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David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 9d
Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net ⋅ 14h
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 9d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 9d
Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social ⋅ 2dDavid M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 9d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 9d
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social ⋅ 22d
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this match-up
not sure if want
dunno if I’d be able to buy a book with them on the cover, Willis, I might have to actually NOT get a make-out tier
…
nah
You mean you’re not gonna have Blaine and Ross make out?
Already picked my dads!
Make-outs aside, I really do hope that these two are NOT on the cover. Bleck.
This is gonna be an EPIC Charlie Foxtrot.
Oh,yeah! The classic FUBAR squad.
It makes me feel gross
A match made in heaven.
A match made in heaven but what conflagration will it start?
New made-for-TV movie…”Blaine and Toe-Dad: A Love Story”.
Can I assume someone has already suggested these two for the next Slipshine?
Well, at least now we’re getting a good glimpse at how Blaine is able to deceive people as well as he has. He seems pretty quick on the uptake in exactly how to manipulate others, which he’s put to malicious use.
Stupid others, but sure.
Well, manipulators DO pick their targets carefully
that one is a really easy target though
So he’s a lot like Mike in that regard, except he actually uses it for his own gain, while Mike is just an asshole.
And there’s the ‘tangentially related Mike-hate’ for my bingo card. Keep being you, Comments Section.
But really, Mike’s more of an antihero. Unless he’s being a minor nuisance(Walky’s Books, ‘HAIL SATAN!’, Etc.) just to keep up his ‘asshole cred’, everything he does could be seen as constructive….from a very narrow, Neitzche-esque perspective that sees pain as the only route to growth.
I’m not saying he’s a good person, but he’s definitely not one-dimensional.
Blaine’s devious cunning is worrisome and outweighs how much I like Toedad being fooled.
Way I see it, Toedad will later realize he was being used, see Blaine as the Devil, and try to kill Blaine
So… I’m looking forward to that fight scene
… I’m guessing you haven’t dealt with Toedad’s specific kind of [[ redacted so as to not get Willis mad ]]
It depends on when he realizes it. If it’s in the planning stage, I give him 50/50 odds of pulling out of their alliance and trying it his own way or rationalizing things and staying in. If it’s in the execution stage, he’ll rationalize it and from then on nothing will be able to make him question Blaine. However, if they fail and then immediately afterward he realizes Blaine has been lying to him, he’ll absolutely blame him for everything and attack him in order to soothe his wounded ego.
It’ll be a weird fight to be sure. Ross got hospitalized and needed a neck brace from one punch from a 90-lb teenage girl, and Blaine was flipped on his ass by a 20-year-old depressed alcohol abuser. My money is on Joyce and A-G wiping the floor with those two in one strip.
Tag in Sal (to the rescue, Han Solo style), and the show is over in two panels.
Ross was also in a car crash just before where he’d been hanging out of the window. It’s more likely he hurt his neck before he got punched.
I’ve got a pet theory that Ruth knows some martial arts, she definitely knows about leverage and using someone’s momentum against them. Flipping a person on their ass is actually not that hard once you know how, flipping an agitated person whose point of balance is off on their ass is even easier.
In a fight between Ross and Blaine I’d say the outcome depends just on how bad that neck injury is. If both were fit I’d bet on Ross, he works out and has mass on his side which means he’s stronger and can take more punishment. Blaine has a bit of a reach advantage, but I don’t think that’d be enough on its own. It boils down to whether or not Blaine can inflict enough pain by targeting the head and neck to make ToeDad stop fighting.
Sacrifice throws are generally harder to do well, though also easier than most throws when the other party has a strength/weight advantage. The difficulty lies in not hurting yourself in the process.
I wonder if it’d be a fight consisting entirely of light pokes to the opponent’s bandaged areas.
He now has three minions in place.
One is an incompetent child that likes Amber.
One is a teenager who hates him and explicitly doesn’t want to hurt anybody.
One is an incompetent adult that will easily switch to hating him.
A dream team it ain’t.
Faz is not incompetent and has the charts to prove it.
Think they mean that guy who ratted Sal out to the cops. Don’t remember what his name is, but he’s like, Sal if she had short hair and also was a guy.
That would be Asher, and he’s the “teenager who hates him and explicitly doesn’t want to hurt anybody.”
And I was worried my descriptions were too vague.
ngl devoid of literally everything else watching Blaine manipulate Ross is kinda funny
Absolutely. It’s Hilarious. The last week has been EXTREMELY entertaining as long as I don’t think hard about what’s coming down the road. It’s like how the initial interactions between Joyce and Old Gashface are funny as long as I don’t think about what happens later.
The jokes are always -so good- even when it’s setting up the scenario for The Worst Thing. I think this is what brings me back, because if this were purely a drama comic I wouldn’t find it half as engaging.
I don’t know if Blaine is actually competent or Ross is just this stupid.
Probably more of column B. Cultists don’t tend to be very bright.
Ross is the living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Blaine is actually smart and quick on his feet. If he were a little better at delayed gratification, his sociopathy would carry him pretty far, career-wise.
Yes.
Well Dina was able to trick him into getting on a bus heading out of town…
When the hell in this comic has Ross ever truly demonstrated he is on the same developmental level society, God-fearing or otherwise, expects a man his age and level of independence to be at?
I wonder if Bonnie was the subtle brains of the marriage, getting him to do the sensible thing while thinking it was his idea.
Probably. I’m sure it’s one of the reasons that Hank said that he thought Becky would make her mother proud.
Seeing this much more of Ross, it also makes me think that she eventually was worn down by Ross in the marriage, and saw no other way out than the one she took.
Without an archive crawl, I’m not sure that she didn’t have the pills forced into her.
I’d say a bit of both, though I didn’t expect Ross to be this easily manipulated.
A person who hears what they want to hear and believes what they want to believe is easily manipulated.
Look at what he says in the last panel. He’d rather believe what Blaine is saying than that his own faith was weak, or that he was wrong, or that God didn’t help him, so he does.
Blaine’s a criminal mastermind compared to Ross, but that’s relative.
His temper is his weak point, he starts flailing pretty quickly once he starts getting angry.
A *competent* manipulator wouldn’t gloat in order to provide a punchline. I’m just saying.
Damnit Blaine is not supposed to be able to make me laugh so hard I snort
Dumbing of Age Book 10: There Is No God and You Were Just Bad at Things
In Soviet Russia, things are bad at you!
Also in Soviet Russia, no God is there.
More like Dumbing of Age Book 10: No.
DoA Book 10: Hmmm, That Does Sound More Believable
*sigh* It’s not as much fun when the author does it!
Hahahaha I was worried about where this was going at first but also hahahaha
“Sometimes it’s like watching a wasp land on a stinging nettle: someone’s going to get stung and you don’t care.” ― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
Or maybe God showed how wrong you were?
nah
This reminds me of Roy Moore the ex-senator that lost a race in 2017 refuse to concede because he claimed “God’s will must prevail.”
My genuine reply to that was just “What if it wasn’t in gods plan for you to win?”
Well, Roy Moore’s an evangelical Republican, which apparently means he gets to use God as a sock puppet account.
“What if it wasn’t in God’s plan for you to win?”
Now now, we all know that concept only applies to brown people and Democrats. Moore is chosen by God, he said so almost every chance he got. #SARCASM
Judging from the number of people God’s told to run for office, it’s pretty obvious He’s just messing with them.
Politics as divine practical joke? I find this theory oddly plausible.
It’s funny how God always seems to agree with those types.
Jesus Christ Ross.
.
Also, gratz Willis, for making Blaine make me laugh!
Yes, that’s who Ross thinks has his back.
The only upside to this team up is they’re gonna hate each other almost as much as I hate them both.
Pretty sure it’s also an upside that this level of demonstrable stupidity is going to result in whatever they come up with failing spectacularly. Or getting them elected as co-presidents of the United States, one of the two.
Is nobody listening to them?
They met two strips ago and Blaine has already abandoned the pretend nice face. That’s even less time than it took with Danny!
… I don’t want this plot threat to continue. I’m scared :\
So, how many decades before Ross figures out that last line was an insult? 3? 4?
DoA decades, or real time decades?
Yes.
God, it’s like an odd couple bromance comedy from an evil mirror dimension.
Gee, Blaine, what are we going to do tomorrow night?
They’re Toe Dad and the Blaine! They’re Toe Dad and the Blaine!
One is a Christian! They’re both a fucking pain
To prove they are the worst
They’ll kidnap, stalk and hurt
We hate them!
They’re Toe Dad and the Blaine, Blaine, Blaine, Blaine, Blaine!
Thank you, i laughed so hard i almost triggered my asthma
Bad Prediction: Blaine wrongfully assumed that Ross, due to also not being a good guy/single-minded in his goals, would team up with him and his “cunning plan”, and will get frustrated with Ross because he assumed he’d just be a redneck oaf. During an important part of whatever the plan is that requires stealth, Ross will not follow whatever the plan was and be the downfall for both of them, getting them caught a second time.
Also, WOG says that no one gets killed. Does anyone get sent to jail? Drop out of school? I can’t see how this plot line could go without Amber (rightfully) hospitalized to deal w some stuff.
If Amber drops out of school then that means Blaine wins, so I sincerely, truely hope that doesn’t happen.
Where has this intelligence been in all of his other appearances?
Everyone’s a supergenius when they’re standing next to Ross.
That’s a good point.
He’s not angry at the moment.
Blaine seems to be very susceptible to his emotions.
He’s in his wheelhouse, here. He’s manipulating someone who’s not on guard against him, who doesn’t have a positive connection to the person he’s trying to destroy, and so on.
Ross you one of these days you haft to consider the possibility that God does not like you, If that wasn’t the case you think he’d design your body without a neck?
The truth is that Ross used to be 6’5″, but was dramatically shortened by a horrible piano moving accident.
I gotta archive crawl again, I thought it was an anvil from acme.
Blaine’s a smooth enough operator for now, but it’s going to be interesting seeing where his arrogance will get him.
Beat up yet again, I presume.
I can’t wait for it to happen.
DoA: Book 10 will feature a cross-over with Pascalle Lepas’ “Wilde Life”, where Blaine & ToeDad meet a Rougarou, forcing the Witch of Summer, Eliza, to slay both of them.
Blaine, if Toe Dad were smart he would kill you for sarcastically explaining how the world works without a god. Now we have Mr. Glass and the Horde ready to cause mayhem in the world… untile the truth is revealed and Toe Dad breaks Blaine’s bones in front of his wife and Faz, traumatizng them and making Faz get the epiphany that he was two steps from being like Blaine.
What are these two steps? I too haven’t had the epiphany that Faz is on a path to becoming Blaine
Step 1: have a failed marriage you fuck up yourself. Step 2: Get into organized crime. Step 3 of 2.5 because it isn’t really a step: be pathetic.
Whelp.
Danny’s gonna die at this rate.
Oh, man, I made so much pizza money in college off of people like Ross with simple magic tricks.
Perhaps Sons of Satan was an overstatement. I dub them the Bruised Brothers. “We’re on a mission from God…to take our daughters.”
. . . .Wouldn’t this kind of talk set off ALL of the alarm bells in Ross’s head? This man claiming to speak for god and be sent BY god to help him?
Nah, he wants to hurt his daughter and regards her as property, so obviously he is allright in Ross’ book.
Ross is a bad person.
check in with how much evangelicals dig trump and then get back to me on this
Ooph. Fair enough.
Yeah, I mean, “sent by god” is an ACTUAL STEP DOWN from Trump, who not long ago claimed to be the second coming.
Just yesterday, a friend mentioned pietists digging Trump. It’s incredible what kind of contradictions the mind can ignore.
It helps if you start with the preconceived outcome you desire, then fold, spindle, and mutilate facts and your perception reality itself to draw a Family Circus Billy Line connecting it to where you’re starting from.
There’s a really good video by Quinton Reviews about exactly what you just said. It mostly covers the Paul Is Dead conspiracy theory.
… see, I wanted to make a Trump comment but felt it would be too on the nose or cause problems.
(I have no issues with religion in general, just with the kind of people who are so blind as to not see they worship the friggin’ Antichrist!)
Blaine is telling him what he wants to hear and offering him what he wants.
Nah the most negative my response to someone doing something I regard as good or well meaning and not harmfull and attributing it to God would be to roll my eyes.
Spoiler: ToeDad is bad at things
Narrator: “He was bad at things”.
And also just bad.
but wait you forgot another option
There is a God but also he likes lesbians and dislikes abusive fathers.
God is chill
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/remembrance/
Blaine does not believe that.
Also there is an extremely slight chance that hearing that possibility even mentioned by someone who’s supposed to be on his side will make Ross consider it.
Honestly I want to say Ross’s faith did falter now, because even if you buy that the feelings God gave her are a sin, despite there being no evidence that acting on them harms anyone, instead of trusting Gods ability to forgive or set Becky on the right path Ross put his faith in a shot gun and the institutions of man.
Not a shotgun.
Ugh I just get more frustrated the more these subhumans show up.
By storyline’s end I hope they end up in separate prisons for 15 to 20 years.
you’re too kind. cellmates would be poetically just.
This is FASCINATING and I cannot wait to see how things pan out :DDDD
There is no foreshadowing at all in panel 3 of this strip, no sirree, not a bit.
Ross’s lines about “God will deliver us our rightful victory” and “Are you saying my faith wasn’t strong enough?” are right out of the Narrativist Framework.
But there’s no narrativium in our universe to make that work!
Wow! That was very well put. Chillingly so. That sorts of thinking crops up in many places, although usually not that severe
You need to believe in yourself!
You guys need hobbies and a lesson in daughters, adulthood and boundaries.
and restraining orders
Pretty sure Blaine already effectively has restraining orders against him, at least in the form of college campus security restrictions against him. Would not surprise me if there are more in part of the judgments against him in Amber’s case in addition to the college tuition parts.
He just sees his concerns as more important than the law. Blaine. It’s you. Your that restraining order creeper who can’t realize when it’s time to stop. You think it’s other people who need those but it’s you.
Law enforcement is already coming into effect. Guess he dodged getting caught for kidnapping Danny, but the Law already said “No you can’t fire off firearms to try and coerce people into doing what you want, you can’t.”
The Law is going to keep getting involved at this rate.
Campus security will just escort him off campus. Big step down from a restraining order. There was no mention of such a judgement when he showed up on family weekend, so there likely isn’t anything already.
Ross is likely to have something about staying away from Becky in the terms of his release on bail, but we haven’t seen it.
Anyway, since they’re certainly going to escalate to more crimes, it doesn’t matter much. They would just have to be careful not to be spotted before they’re ready to act.
I’m not sure one lesson would be enough for them.
To those of you who gave me condolences yesterday, thank you. All that mess is over with, now it’s just finishing up paperwork and figure out other things, but that’s not really pertinent to the comic at hand. I just figured you folks would like a reply or something.
*goes back to bed*
Take care of yourself.
I can’t read this storyline. It’s legitimately triggering my anxiety.
We in the industry call that alternative: the truth.
Blaine in panel 2 reminds me of this: SFW reading a kids’ book (Sorry to compare him to something cute.)
what was ross gonna do? try to hit blaine? with a neck brace on?
Yeah, I kind of figured that Ross’s idea of a ‘plan’ would be to keep trying the same thing over and over again until he either gets irreparably crippled or killed. Because his idea of ‘faith’ seems to be ‘God will give me success because I say he should’.
Toedads moustache is one of his, probably quite rare, good qualities I think.
Cuz its a Batstache.
It is the night.
Goddamit, Blaine is good at this.
Religion contains many useful buzz-phrases for the unscrupulous con-man to use.
Seriously, Blaine + bus.
I ship it.
otp
We call them “Blainus”, which also coincidentally sounds a lot like “Blennorrhagia from the anus”.”
I laughed. I didn’t want to but I did. That has to be my new favorite line.
Also, off-screen, Blaine kicked a puppy.
Anyone else hear “You and me (but mostly me)” from The Book of Mormon when looking at panel four?
*panel six
Blaine has some skills but for what? Even if this deranged plan works, what’s the net outcome? He will have spent dozens of hours, presumably thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, untold emotional energy, and his limited legal standing and freedom to what? Show a geeky college freshman who is boss? Restore his sense of ego? He lost before he started by investing way too much in a dead end. Amber isn’t stealing these from you, you’re burning them up.
In many ways, he’s like Ross in more ways than one. He isn’t thinking about ‘what next’. He’s just trusting in the narrative that he will get what he wants (because isn’t that the right thing to happen?) and making it up as he goes along.
Also get Amber out of college (dead or expelled or dropped out, doesn’t matter to him), thereby not having to pay for her education any more. College and university are stupid expensive in the USA from what I hear, even the normal ones.
Also, my understanding is that as long as Ross shows up to the trial the bond money will be returned, but I’m not sure what happens if he commits more crimes in between and gets himself arrested again.
Fair point, although it seems like he has been spending a lot in bail money to try and achieve that financial objective.
Bail money gets refunded on condition that the person on bail shows up for their trial, if I’m not mistaken.
Getting busted also forfeits the bond. And since Blaine plans on having him re-offend, he can’t really be expecting the money back.
IIRC, Blaine lended money to the church which then bailed Ross. So, assuming the church doesn’t learn (or care) that Blaine has a role in Ross being arrested again, Blaine could very well still ask his money back.
It’s not clear what the deal with the church group was. He just showed up and offered to help. It could certainly be a loan.
Blaine is a narcissist. “Restoring his ego” and “show x who is boss” are literally his primary goals in life, and anything he does to attain them is therefore justified, because to him “I’m the best” and “I’m the boss of everyone and you should all acknowledge it” are unshakeable truths. Anyone who so much as speedbumps him is committing an unforgiveable crime against “how things should be”, and all resource expenditure is justifiable in punishing them, and also it’s their fault for making him spend resources at all instead of just acknowledging his obvious superiority from the get-go.
I almost feel bad for Ross, being manipulated so openly by an evil man, but he’s so convinced of his own righteousness that he doesn’t see it. Doesn’t even think to question it.
Someone once said, don’t weep for the stupid, you’ll be crying all day.
But in an Irish accent.
I keep finding myself hoping the next strip is police walking up behind Toedad and going “Hah, sorry, our bad, we just remembered that you fired a gun on a college campus and kidnapped your estranged daughter and tried to flee with her at high speed and so you are DEFINITELY a flight risk so no bail for you. Come now, back to jail.”
Judge sets a bail, cop isn’t going to override it.
As mentioned in the comments a day or two ago, the Indiana state constitution mandates bail to be set for any crime short of actual murder.
But that last option sounds really believable
The Terrible Dads Dynamic Duo is concerning already.
Blaine’s last line in panel 4 did make me laugh, though.
And then they got run over by a truck. The karma truck. Who wants to help me drive it?
Or that god didn’t want you to do it and you ignored him, but i doubt either would consider that possibility.
God wanted you to do it and fail – for the drama of it all.
God wanted you to do it and fail because he* loves gay people and he’s grooming your gay daughter for gay glory.
* possibly she. Or it. Or they.
Gay Glory sounds like a superhero name.
Or an Australian ice cream.
That guy really is so duuuumb
(Tries hard not to get political, fails)
This has such a familiar feeling to it…
Sure does, doesn’t it?
Tomorrow, a piano falls on both of their heads. End of chapter.
From your lips to Dave’s ear.
Are they going to go to Ross’s house to discover evidence of Becky’s “burglary”?
Blaine/Ross 2020 – You thought Trump was bad? Hold my Beer.
It’s bad if I like Blaine? He’s just so machiavellian and Evil.
You can like a character and hate everything they do
Blaine’s a good character. He’s believable, he’s memorable, and though he gets consequences for his action he keeps coming back for more like the narcissist he is. As far as DOA characters go, he’s one of the best written – compare with, say, AG, where you have to push down hard on the accelerator of the supensionofdisbeliefmobile.
This supports my theory that believability is an over-rated character trait, because real people are terrible, therefore believable characters are terrible, and I get enough of them in reality without having them in my fiction, thanks.
At least in this kind of comic, you know they will lose in the end.
Blaine and Ross belong together. They start at the result they want and but don’t think through the costs and difficulty of getting those things. They want them so they will have them. This will not be a wacky plan, but directed reasoning.
That look like a book title to anyone else?
Anything can be a book title if you look hard enough.
I still think Toedad is going to turn on Blaine (‘the demon sent to tempt me’) once he gets within reach of Becky. And that Blaine is expecting and means to use it as his own exit plan (‘Officer, I was just trying to help someone who could testify against that terrible vigilante Amazi-Girl in court, and then he forced me to come here at gunpoint!’).
On the one hand, watching Toedad be so flawlessly manipulated is satisfying because it highlights how dumb he and his faith are, on the other, Blaine is getting what he wants and that’s bad
This isn’t going to end well….
off topic but there is an add on the left of the screen blocking your comic, dont know if you read these or can do anything about it
Damn you, Willis! And on my birthday, too. >:(
panel 5: toedad’s mustache is gonna crawl off his face and go strangle blaine.
that mustache really deserves its own tag, if not its own storyline.
can the next strip be them getting hit by a truck? I’ll pay.
I’ll DRIVE the truck.
Make it a bus, sell tickets.
I love the way you think!
im so stressed
Back in higschool there was a group of parents in the school’s advisory board from the extreme right wing. They managed to put security cameras inside and outside the campus (was a big school) to watch the students for ill behaviour, they had put a large billboard on the entrance saying they didn’t want students from the lower income population and from racial minorities (the school was public!). Also they shared mails with the info of members from the students center encouraging to get them expelled. We managed to get the director to get the cameras and the billboard out, but those same parents were still on the counsil by the time I graduated. we could have used an amazi-girl back then, luckily we had the students center and the student members of the advisory counsil (politics are the best if you want to defend the beckys and ambers of the world).
By the time this is resolved I hope at least one is in a wheelchair for life.
Hi Willis,
is there any possibility you could have trigger warnings on the Blaine/Ross story arc? I don’t know how that could technically be done…
I just notice it brings up bad memories i don’t want to deal with, but i also don’t want to quit reading DoA completely.
Otherwise i’ll probably just try to not read it if i see that these guys are in it, maybe that works, too. Or maybe the community has suggestions?
I love your comic and i also love that it’s deep and showing the very bad people that reality has. it’s just… too real for me atm to read.
One smart atheist (?) with one very stupid, religious fanatic in a neck brace. It’s basically the smart minion/stupid minion pair-up that you get in the odl commedia dell’arte plays. Fun times ahead!
Pleeeeeease let that be the real Book 10 title!