Akane has only one way to get back home: collect the 42 keys to parallel worlds. Eri and Ben are just trying to get through the summer before university. When a magical key turns up in an old spare set, all three are forced to change their plans and fast.
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Hemlock
Josceline Fenton
A witch accidentally marries a monster, and now she and her familiar has to navigate life around her monstrous husband and her even more terrifying in-laws.
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She can’t help it, she knows more about dinosaurs an fossils then the teacher. She has refuse to listen to what he says ever since she found out that he likes the Jurassic Park franchise and thinks dinos should not have feathers.
Dina probably only refrained from challenging for credit on the intro courses because she is taking a year adapt to dorm life before letting herself hyperfixate on graduate courses.
They’re fraternal I think, which technically means they’re not clones. I don’t know enough about genetics to know how it shakes out. The matching appearance is just strong genes I guess. Which Walkerton parent is responsible for that?
Fraternal twins are no more genetically similar than other siblings, so in the ballpark of 50%. It’s hypothesized that there may be half-identical twins, where an egg cell divided before fertilization and who would share all genes from the mother and about half the genes from the father, but we can’t confirm this.
It’s also possible that, due to a weird condition that activated in Sal but not Walky, the at they’re both XY identical twins… but you gotta think that Sal would have noticed she never went through menarche.
Thanks to the increasing cheapness of genetics testing, there have now been found and confirmed XY women who have successfully carried their own children to term, so even that’s not ruled out.
I mean, it’s quite rare, but here’s one from 2008. She conceived and bore two children. The reason they found out about her is that one of her kids had a genetic developmental disorder and they started working backwards.
There are also identical twins of opposite sex.
Because both have a mixed genome of different ratios.
( Probably due to a merger of embryos and then division)
(Already knew about genetics being cool. Did not know there were known cases of XY women getting pregnant and giving birth, or identical XX and XXY twins!)
The other way around might work? I know a guy whose mum was going through early menopause when she had a surprise pregnancy. Full grown person when he found he was genetically XX. (He tried it out, but decided to stick with he/him.)
Fraternal are just normal siblings
Who were born from the same pregnancy, and who shared the very same life experiences in infancy and sometimes up to adulthood, which matches up with Sal and Walky having the same coping mechanisms.
real talk, I’m glad more teachers understand nowadays that some kids doodle to pay attention. There was a marked difference in my grades between classes where I could draw and classes that didn’t let me.
Being neurodiverse myself definitely helps with recognizing issues with some of the conventional “wisdom.” Like, actually I often listen better and can retain more when I’m not looking directly at the person. Doodling during classes was helpful, too. Though I also understand why there may be teachers who have issue with it because I’ve definitely had kids (4th/5th grade) who say they pay attention more when they x, and it turns out they really don’t. Still, better to talk about it with those students than just do blanket bans.
Same. My teacher last semester liked to come over and see what I was drawing during videos because I’d draw the people I’m listening to or diagrams/doodles that sort of expressed information. Like, learning about globalism (not that one) I had like a set of comic panels with characters sharing things across them or building bridges and walls.
Oof, that reminds me not only that my teachers didn’t get that, but of the time I drew some Halloween decorations for the classroom at home, took them in, and the teacher refused to believe I hadn’t been drawing them in class. They were in colour! I didn’t even have felt tips with me!
The main reason my Uni career imploded was undiagnosed dyscalcula, but being trained against doodling, and instead filling a folder with notes I would go back to a week later and think “But what does that mean?” (assuming I could even read my own writing) didn’t help.
Knitting 1×1 ribbing or stockinette. Kept my hands busy and provided juuuust enough interest to keep my brain from trying to make it’s own fun without needing enough focus to pull my attention from the lecture. Drawing was too absorbing for me.
considering it’s college i imagine most profs dont’ care as long as you aren’t openly distracting everyone else versus ‘needing’ to turn in notes/worksheets and such
So in one hand, Sal was the actual dinosaur kid. She has a favorite one and everything! On the other hand afaik she’s musically inclined while Walky’s the cartoonist.
I’d go for Sal but wouldn’t bet more than a dollar on it?
I imagine the Hand Injury might interfere with Sal’s ability to draw well for more then a few moments before the spasms kick in. Walky on the other hand does art on a regular basis and while it is cartoony, he still has more experience at it then Sal.
Unless im forgetting some art talent that Sal has.
That’s not even the important factor. Technical skill is irrelevant, because the best dinosaurs have buzzsaw ridges on their heads and laser blades on the ends of their tails. Jeraparsolophus Phaesertiensis is the objectively best dinosaur, so unless Sal is drawing one, she’s losing the note-doodle competition.
Dorothy is being to relatable. I think she’s about to realize that she is trying to help others, when right now she needs to chill and help herself.
And also wow, Walky+Sal Synchrony.
I’m not even sure who the mom of Dumbing of Age would be. Unless you consider Willis to be both the dad and the mom, the farm to refer to the strip as a whole and Amber, rather than Joyce, to be the autobiographical character. Still not sure that completely works.
What was in the back of my mind was a group of SF&F fans in Dallas/Ft Worth area who ran a Science Fiction convention for 18 years and then stopped, with the comment that since the con was 18 they were throwing it out of the house.
That seems to be a 50/50, and it seems that the collapse will be first and then see the importance of relaxing. It’s obvious there’s still a lot Dorothy needs to learn but I honestly don’t want to see her break down again.
Dorothy, you work-a-holic, you could always actually attend your own classes and take those notes. Though I’m curious to see if she bites Jennifer’s offer and next time we see her, she’s got an entire stack of class notes for her.
Professor Rees is so far disappointingly stable and far away. Queer status is debatable and they’re likely not a woman. No wonder we rarely sit in on this class.
I imagine he feels like he’s not his true self, like his body is a meat robot that he’s just piloting around. But since the other two characters he probably interacted with the most either got deported or ghosted him, there’s not a lot of opportunities for Alan stories.
I like to think he’s still somehow an Alien piloting a human robot suit, even in this world, if only because the idea of the only fantastical being in this universe being so completely irrelevant that this detail just never comes up is endlessly amusing to me.
I used to work with a pair of fraternal twins (one boy, one girl) who were both diagnosed with ASD. It probably depends, but there’s definitely some precedent for twins sometimes having the same disorders.
Exact rates I can’t give you, but ADHD and Autism are linked to genes. My family on the side of my dad is a Punett Square on having either or both, reaching all the way to yours truly and my brother (we share the ADHD, only I got the ’tism.)
iirc Schizophrenia is one of the most heritable, and an identical twin has about a 50% chance of Schizophrenia if their twin has it. Mood disorders are I think somewhat less but still some of the highest.
Myself and 1 brother have been formally diagnosed with ADHD, but I’m confident at least 4 of the 6 of us have ADHD and the others just didn’t get clocked by doctors about it.
I misread “show” as “snow,” but I also recently read a MG book where “snow” was used to replace “shit” (and maybe other swears) in the text, so my first reaction to “the Sarah and Jacob Snow” was “Oh, you read that book too?”
Sometimes the best way to help is to get out of the way. But if that doesn’t satisfy her then Dorothy could just sign up to be a student assistant. Not for this class though we don’t want a repeat of Jason.
That aside, happy anniversary you magnificent bastards.
She could also sign up to be a tutor, or to be a note’s taker. My university always sends out emails beginning of term for note-takers for people with disabilities that get in the way of being able to take notes.
OK but it’s adorable that Walky and Sal have that in common.
On another note, I’m a little irked that we’ve left Sarah but it’s just as well. We need to be away from her so she can have time to fester. Because I’m morbidly curious enough to wanna see where it goes.
Oh hey, I doodle during my Public Speaking class. None of the others though, just that one. Not sure why, but at least I’ve got some cool abstract textbook covers out of it.
was it worth it Dorothy? was it worth giving up your dream school so you can sit here and do nothing, because your friends don’t need you micromanaging every damn second of their day?
I don’t think it was actually her dream school in the end – I think she realised she didn’t want to go to Yale, but she doesn’t want to confront the reasons for it yet. Dorothy is someone who would be missed like fuck if she left; micromanaging isn’t the only thing she does.
Would she author it under her own name, or adopt a pen name like “Dear Aunt Sadie” because people are more likely to open up to a quasi-maternal persona?
Look, Dorothy compulsively takes care of others when she doesn’t know how to take care of herself. Give her a problem to solve or her face is gonna pop.
I’ve never related to the Walkertons this much. One of the funniest punchlines from recent strips too, i am impress. And that’s good cause tonight is “read comics to distract myself from sad feelings” night.
Off topic, but this morning I stumbled upon a radio program where Kurt and Kate were talking about their kids and grandkids watching Psalty and how they didn’t want the next generation to grow up without knowing him. He is real and he is remembered.
But doing a favor to someone else is the point and what she wants to do, if it wasn’t taking notes, it would be something else. Being a helper is how she copes.
Kinda doubtful of getting a response this late in the game comment-section-wise, but is “keeping notes” a Midwestern expression? I’ve only ever lived in California and Seattle, but I’ve always heard “taking notes,” never “keeping.” Or is that just Dorothy being weird?
I guess that could work if she meant that she would literally keep their notes for them, but it seemed to me that she was offering to take the notes in the first place. To answer your question, though, the act of taking notes usually made me remember stuff in school, so I did not actually need to keep them, the writing it down was enough.
They don’t mean the same thing as each other (Missouri). I think keeping notes implies further editing. Like if someone kept notes on background character’s relative room locations, they’d be updating it each time there’s new information.
Taking notes is jotting things down, which may or may not be referenced later. Since the act of writing or typing it may make the memory stronger.
I could see it if she was offering to edit their notes for maximum clarity later, except since she’s asking right then, it seems more like she’s saying I’ll take notes for you. Like, what you’re saying makes sense but only if the notes already exist.
Omg, 14 years?! Congrats to you, Willis! I feel like I’ve “known” you for much longer than that, but it’s only because I went back & binge-read It’s Walky & Shortpacked! with all the wonderful commentary about your early days. I’ve been “here” every night since DoA kicked off—it’s a consistent source of pleasure & laughter (& ). Thanks for your work—& your work ethic! (That buffer!! 🤩)
Dammit Willis, stop reminding me that its not 2010 anymore and I’m no longer in high school (except for the fact that I teach there). So glad I found this all those years ago, its been a wild ride so far, here’s to sliding time scale amount of years more.
I was just thinking that with the anniversary being September 10th, it was good they didn’t start it a day later and have an anniversary for it on September 11th… then I remembered that September 11th was more than 14 years ago… by 9 years… so they were probably aware of it at the time.
Why is it that looking at DoA being 14 years old makes me feel older than either the fact that my 45th birthday is less than a week away or the fact that I just celebrated my 18th anniversary at my workplace last week?
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Dorothy’s pretty bad at slacking off.
She just needs to try harder
i mean nothign wrong with doing busy work, like when you clean up your room procrastinating on more importnat things lol
Ironically, in Dina’s paleontology class she finds she can only take notes by doodling math problems.
That would be a fantastic gag.
She can’t help it, she knows more about dinosaurs an fossils then the teacher. She has refuse to listen to what he says ever since she found out that he likes the Jurassic Park franchise and thinks dinos should not have feathers.
He what? He thinks what?!
Dina, I will help you exact science justice.
I happen to actually know the vertebrate paleontologist who teaches the intro to paleontology class at IU, and I’m not gonna tell him you said this!
Does IU even have a dedicated Paleo department?
I wouldn’t be surprised, based off the fact that Dina chose IU.
she is 100% gonna do an undergrad thesis with Dave Polly
When I went I believe they had 750 majors, I’d be shocked if they didn’t.
The intro. courses seem to be graduate-level. There’s also the IU Paleontology Collection. Dina’s probably in a general life-sciences course.
Dina probably only refrained from challenging for credit on the intro courses because she is taking a year adapt to dorm life before letting herself hyperfixate on graduate courses.
She’s probably furiously writing down objections to specific things the professor is saying about dinosaurs to bring up after class.
Dina has her own video channel, PalwoCinemaSins
(Paleo.
Sal and Walky clones confirmed.
that is what twins are
They’re fraternal I think, which technically means they’re not clones. I don’t know enough about genetics to know how it shakes out. The matching appearance is just strong genes I guess. Which Walkerton parent is responsible for that?
Yeah, they are fraternal, and presumably their dad, both look more like him beyond being a quarter-black. (Charles is half.)
Fraternal twins are no more genetically similar than other siblings, so in the ballpark of 50%. It’s hypothesized that there may be half-identical twins, where an egg cell divided before fertilization and who would share all genes from the mother and about half the genes from the father, but we can’t confirm this.
It’s also possible that, due to a weird condition that activated in Sal but not Walky, the at they’re both XY identical twins… but you gotta think that Sal would have noticed she never went through menarche.
Google says your info is out of date and that there are at least two confirmed cases of semi-identical twins.
Thanks to the increasing cheapness of genetics testing, there have now been found and confirmed XY women who have successfully carried their own children to term, so even that’s not ruled out.
I mean, it’s quite rare, but here’s one from 2008. She conceived and bore two children. The reason they found out about her is that one of her kids had a genetic developmental disorder and they started working backwards.
I think half twins are confirmed.
There are also identical twins of opposite sex.
Because both have a mixed genome of different ratios.
( Probably due to a merger of embryos and then division)
This has been confirmed.
Very rarely can there be identical twins with one XX and one XXY
Genetics as a field is SO COOOL… TIL.
(Already knew about genetics being cool. Did not know there were known cases of XY women getting pregnant and giving birth, or identical XX and XXY twins!)
The other way around might work? I know a guy whose mum was going through early menopause when she had a surprise pregnancy. Full grown person when he found he was genetically XX. (He tried it out, but decided to stick with he/him.)
Fraternal are just normal siblings
But there are “half twins” that share 3/4 DNA
One egg splits, two different sperm.
You end up with fraternal twins that look very similar
Fraternal are just normal siblings
Who were born from the same pregnancy, and who shared the very same life experiences in infancy and sometimes up to adulthood, which matches up with Sal and Walky having the same coping mechanisms.
Yeah, genetically just normal siblings, but very close on a nurture level.
real talk, I’m glad more teachers understand nowadays that some kids doodle to pay attention. There was a marked difference in my grades between classes where I could draw and classes that didn’t let me.
(Yes, I have ADHD, how did you guess?)
Eeey fellow ADHD and doodler in class, fistbump!
Hi5! It’s a thing, yeaaaah :’33
Unmedicated = Doodling/writing so I could pay attention. Anything less and suddenly sitting still was torture.
Being neurodiverse myself definitely helps with recognizing issues with some of the conventional “wisdom.” Like, actually I often listen better and can retain more when I’m not looking directly at the person. Doodling during classes was helpful, too. Though I also understand why there may be teachers who have issue with it because I’ve definitely had kids (4th/5th grade) who say they pay attention more when they x, and it turns out they really don’t. Still, better to talk about it with those students than just do blanket bans.
Schools should ban all behaviors
They’re trying.
Especially in Florida
They are _very_ trying in Florida.
Imma fuckin bugs bunny that shit off D:<
https://media.tenor.com/A2H9BNaLtuoAAAAM/bugsbunny-florida.gif
Oh, what are those gatorfuckers doing now?
Dark sarcasm
in the comments
Hey! Butting! Leave those baby goats alone!
All in all, you’re just a …. Ooooo! Doughnuts!
My 5th and 6th grade teachers did not like that.
Same. My teacher last semester liked to come over and see what I was drawing during videos because I’d draw the people I’m listening to or diagrams/doodles that sort of expressed information. Like, learning about globalism (not that one) I had like a set of comic panels with characters sharing things across them or building bridges and walls.
Oof, that reminds me not only that my teachers didn’t get that, but of the time I drew some Halloween decorations for the classroom at home, took them in, and the teacher refused to believe I hadn’t been drawing them in class. They were in colour! I didn’t even have felt tips with me!
The main reason my Uni career imploded was undiagnosed dyscalcula, but being trained against doodling, and instead filling a folder with notes I would go back to a week later and think “But what does that mean?” (assuming I could even read my own writing) didn’t help.
Knitting 1×1 ribbing or stockinette. Kept my hands busy and provided juuuust enough interest to keep my brain from trying to make it’s own fun without needing enough focus to pull my attention from the lecture. Drawing was too absorbing for me.
considering it’s college i imagine most profs dont’ care as long as you aren’t openly distracting everyone else versus ‘needing’ to turn in notes/worksheets and such
I wonder which Walkerton twin draws the best dinosaurs.
Depends on your metric.
Walky just draws what he thinks is cool. Which probably means 90% are T-rexes.
Sal seems to have some actual knowledge based on her favourite dinosaur and conversation with Dina.
Probably Sal then.
Good thing Dina didn’t see you spelling it that way.
So in one hand, Sal was the actual dinosaur kid. She has a favorite one and everything! On the other hand afaik she’s musically inclined while Walky’s the cartoonist.
I’d go for Sal but wouldn’t bet more than a dollar on it?
I imagine the Hand Injury might interfere with Sal’s ability to draw well for more then a few moments before the spasms kick in. Walky on the other hand does art on a regular basis and while it is cartoony, he still has more experience at it then Sal.
Unless im forgetting some art talent that Sal has.
Hand injury is in Sal’s non dominant hand. Her right hand was stabbed, she is left handed.
That’s not even the important factor. Technical skill is irrelevant, because the best dinosaurs have buzzsaw ridges on their heads and laser blades on the ends of their tails. Jeraparsolophus Phaesertiensis is the objectively best dinosaur, so unless Sal is drawing one, she’s losing the note-doodle competition.
I’m convinced.
Dorothy is being to relatable. I think she’s about to realize that she is trying to help others, when right now she needs to chill and help herself.
And also wow, Walky+Sal Synchrony.
That’s true, the expression in the fourth panel seems to say “oh, this is new.”
And yes, that Walkerton synchronicity haha.
The ADHD is so genetic it hurts to look at, I love the Walkertons
Sal and Walky are adorable.
With any luck it won’t be kicked out of the house at 18.
It won’t be kicked out, but it’ll help its dad murder its mom, to keep her from selling the farm. Things will really spiral after that.
I’m not even sure who the mom of Dumbing of Age would be. Unless you consider Willis to be both the dad and the mom, the farm to refer to the strip as a whole and Amber, rather than Joyce, to be the autobiographical character. Still not sure that completely works.
What was in the back of my mind was a group of SF&F fans in Dallas/Ft Worth area who ran a Science Fiction convention for 18 years and then stopped, with the comment that since the con was 18 they were throwing it out of the house.
Happy birthday Dumbing of Age!!!
Also, is Dorothy going to have a meltdown if she feels like no one needs her help? Or is she going to learn to chill?
Yes! Happy Birthday to Mr. Willis’s beloved brainchild.
Beloved by us anyway. Apparently he keeps whoring it out to feed his flesh-children. Thus is the life of an artist.
That seems to be a 50/50, and it seems that the collapse will be first and then see the importance of relaxing. It’s obvious there’s still a lot Dorothy needs to learn but I honestly don’t want to see her break down again.
True!!, I forgot, Happy Birthday Dumbing of Age!!!
Dorothy Will Diminish, and Not Go Unto The Yale, and Remain Dorothy.
I think she’s just bored.
Dorothy, you work-a-holic, you could always actually attend your own classes and take those notes. Though I’m curious to see if she bites Jennifer’s offer and next time we see her, she’s got an entire stack of class notes for her.
Somebody give her a sheet of paper and a pencil so she can take her own notes!
Or draw dinosaurs. That’s a valid option, too.
Panel 4 Dorothy is pretty adorable.
Indeed
Professor Rees is so far disappointingly stable and far away. Queer status is debatable and they’re likely not a woman. No wonder we rarely sit in on this class.
I imagine he feels like he’s not his true self, like his body is a meat robot that he’s just piloting around. But since the other two characters he probably interacted with the most either got deported or ghosted him, there’s not a lot of opportunities for Alan stories.
I like to think he’s still somehow an Alien piloting a human robot suit, even in this world, if only because the idea of the only fantastical being in this universe being so completely irrelevant that this detail just never comes up is endlessly amusing to me.
We’re all alien software plotting a human robot suit.
*piloting – tho plotting works too.
Y’know, I wonder if the Walkertons have ADHD.
And now I’m genuinely curious how often identical and fraternal twins both share the same disorders.
Walky at least has been informally diagnosed by his friends as ADHD since back when Mike was alive.
But was Mike ever actually alive, or was he just pretending so that he could annoy people.
And collect nickles from your mother.
I know a set of twins and they both have depression, but that may just be the world we live in and not so much a twinsy powerup.
I used to work with a pair of fraternal twins (one boy, one girl) who were both diagnosed with ASD. It probably depends, but there’s definitely some precedent for twins sometimes having the same disorders.
ADHD and autism are part of a whole constellation of highly heritable conditions, which all overlap with each other.
If your sibling has one or both then it’s not surprising if you do as well.
Exact rates I can’t give you, but ADHD and Autism are linked to genes. My family on the side of my dad is a Punett Square on having either or both, reaching all the way to yours truly and my brother (we share the ADHD, only I got the ’tism.)
iirc Schizophrenia is one of the most heritable, and an identical twin has about a 50% chance of Schizophrenia if their twin has it. Mood disorders are I think somewhat less but still some of the highest.
“The ADHD is strong in my family, my father has it, I have it, my sister has it.”
– Walky, probably
RIP JEJ
Myself and 1 brother have been formally diagnosed with ADHD, but I’m confident at least 4 of the 6 of us have ADHD and the others just didn’t get clocked by doctors about it.
“And as you can see, as the student’s row number increases, their ability to read the blackboard approaches zero.
Well as some of you can see, anyway.”
Oh thank PRIMUS we cut away, I don’t think the comments section could have handled another strip of the Sarah and Jacob Show.
I misread “show” as “snow,” but I also recently read a MG book where “snow” was used to replace “shit” (and maybe other swears) in the text, so my first reaction to “the Sarah and Jacob Snow” was “Oh, you read that book too?”
Somebody get those twins some ADHD meds, stat.
Lectures are so hard without them. Hate when I forget them.
A nervous glance at scribbled notes
From handsome men in overcoats–Honeymoon Suite, circa 1986
Sometimes the best way to help is to get out of the way. But if that doesn’t satisfy her then Dorothy could just sign up to be a student assistant. Not for this class though we don’t want a repeat of Jason.
That aside, happy anniversary you magnificent bastards.
Dorothy… student assistant.
Interesting
She could also sign up to be a tutor, or to be a note’s taker. My university always sends out emails beginning of term for note-takers for people with disabilities that get in the way of being able to take notes.
OK but it’s adorable that Walky and Sal have that in common.
On another note, I’m a little irked that we’ve left Sarah but it’s just as well. We need to be away from her so she can have time to fester. Because I’m morbidly curious enough to wanna see where it goes.
This is the part we’re I apologize for accidentally touching the “report this comment button” while scrolling down.
would be great for them to become better friends with dina too lol
Oh, huh, it is the DoAnniversary day, isn’t it.
I suppose it’s an oddly appropriate day, then, to remember one of the greatest Evil Dads of them all. Rest in Peace, James Earl Jones.
As a dyslexic, I Am In This Comic And Don’t Like It.
See, I was good in math classes. Now, and classes that involved spelling…
GNU James Earl Jones
Oh hey, I doodle during my Public Speaking class. None of the others though, just that one. Not sure why, but at least I’ve got some cool abstract textbook covers out of it.
Someday those covers will sell for jillions.
Unfortunately, by that time, inflation will have made those jillions virtually worthless.
Dina would be pleased.
Or not, I can’t imagine Walky and Sal drawing dinosaurs that are scientifically accurate enough for Dina.
Maybe close enough
A very good point ^^
happy 14th birthday doa!!
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday, DoA! Damn, this year is sure is long
Those people should graduate by 2070 (our time).
Dorothy could take notes for herself, if anything.
Also why is DoA’s age 1/3 of my life?
It’s around half of mine! (I’m 27, for context)
Happy birthday DoA!
And less than a fifth of mine, so naturally I’m going to lie to myself and declare age to be unimportant.
It’s exactly 56% of mine! XD
Happy birthday, DoA! You are two years away from getting your license
Not being corporately owned, I always thought DoA had plenty of license.
Hell yeah finally something for the professor rees fans
And also happy birthday DoA, continuing not to be DOA for 14 years!
I would say 14 straight years but we all know that would blessedly be a lie. ^_^
Have a spare Internet.
was it worth it Dorothy? was it worth giving up your dream school so you can sit here and do nothing, because your friends don’t need you micromanaging every damn second of their day?
I don’t think it was actually her dream school in the end – I think she realised she didn’t want to go to Yale, but she doesn’t want to confront the reasons for it yet. Dorothy is someone who would be missed like fuck if she left; micromanaging isn’t the only thing she does.
Gosh, I could swear that looks like Joyce sitting there, but according to the tags, it’s Lucy. Guess I need new glasses!
Joyce is the new Lucy. Kind of like how Billie became Jennifer.
“Look I either help someone with their problems or I acknowledge my own and I am NOT doing that.”
Dorothy’s gonna start bumping into people carrying large stacks of paper just so she can help pick the papers up.
She needs to start an advice column in the school paper or something.
Would she author it under her own name, or adopt a pen name like “Dear Aunt Sadie” because people are more likely to open up to a quasi-maternal persona?
Look, Dorothy compulsively takes care of others when she doesn’t know how to take care of herself. Give her a problem to solve or her face is gonna pop.
Wait! Shortpacked was like, last week, right? Right?
Sigh…
I was surprised myself to realise I’ve been a fan for 13 years! Potentially the longest I’ve been a fan of something, apart from Doctor Who.
Shortpacked! was in April, as is tradition.
Sal and Walky having the same study method is kind of touching
It’s *so* cute, and relatable having ADD. I want to see the dinosaurs! Patreon bonus strip?
Yes, yes, this would make a fantastic anniversary Bonus strip! ^^ <3
Dorothy no
Happy Birthday DoA!
You can finally….
hmmm……enter puberty(?)
Yay, it’s Alan!!!
And HBD, DOA!!!!!
The siblings have more in common than one might think.
Or that they care to admit.
I’ve never related to the Walkertons this much. One of the funniest punchlines from recent strips too, i am impress. And that’s good cause tonight is “read comics to distract myself from sad feelings” night.
I first read Sal’s rejoinder as mimicking Walky to make it clear to Dorothy that she was being brushed off, but it works either way.
Dumbing of Age is entering Coming of the Age.
Why isn’t Dorothy taking her own notes, though?
IIRC she’s in a different math class, she’s just sitting in on this one because her friends are in it.
She’s not in any math class.
She used to be!
Because she’s not a student in this class, she’s just sitting in to not stay alone and have to confront her feelings!
But if she’s not taking notes, she’ll have to confront her feelings anyway…
Just ADHD things.
Being Dorothy is suffering…
happy 14th anniversary !
Panel 4: Dorothy’s “This is fine.”
Off topic, but this morning I stumbled upon a radio program where Kurt and Kate were talking about their kids and grandkids watching Psalty and how they didn’t want the next generation to grow up without knowing him. He is real and he is remembered.
Dang, can’t belive I’ve been reading this daily for 14 years! Congrats!
Happy 14th Birthday DoA!!!
Happy Birthday to you!
The world is a zoo!
We wish for one true pairing,
and slipshine pics too!
XD
If she wants to take notes, she should just take notes. She doesn’t need to frame everything she wants to do as a favor for someone else.
Or borrow some paper and draw stuff too. It’s a calc class, I’m not sure what she was expecting to do.
But doing a favor to someone else is the point and what she wants to do, if it wasn’t taking notes, it would be something else. Being a helper is how she copes.
Happy Birthday to DoA!
(or is that Happy Anniversary?)
((joyful annual?))
i legit ALMOST thought that said “joyce anal” XD
Who is that guy sitting behind Dorothy? He looks kinda familiar.
Happy Birthday, DOA.
14 years and they’re only just into the second semester? I’ll be dead long before they graduate
It took you 14 years to understand that?
Kinda doubtful of getting a response this late in the game comment-section-wise, but is “keeping notes” a Midwestern expression? I’ve only ever lived in California and Seattle, but I’ve always heard “taking notes,” never “keeping.” Or is that just Dorothy being weird?
Why would you take them if you weren’t going to keep them?
I’ve heard both, keeping implying a longer and probably repeated process while taking notes is immediate, but it may be a generational thing.
I guess that could work if she meant that she would literally keep their notes for them, but it seemed to me that she was offering to take the notes in the first place. To answer your question, though, the act of taking notes usually made me remember stuff in school, so I did not actually need to keep them, the writing it down was enough.
Lifelong Midwestern here, also found “keeping notes” to be unfamiliar phrasing.
They don’t mean the same thing as each other (Missouri). I think keeping notes implies further editing. Like if someone kept notes on background character’s relative room locations, they’d be updating it each time there’s new information.
Taking notes is jotting things down, which may or may not be referenced later. Since the act of writing or typing it may make the memory stronger.
I could see it if she was offering to edit their notes for maximum clarity later, except since she’s asking right then, it seems more like she’s saying I’ll take notes for you. Like, what you’re saying makes sense but only if the notes already exist.
I’m from Little Egypt, and I’ve never heard anyone use the phrase “keeping notes”.
I enjoy the callback to Joyce’s first ever strip in Roomies. Very fitting for an anniversary.
Omg, 14 years?! Congrats to you, Willis!
I feel like I’ve “known” you for much longer than that, but it’s only because I went back & binge-read It’s Walky & Shortpacked! with all the wonderful commentary about your early days. I’ve been “here” every night since DoA kicked off—it’s a consistent source of pleasure & laughter (& 
). Thanks for your work—& your work ethic! (That buffer!! 🤩)
happy birthday dumbing of age
and man that really is a long distance to read across no wonder joyce was having problems before the glasses
Dammit Willis, stop reminding me that its not 2010 anymore and I’m no longer in high school (except for the fact that I teach there). So glad I found this all those years ago, its been a wild ride so far, here’s to sliding time scale amount of years more.
I was just thinking that with the anniversary being September 10th, it was good they didn’t start it a day later and have an anniversary for it on September 11th… then I remembered that September 11th was more than 14 years ago… by 9 years… so they were probably aware of it at the time.
Omg now I really feel old.
Why is it that looking at DoA being 14 years old makes me feel older than either the fact that my 45th birthday is less than a week away or the fact that I just celebrated my 18th anniversary at my workplace last week?
Both Sal and Walky having to draw dinosaurs in order to pay attention is fucking hilarious to me
i think joyce might be missing her tag on here?? :0