana had fallen down a deep pit of depression alongside some serous self destructive habits. Unless Raida had spent some time learning to be a therapist there was nothing else she could have done for her and the most mature thing she could do right now is to come to terms with that and let it go.
As for Sarah there’s no real reason for her to actually hate Raidah besides being vilified by her for not being a caring enough friend. Honestly I don’t know maybe she wasn’t at the time or maybe she did everything she could but it still wasn’t enough, and maybe, just maybe that’s what she’s been wondering this whole time. Maybe she feels guilty because despite that hindsight she probably made the right call with Dana she still feels like she gave up on her just a bit to easily. If that’s the case and maybe it is then then I suggest she should try visiting her to confront that part of her past.
Other than that I don’t know but I’m just tired of this petty as fuck grudge of theirs.
I guess Sarah might dislike Raidah even more for insulting Dina that one time? I dunno.
I do think it’s a petty grudge. But eh, they’re teenagers. Joyce and Walky are also mean to each other.
Based on what we’ve seen, Raidah has been harassing and bullying Sarah in one form or another for a year now whenever they cross paths. That feels like legit grounds for hatred… That kind of treatment can really weigh on a person.
This. Raidah literally just cruelly insults Sarah constantly. One time she called her a bongo just, like, in passing, without any other conversation.
Raidah is a classic “any mean behavior is okay if it’s to a Bad Person” bully.
As Username Taken said, there’s history here and even though we only saw a couple examples, they imply a longer pattern. And if you look closely at the early interaction in the mall, one thing you see is that Raidah tried to turn Joyce against Sarah. Is part of the reason Sarah had no friends that Raidah’s harassment campaign included targeting everyone she might have gotten close to isolate her?
OTOH, part of the reality of the situation with Dana seems to be that she was still capable of concealing just how bad it was from her friends other than Sarah. Breaking down in the dorm and putting on something of a face when going out. Raidah thought (or at least said) “she was getting better”, so there was no need of her having to do anything more to help.
I try to understand where Raidah is coming from. She’s missing some key information, but in her view Sarah is a bed person who will do anything to remove someone who annoys her from her life, not caring what good reasons they may have for being annoying to Sarah and not caring what horrific consequences may befall them from Sarah’s actions. In her shoes I’d probably use more massive aggression, not just let my feelings fester until I happen run across Sarah and then unleash some tepid barbs.
And boy would that resolve things faster. My dislike for Raidah is mostly just frustration over the bad information she’s using as her basis for her hateful actions. Sarah knows exactly what Raidah doesn’t know, but doesn’t care about Raidah’s opinion of her enough to explain things to her; it would be such a delight to see if Raidah pushed her enough to make that effort.
Something like: “I know that you think I’m selfish. That I got Dana kicked out of school without any thought as to what trouble it would get her in just so I could keep my scholarship. Which, since you and all your friends have rich parents you probably actually don’t understand what it means to have to keep up high grades to be allowed to go to school. But that’s not really the point. The point is when Dana was grieving for her mom I was the one who had to deal with that. I was the one who had to live with her when she was getting stoned all day and all night, getting so fucked up she was tanking her roommate’s grades, and if you’re going to tell me you knew her better than her roommate did because you used to get stoned together before she lost her mom you’re so full of shit. The point is I tried to help her. I tried to get you to help her but you all just told me she would be fine. I thought she needed help and you didn’t want to do anything. Maybe I didn’t do the right thing, calling her parents. Maybe you would have known what to do better than I did, since you’re such good friends. But when your good friend Dana was grieving I tried to help her. What the fuck did you do, besides getting stoned with your stoner friends?”
Man I must have forgotten the full picture of what happened, this opened my eye’s a little. Maybe Should Re-read the past strips with Raidah.
Sadly cartoonism is a lifelong affliction with no known cure. Luckily services such as Patreon exist so that these “cartoonists” may live relatively normal lives.
This public service announcement has been brought to you by Deathjavu, maker of better web comments.
Sorry, Raidah. Not everyone can be a put-together opportunist like you.
Yeahh… Joyce did ruin her relationship by being a flirty homewrecker. She could be cattier.
Personally, I think Jacob’s involvement in that scenario gets glosses over a little bit. He coulda just shut Joyce down and not participated in the flirting, and he certainly didn’t have to go and kiss her. Yeah, he maybe wouldn’t have been tempted if Joyce wasn’t trying to tempt him, but it’s not like he was without agency.
(This is not a post that says “Joyce wasn’t misbehaving”. In case it needs pointed out.)
Right. Additionally, given what happened, it doesn’t let Joyce off the hook, but it does kind of highlight that I think he’d have come to the same conclusion he ultimately seemed to come to, that his being with Raidah was part of him trying to do things the “right way”. I sort of wonder when we see him next what else about his life may have changed, like if he ended up changing majors, even.
I think my “favourite” part of the whole thing is when Jacob kisses Joyce while in a relationship with another girl, and then IMMEDIATELY tells her “you’re not who I want”. What was the kiss for then, you ass? Just to get some cheating in as a matter of principle?
If Jacob was in the scene I would have mentioned him as well. He’s the main one at fault.
Now that I think ofnitnwe havent really seen much of Jacob in a good while.
Has he appeared post timeskip yet? I cant remember
No is the answer, I checked. At least he wasnt tagged in anything
One can only hope, the skeezy jag. Maybe Ethan scared him away to a different dorm.
I’ve got a lot of sympathy for Jacob. He went through a lot in that sequence – had his whole worldview overturned in terms of what he wanted in life and romance, realized he was falling for Joyce, had to break up with his girlfriend and was still capable of walking away from Joyce. He didn’t handle it all that well, but it was a lot to handle.
Unlike some others involved, he didn’t set out to hurt anyone or to do anything wrong, he just got caught up in it.
It would be interesting to see him again and see how he’s settled down.
Raidah, happy to see you’re still throwing shade every five seconds.
I defend her a lot but yeah, nah, Raidah’s just being a jerk here. I got nothing.
DOA Book 12: “Your Words Can’t Hurt Me. I Have A Comic Strip In The Newspaper Now”
[reads hastily handed note]
CORRECTION: In our last comment, we incorrectly referred to DOA Book 12. It was, in fact, the title of 9 Chickweed Lane Book 12. We regret the error.
‘Your words can’t hurt me, I had my fictional lust object look in a dictionary and say SHE doesn’t find this language objectifying!’ – 9 Chickweed Lane Book was that before or an interlude during the Endless WWII Flashback, I can’t remember, time compressed in on itself sometime between when the racial slur got it pulled from the LA Times and the interminable pinup shots and weeklong wordless airchase.
Anyone else think Raidah is letting Sarah and Joyce live in her head rent-free and it’s really kinda sad?
Quite sad. For someone whose entire personality is supposedly about how much more mature and socially elevated she is than everyone else around her, Raidah certainly seems obsessed with being the shittiest she could possibly be in response to slights she should’ve moved on from months ago.
Why is Raidah being a bongo to Joyce? I know she hates Sarah but I thought she just viewed Joyce as naive for not seeing what was “bad” about Sarah. Which doesn’t warrant this level of bongoiness
Jacob
Yeah she has as more valid reason to be pissed with her these days than with Sarah.
She thinks Joyce is the reason Jacob dumped her despite Jacob telling her otherwise
I mean, at best, the most you could say was that Joyce was *only* a contributing factor to Jacob breaking it off with her. And Joyce was clearly, explicitly, obviously-to-everyone-looking-in-her-general-direction trying to break the pair up so that she could have Jacob.
At that point, it doesn’t matter what Jacob says about why he broke it off with Raidah. Joyce was in the wrong for the whole situation and I don’t blame Raidah for holding a grudge there.
Agreed. I mean at first she was trying to break them up for SARAH, even after Joyce had a crush but didn’t totally acknowledge it, but Raidah doesn’t know that and ultimately it doesn’t matter. Raidah may have thought jealousy was dumb and immature and her hypothetical boyfriend’s loss for being a dude unworthy of her greatness, but clearly she DID care and Joyce WAS acting in bad faith in the attempting to drive a wedge.
Cool and normal thing to say to somebody whose friends, along with her, have been kidnapped and threatened at gunpoint etc.
I mean that person also made the lip locky with her Boyfriend and caused him to cheat on her and break up with her so….
Nah, he did that shit of his own free will.
Oh, I meant to Sarah, lol
Do we even know that she knows the kiss happened? Like, she obviously was aware Joyce was interested in Jacob, but Jacob didn’t cite Raidah as the reason for the breakup to her, or even to Joyce, if I am recalling correctly. Which, is not even strictly untrue, since I get the impression the bigger issue was him realizing he was dating Raidah because it was the expected move to follow his brother, not what he actually wanted for himself.
Granted, I don’t think it’d make any real difference to Raidah if Joyce kissed him or not, she’d still most likely see it as Joyce’s direct intervention in her relationship, which is more or less correct.
I mean you’re not obligated to like someone because they went through something traumatic and frankly if she had suddenly started being nice to Sarah after all that it might just be more insulting to Sarah then the current status quo between them
Happy for Sarah, like sucks that Radahs being a jerk but I’m happy that Sarah is in a place where she’s not denying her friendships
Also cool to see Sarah not rise to her bait and actually take the opportunity to realize her own growth.
It is a little weird because of the people she’s walking with, I feel like only Joyce is her friend.
Otherwise there’s Dina and… I guess she’s okay with Dorothy?
Raidah: *insults*
Sarah: *sudden deer-in-headlights introspection about her life*
“Nice boyfriend you have there, Raidah, shame if something happened to him.”
that is the answer Joyce had told to Raidah
Raidah sucks, but I think her response to someone saying they have a comic strip in the newspaper is absolutely correct
Yeah, people with interests are fuckin’ freaks.
Nah, if it was a WEBcomic, it would be respectable. Newspaper comics are the bottom of the barrel now
Hey now. This is a CAMPUS newspaper comic! Those have some standards!
… Well okay this one runs 9 Chickweed Lane but at least it contains zero Wilbur Weston!
There’s a lot of webcomics I would judge people for making
Also I was not being serious
That’s what they all say.
Now I wonder how many times the author of this comic strip has heard people say this to him.
The projection is strong with this one.
Yeah, where’s the friend group we saw Raidah with at the mall?
raidah you can only see 3 inches of her face, how can you tell if she looks like shit
Considering how Joyce always insisted on shoving herself in people’s faces… limiting herself to three inches exposure Is Weird
Things that are okay to be mad at Joyce over and hold her accountable for:
– Venting about her abusive and repressive upbringing in a private conversation for the first time, and learning this because you followed her using someone else’s social media because you are entitled to her time and thoughts.
– Being an Edgy Atheist who is just as bad as the worst fundie towards the thing that brainwashed your mom so hard that she bailed out your best friend’s dad after he almost shot you in the face so he could then kidnap you for an entire 12 hours at this point, acting in a way that you never did prior until your clingy dipshit best friend dragged you into arguing about it.
– Celebrating having a job instead of being properly contrite to her clingy dipshit best friend.
– Being an atheist at all instead of being her clingy dipshit best friend’s buffer who never changes or has the slightest thought outside of what she is allowed to, while said clingy dipshit best friend is secretly trying to indoctrinate her back.
Things that are not okay to be mad at Joyce over and hold her accountable for:
– Interfering with your relationship and getting your boyfriend to dump you because she felt entitled to him.
Well, okay, though I don’t believe some of those things happened and a few seem to assume inaccurate premises. For example, I would never describe Joyce’s best friend, Dorothy, as clingy dipshit and I’m pretty sure that Jacob made his own choices and Joyce didn’t “get” him to do anything.
That… that might have been in reference to another best friend.
Anyway I feel like you’re arguing semantics with “Joyce didn’t get him to do anything.” I don’t actually need to explain with words why being the girl he cheats* with is grounds for that person not liking you anymore, and you’re absolving Joyce of responsibility for deliberately interfering with someone else’s relationship.
Like Joyce can still be a good and nice person (except when we’re all mad at her for something) and also this one particular person here can think she’s a jerkface because she interfered with the relationship she had with her boyfriend.
*I say “cheats” even if that’s a heavy word that I wouldn’t necessarily use myself for this situation, I think Jacob still showed emotional unfaithfulness to her (mostly because I think he realized he did not want to continue being with her), and I think someone being dumped for the reason of “that other girl” is grounds for them at the very least thinking of that situation as tangential to being unfaithful.
Joyce is completely on defensive mode.
Dumbing of Age Volume Twelve: Your Words Can’t Hurt Me, I Have A Comic Strip In The Newspapers Now
(or perhaps: I Hope You Find The Help You Need, but that’s the mission statement of all walkyverse and dumbyverse stories tbf)
Anyway in less deliberately inflammatory news: I wanna argue the idea that Raidah only cared about Jacob as a status symbol. I’m just gonna use two links here to avoid getting flagged, but I’ll be talking about her other appearances. She’s only got six pages worth, it’ll be easy to follow along.
Here is Raidah stating she does not do jealousy and if Jacob were to cheat on her then obviously he’s a piece of crap and she deserves better:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/02-everything-youve-ever-wanted/storied/
Here’s the fallout of that exact thing happening:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/bubblebrained/
“Cheating” is a super loaded term, I think it’d be fine for Raidah to think of it that way and I think Jacob’s problem at this point was that he was emotionally unfaithful enough to her that he didn’t think it was right to still be with her, and also that he realized he did not actually like her that much (this isn’t outright stated but I think that’s the endpoint), but personally I’d only describe it as cheating in the broadest sense of “Jacob was emotionally unfaithful to his girlfriend in a scenario involving another girl where monogamy was expected.” At the very least I’m not gonna ask someone getting dumped for another girl to be perfectly concise with their language.
Raidah, who has had less panel time devoted to what her relationship was like than Joyce had feeling sad she was a huge tool, is somber and very clearly hurt in this strip. Jacob didn’t tell her the specifics but she is learned enough (because Joyce was actually sniffing around him and she was, in fact, feeling threatened by her presence while her friends reaffirmed that fear in her) to know that it was Joyce, and she very pointedly tells Jacob that she knew it was Joyce as soon as it happened. The idea of Joyce interfering with her relationship was very clearly something on her mind, despite what she said early on.
That isn’t someone who “doesn’t do jealousy” or can happily wave off an unfaithful boyfriend. Raidah’s hurt, I think anyone would be. Her “dating for status” thing doesn’t really ring true to me either considering she describes their relationship to her friends as “he needs me” instead of the other way around. Jacob’s got a famous brother, and Raidah talks about him as if she herself is someone Jacob can be made proud to his brother through her.
Y’all, Raidah wasn’t using Jacob, it was the other way around. He was dating her because he wanted to make Harrison proud. When Harrison describes the kind of girl he was worried Jacob would date to impress him, he just actually describes Raidah. Harrison knows all about Joyce before meeting her, he does not even know Raidah’s name.
Raidah is condescending to Joyce and judgmental of her career choice. Raidah also only starts saying these things and entering Joyce’s orbit at all after Joyce decided to carry on Sarah’s impromptu plan to break her up with that guy Sarah wanted to fuck one time and then never speak to him again. Previously, Jacob asks if she’s fine with him hanging around Joyce and she does not bat and eyelash; it is completely irrelevant until we get to her friends going “yo watch out for Ms. Steal Yo Dude.”
Whether or not Raidah’s ever going to matter in any capacity other than being a snooty jerk to two people she actually has legitimate grievances towards is up in the air, at the end of the day we’re all gonna like Joyce and Sarah more than we do her because if we were supposed to feel really bad for Raidah about Jacob she’d probably show up more often. Maybe that’s starting now, maybe Raidah and Rachel can start being best friends and form a club entitled “I’m only here because this main character was an asshole and I suffered for their character development,” but regardless it’s not actually okay to break someone up because they are a Mean Girl who does not deserve their boyfriend.
That’s not justice, that’s being the misguided screwball protagonist of a late 90s romcom.
I’m not sure how much character development Ruth got. She was a violent, physical abusive alcoholic asshole that had untreated depression and now she’s a violent, physically abusive alcoholic asshole that is undergoing treatment for her depression. Meh?
Gonna have to veto the “violent, physically abusive” thing. She hasn’t actually done that in ages and the last time she “threatened” to it was extremely blatantly performative.
She actually has, to the point that an RA of a different dorm called her out on it.
??? No? I’m pretty sure the last mention of her being violent was during that one floor meeting, when she basically mumbled something femur-relayed and moved on. Did I miss a chapter?
Went back and double-checked. The last physically-abusive thing we’ve seen Ruth do was suplex Carol for semi-trespassing. Spencer calling her out seems more like skepticism that Ruth has changed at all. Both of these took place before the time skip, which was months ago in-story and well over a year ago in real life. I didn’t say she was never like that, I said she hasn’t been doing those things lately. Maybe we’re just working with different ideas for what “in ages” means.
Spencer was specifically referencing the time where Ruth broke into the Pod People’s rooms and forcibly dragged them out. All of them. And, like, these are the Pod People we’re talking about, who don’t really have a spine to speak of. I’m pretty sure if I literally stepped on them they’d ask me if they should’ve eaten more to give me a softer footing or less to give me a firmer one. And they STILL complained to Spencer about Ruth.
Look, I know what Spencer was talking about. Again, that was ages ago. I am strictly referring to post-timeskip recency. I don’t understand what the disconnect is, here.
I don’t feel that “I stopped beating people up” should be affected by the months of Ruth not having any chance to do it on panel.
Like she was supposed to learn her lesson already and she did it again.
Alright, I’m just checking out of this because I’m just not understanding what anyone is talking about. All I said was that she hasn’t beaten up anyone in months and I’m seemingly being refuted with an event that happened months ago like it changes the order of events.
She hasn’t beaten anyone up that we’ve seen. And we’ve been mostly following other characters. Ruth continued her pattern of behaviour when she had a minimal reason to, and there’s no reason to believe that she stopped in the mean time.
Like, the events Spencer refers to are already post-depression diagnosis/medication/therapy.
(This might get confusing since the RA character from the other dorm is also named Spencer)
Raidah: “I don’t do jealousy.”
Ron Howard’s voiceover: “She did.”
There are many parallels between Raidah and Rachel as minor characters in DoA, but the main difference is Raidah is with the “minor villains” while Rachel is with the “minor characters siding with the protagonists”.
I dunno what that distinction means. Raidah’s only involved in anyone’s ongoing plot because two of the protagonists picked a fight with her.
Like, ‘villain’ feels like a really morally binary term when we’re not talking about, like, Mary or one of the parents, and Mary’s just pre-heel turn Peridot at this point.
Nah, pre-face turn Peridot was charming. 😛
(A heel turn implies Peridot turned into a villain dude XD)
This is what I get for using TV Tropes vocabulary.
Anyway the important thing about Mary is that she sucks except now she sucks in a way where Dina can aggressively hompk at her and she throws wild face faults and dies instead of attempting to be any kind of credible threat.
It is the best possible use of her character. It’s fun to watch her suffer because her suffering is outrageously cartoonish.
Yeah, she’s a Team Rocket villain who exists to get dunked on.
XD The Tv Tropes titles make it confusing but yeah, a heel turn is turning into a bad guy. A face turn is becoming a good guy. It comes from wrestling.
Raidah is gonna be a great lawyer. Already petty and zero empathy.
She would agree with that assessment
Right back at ‘ya, Raidah
Lmao cant wait for someone to tell Raidah to stop acting like a high school bully and grow the fuck up. Like, come on babe, youre embarrassing yourself now acting like this.
Real talk: I do want Joyce to find a good therapist. A secular one that can teach good behaviors without using God or faith as a moral backbone.
Can’t learn how to resolve dissonance if your therapist is one of multiple people giving you dissonance.
This comment brought to you by someone struggling to find a secular therapist.
“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is deconsecrated, and the human at last is compelled to face the reality of their condition, of their relationship with others of their species, under sober circumstances.”
Poor human, you have my greatest sympathy. 🔥 👿 🔥
I still hope for the day Dana returns and thanks Sarah for being a true friend and making sure she got help.
I have a very hard time believing a return of Dana would be that simple
Same. Sarah unambiguously doing right by Dana is the one answer I think is flat out impossible.
(which is bad news for me, since I’m bad at guessing)
At the most base level, I just don’t think it’s really satisfying for it to be built up for so long and it turns out that Sarah was totally right and never had to think about it again. She just does the right thing, never questions it, and then it turns out it was right all along? That’s boring.
Sarah right now just had a chapter where she dragged her little sister back to college instead of hearing her out, and then returned home and told Joyce “damn I have no idea how to help you” because Sarah can’t process a problem that isn’t solved by bullrushing to the solution and calling herself a hero for it. She’s defined by being forced to do the hard thing to help Dana and is now applying that to scenarios that really aren’t as hard where she isn’t as isolated, but Sarah’s just wired for solution-oriented thinking and Dana’s the moment that she gets to fall back to whenever anyone has a problem with it.
Which I think is also the important factor of any Dana follow-up: Sarah did the hard thing that (hypothetically) made Dana’s life miserable because she was backed into a corner. Sarah could be unambiguously wrong, she could have made Dana’s life entirely worse by that choice, but it was the only one she had because no one else gave her a minute. Sarah’s fears were entirely ignored, and she was the one who had all the consequence.
That’s kinda why I’m warming up to the idea that Raidah was completely correct, or at least that Dana is not happy now; Sarah did the wrong move, but that’s dulled real hard by the fact that it never should have solely been her choice to begin with. Dana could show up and be howling mad, Sarah would still have the ground to stand on that she never should have been handed complete responsibility in the first place and they should have heard her out, if not for Dana’s sake then at least for Sarah’s because she doesn’t have a rich lawyer dad to fall back on.
Like I guess I question the value of doing right by Dana if it plays out like that. Good job, Sarah! Deciding of your own volition to uproot Dana’s life was radical! It was also rad to apply that same kind of “I know better than you and I hurt you because I love you” thinking to your little sisters too! Character development is for suckers!
There’s just too little we know about Dana (let alone how open those flashbacks were. Did Sarah actually make things worse for Dana by trying to be there for her? Did Sarah muck her appeal to her friends up by ending it on a note about her scholarship? Did Dana even know her dad was coming?) to make any statement on her, but from my point of view, Dana feels most relevant as someone Sarah had all the power over, and other examples of that behaviour in the series haven’t worked out.
I’d like to note that it wasn’t just about Dana, it was also about Sarah protecting herself from going down with Dana. Sarah was being impacted severly by Dana’s depression, the lack of interest/ability of others to see Dana was strugglling. Her own health was beginning to suffer, and the possibilty of losing the scholarship was real
She didnt choose this as a first resort, it was a last resort. She did the best with what she knew. It might have been bad/good/complex result for Dana but not making the choice was not going to be good for Sarah in any way.
I think people forget that Dana wasnt the only one in trouble that Sarah’s own wellbeing was at risk. I think she made her decision from a profound sense of powerlessness.
Or where she comes back and doesn’t thank either Sarah or Raidah because the situation was complicated and neither of them actually helped her all that much and she deserves better friends and they BOTH suck.
I can see everyone here is a social interaction master
Same, Raidah, same.
I am proud of Sarah because admiting this was probably not easy.
maybe because joyce actually wanted to be sarah’s friend instead of just networking, raidah
gotta change my caps
What a coincidence, Raidah, you look like a petty bongo.
god Raidah is such an asshole.
How can she say Joyce looks like shit? With how she is bundled up, you can barely tell that it is Joyce.