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David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
The New York Times @nytimes.com ⋅ 5d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 3d
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This is how Crowley and Aziraphale got started.
What?
Read or watch Good Omens immediately. It will enrich your life.
Upvoted.
Updooted.
Up TOOTED!
What the Doctor said. There’s an excellent series on Amazon Prime. There’s an excellent BBC radio play. And there’s the book, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. There are probably a few others, but those three are the best picks off the top of my head.
A Demon and Angel odd couple from the Neil Gaiman / Terry Pratchett collaboration Good Omens.
I know it’s not the popular opinion lately but god I love these two more in this strip than in Shortpacked. Call me a sucker but I’m compelled by two people who are closely bonded by something fiercer and more fucked up than romantic attraction.
What can be more fucked up than romantic attraction?
It’s like they amicably divorced but still fight over how to co-parent.
That you for posting it so I didn’t have to
oh good, it’s the adults version of Dorothy and Becky
Considerably more actual serious and justified animosity here.
Except weirdly, here it’s the mature responsible one who’s insisting on the rivalry, and the goofball who wants to be friends.
“adults”
How old are they? Mid to late twenties?
And when do people definitely become adults? …Mid to late never, I’m starting to think?
…I don’t think a whole lot of people get to be professors or politicians in their mid twenties
Robin first ran for congress at 25, so she’s at least 27?
Evidence: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/activist/
You have to be at least 25 to run for House of Representatives, and Robin was running for reelection, she she must be at least 27. Mary says she’s 30 in this strip, which is either facetious rounding or something Roz said once:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/fraud/
Leslie says she’s 26 in this strip:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/scaredmess/
Yikes. When I started reading DOA I was younger than or the same age as most of the cast and now I’m older than their teachers.
My first post on this forum was a discussion about Leslie’s age. 26 is awfully young for a professor, especially in humanities programs– my thought was that maybe she has an MFA instead of a PhD.
Remember Leslie, you started this conversation. You’re maybe a little partners.
Excited to see where this Good Omens AU goes
Willis, seeing what’s happening to Twitter deeply concerns me. 🥺
Especially after seeing Jeph Jacques get screwed over in an instant.
Just how many of your readers come via Twitter? Are you considering migrating to Mastodon or other alternatives?
Also is Amber gonna stay there?
Oooh, oooh! Is something bad happening to twitter? Has it finally started to die? Please, god, tell me that disgusting abomination is finally shambling to an ignominious death.
Well not quite but musky is trying to crypto yolo holdo stonk the platform into oblivion in order to make it a tax write off and ruin thousands of people’s lives a statement I may not be able to put on Twitter beacuse allegedly anti musk rhetoric is being silenced on the platform and I also don’t use it.
Also I have no proof that what he is doing but it wouldn’t surprise me.
I hearby dub the ever-lengthening list of controversial crap that he’s doing at Twitter as Elongate.
I don’t have many internet to give but you get an internet!
Love it. Elongate it is.
The only justifiable use of -gate suffix in, like, ever.
You win!
Just for the record, this is JUST because the controversy-list keeps getting longer, and not at all in any way definitely not because his purchase of Twitter is part of some sort of rich-person dick-measuring contest.
I think saying he’s crashing the service deliberately is giving him too much credit.
He’s a spiteful idiot whose bluff was called and was forced into doing something he didn’t want to do and isn’t capable of doing.
I am not really saying that he wanted to do intially do this twitter nor do i have any evidence to back this up nor am i that serious, but i am just basing this on his tendency to scam. Also spiteful idiots are perfectly capable of manipulating the tax code in their favor or at least hire people to do it just look at Orange Julius Ceaser.
I am not saying the dude isn’t evil, he absolutely is, but I also think this is him sincerely trying to make the site work and claw himself out of the debt he put himself in.
*I am not saying that he initially wanted to do this to Twitter,
Sorry this forum really isn’t optimized for phones and there is no edit button.
Elon Musk was forced to follow through on his proposed deal to buy twitter on threat of legal proceedings airing all his dirty laundry, and he’s currently in the early stages mismanaging it because he’s an idiot who saddled an already unstable company with massive debt.
It’s very funny and also probably going to have a severe negative impact on a lot of people’s livelihoods
The tweet in which he revealed the company is losing $4m A DAY was something else.
People thought this man was taking us to Mars
He may or may not take us to Mars, but without him our manned space program would be crap.
Without his money our manned space program would be crap. He’s not the only source of money.
that clown is going to drive a satellite through somebody’s space station and the resulting debris will end *all* exploration of the solar system for 20 years.
There’s nothing Musk’s company is doing that a well funded NASA couldn’t be doing without it, and it’s not like SpaceX functions without massive government funding anyways.
If only that platform hadn’t become a load-bearing structural component of Web 2.0.
And now it’s on fire. It’s a load-bearing fire.
As much as one may or may not dislike Twitter, it IS responsible for a lot of people’s livelihoods or social circles. It being driven into the ground is bad.
I may not vibe with some things like Snaphat or Tiktok, but I’m not gonna knock it if some people get some enjoyment out of it.
Elon Musk bought Twitter for 44 billion dollars, fired half of the employees, declared “free speech for all” and “comedy is allowed again”, decided that blue checkmarks should cost 20$ per month, immediately bargained down to 8$ a month, advertisers started pulling out en masse. people running the numbers have said that Musk is rocketing Twitter deeper and deeper into debt because it would take every single Verified User paying 8$ a month, for a whole year, would make as much money as 30 hours of ad dollars. I don’t understand all of the financial details of the loans but he has borrowed some big dollars from the banks and I think if it gets bad enough he has to sell Tesla shares to get out of it. Also Tesla stock is dropping like a rock, everyone is fleeing Twitter like it’s the Exodus, Musk immediately rescinded “free speech for all” because people were making fun of him, new subscription Twitter is supposed to have half the ads but they’re better targeted, and give priority to your tweets. It’s supposed to roll out Monday morning except he’s fired half of the staff so I don’t know who he’s expecting to actually… Do the work. Also he’s being sued because firing half of your workforce without at least 60 days notice is one of those things they have “laws” about. Thaaaat should about cover it?
You literally won’t show up on people’s feeds unless you are Verified now. Elon Musk has destroyed the very purpose of Twitter.
He’ll sell it in a year, but the damage is done.
Huh, it turns out making an unstable individual the face of a company, and using their temper tantrums as the company’s guiding principle, isn’t a viable business strategy. Go figure.
“Also Tesla stock is dropping like a rock”
The worst part of that for him, is that he can’t use “X Tesla shares” against the loan, he had to put up “$X worth of Tesla stock”. The lower Tesla stock goes, the more he has to sell to raise the same amount of USD.
Oh no! Anyway.
And now thy are racing to try and hire some of the people back, because they realized that the company has a hard time functioning when you fire most of the people who are keeping it running.
As it turns out, the REAL answer to “Who is John Galt?” is “somebody who can’t do jackshit without a huge number of workers and government-sponsored infrastructre turning the crazy potdreams he had into stuff that actually functions in reality”, who knew?
I think you missed the part where he promised to unban the man behind 6 Jan, unless that fell under the heading of “free speech for all”.
With luck, Trump’ll attack Musk for not unbanning him yet and Musk’ll get pissy about it and not do it at all.
Elon Musk bought it, said ‘Comedy is now legal on Twitter’, started charging for blue verification checkmarks (which defeats the point of them being to stop impersonation) and is now acting like a crybaby when people impersonate him and don’t specify that it is a ‘parody’.
Like it is almost like, the blue checkmarks had a purpose to specifically prevent impersonation! Wow!
It would be funny to see him flail around destroying it with horrible mismanagement if it didn’t also mean a bunch of people got fired and him driving it into the ground will screw over content creators, artists and others that use Twitter as part of their career.
Short form, Elon Musk tried to manipulate the stock price and instead whoops’d himself into buying Twitter. It has since come out that Twitter is basically a profitability black hole and there’s a non-zero chance that the site becomes a smoking crater within the next few years, or at least it becomes MySpace-levels of relevant.
As with all things with tendrils into the lives of many people, this will cause a lot of pain until people figure out new ways of doing adequately similar things. And also there’s a misinformation explosion happening because the content moderation team was bulldozed. (That’s part of why Jeph was banned. The full story is slightly funnier.)
It’s probably a net good for humanity, but it’s also too little too late, so.
(I haven’t used Twitter since 2011 or so. Never got the hang of it. I’m old.)
Jeph’s attitude to it seems to pretty much be ‘LOL, whatevs, social media isn’t great anyway, and it was funny, so it was worth it’ from the newspost he made.
But yeah, Twitter seems to be changing in mostly bad ways from what I can tell.
They have a mastodon account but they rarely (if ever) post there directly, it’s all cross posted from twitter as far as I can tell.
I’m surprised there aren’t more alternatives. Every programming language / web framework book I’ve bought in the last five years has “let’s make a clone of Twitter!” as its tutorial project.
Making a clone of Twitter isn’t hard, but building the infrastructure to handle what everyone does on Twitter is significantly more expensive than what can be handled in a tutorial.
Anyway, people should check out pillowfort.social.
Ol’ Jepheroni seems pleased as punch with the whole thing. He knew exactly what he was doin’ and got the result he wanted, so I’d say things are goin’ pretty well for ‘im.
Again, Robin is the CN shoulder-devil, and Leslie is the NG shoulder-angel.
Devils are LE unless 5th edition changed that Daemons NE and Demons Chaotic Evil, though she could have had alignment shift but I guess the GM isn’t enforcing the negative level penalty.
A) I didn’t specify edition.
B) I’m borrowing from both the DnD alignment system and from the shoulder angel/devil tropes, and classifying them as angels and devils came from the trope rather than DnD.
I mean no offense I am aware of the tropes but Devils are evil so if Robin was CN devil she would have lost level points or her CR would have gone down from power loss. If she is an NPC.
Also I don’t know if 5th edtion has changed the alignment system for Devils I haven’t played it.
It’s really common nowadays to use the alignment system as general shorthand rather than talking about it the context of D&D
And “shoulder slaad” is a joke on its own that would distract from the point more than clarify it.
I mean she *has* suffered a penalty in form of not getting politician level money anymore…
From a 5s Google, it does not appear that 5e changed that.
Robin is so unlikeable I’m astounded Becky actually considers her a role model.
Robin leveraged a version of Becky’s coping mechanism into national success. Why wouldn’t she be a role model for Becky?
She did?
Off-color jokes propelled her into being a House Representative. I’d say that counts as a national success.
I guess. Like Leslie mentioned though Robin’s politics were probably the biggest tangible threat to Becky’s life other than her father. And Robin hasn’t actually shown any guilt or remorse for that. She has for Becky specifically but not for anyone else or even her own family. Don’t know if that’s a great role model even if she did manage a successful career politically.
Robin ended her congressional campaign and career in politics for Becky’s sake, which I imagine earned her a decent amount of goodwill
I mean, Robin tanked her career and lost her endorsements before that by firing her staff. Mind you, there is a good question, “Is there anything wacky and fun Robin could do to earn redemption?”
She did all that for Becky, and that’s great for Becky but I fully believe if Becky were a straight girl if that were literally the only change in her character, and every event stayed the same, Robin would still be congresswoman and voting to pass lgbtq discriminating laws. My point being I don’t think she cares. Despite, y’know…very likely being queer herself. She just kind of lacks the empathy. I guess that’s fine since she didn’t do any actual damage (as far as we know) right? The law we know of didn’t pass, she’s sponsoring her local at risk, queer orphan. That makes up for everything.
Maybe she could start one of those car wash cliches and donate the funds to an lgbt supporting charity, that will make up for being oblivious or indifferent enough to have a rapist on her volunteer staff or illegally squatting at a local lesbian’s house, and uprooting her private life into a public scandal.
I don’t think it’s a matter of empathy so much as awareness. She was proudly ignorant and incurious and mostly did what she was told. Once she was aware of Druggo McStabbed she had him fired, and cut the rest of her team loose for trying to protect him.
A vast amount of the increase in public support for LGBTQ rights came from people knowing out queer people. For most of us personal empathy works a lot better than in the abstract. That makes Robin more normal than monstrous.
As for having a rapist as an unpaid volunteer intern – there’s no way she could have known about him. Nobody does full background checks on that kind of volunteer and, unless he had a record or at least accusations, a background check wouldn’t have caught it anyway. Nearly every employer in the world is that “oblivious or indifferent”. There’s no way not to be.
She aspires to be as unlikeable as Robin is, and she seems to be succeeding
…the phrase “old married couple” comes to mind…
You know the whole “your dreams are what’s happening to you in another universe” thing?
These two have had some interesting ones.
That other universe must be a strange place. I just dreamed that C.J. Cherryh walked into my house. She liked my sister better than me. She wore her hair like Miss Bliss in the Cul de Sac comic strip.
I did not expect to see Cherryh mentioned here!
Are you Team Cyteen?
I used to be a huge fan, but I burned out on science fiction some time in the late ’80s. I’m all fantasy, now. I follow her on Facebook, though. My favorite series was Morgaine.
Morgaine is the best, though I like a lot of her other work
More like an old divorced couple with problematic child custody issues.
…I mean, you could say that, but “old married couples” are a cliché for a reason.
Right, but the reason is that women weren’t allowed to divorce partners no matter how much they despised them/were abused by them without also becoming destitute and social pariahs. As women got older and gave fewer fucks, they stopped playing sweet and dutiful housewife and the sniping started.
These days, if you’re in a married couple that fights like this? Get the fuck out. There are billions of people in the world and you deserve to be with one who won’t make you feel like shit.
I do not like this Robin DeSanto, I do not like her bravado, I do not like her teaching class class I do not like her when she is an ass.
Finally, the love-hate dynamic I’ve been missing since the WorthLess breakup has taken on a new form
Love hate? Kinda feels like hate and I forced my way into your life against your wishes and through personally convenient happenstance you are now stuck with me. But I guess you can consider teeth grinding levels of annoyance a form of love.
So does Becky, who is an adult, get a say in any of this?
Why would their pet project be allowed an opinion? Silly person who operates in normal reality with a healthy view on the world and a healthy idea on relationships!
Her say is the reason they’re even having this dispute. Becky chooses who to go to for guidance and when and that being Robin right now is why Leslie is upset.
Leslie, I know you’re allergic to cats so you wouldn’t know this, but people are like cats. If you want them to trust you, you gotta give them space. If you chase them yelling “trust me!!!”, they’re going to avoid you.
I thought we’d established that Dorothy was a puppy.
This summer, I had the pleasure of hosting the absolute most puppy-like cat I have ever met.
I totally get WHY Leslie doesn’t like Robin but I can’t help but think that Robin’s just out here livin’ life and talking to Becky when spoken to. Like sure she enjoys helping Becky but she’s not pushin’ it.
These two are just Bagheera and Baloo.
Humorously ironic that Robin is the “devil”, considering her surname.
Her and Leslie’s hair colors, *chef’s kiss in thematic characterization*
Her and Leslie’s shirt colors, *reverse-chef’s kiss?*
Yikes, if Becky became more like Robin, she’d lose all likability
Depends. Some people like Robin, so Becky becoming more like Robin might make her more likeable to certain crowds.
… granted, those crowds are MAGA types, and they’re on a like-Robin hiatus until she pulls off that soft reboot of hers, but they still count. …. *sigh*
Wait.Becky has likeability?
Dina likes her.
Likeability is generally subjective; you not liking a chracter doesn’t automatically mean others won’t like them as well.
Not gonna lie this feels like a battle for Becky’s soul now. I would not want to turn into Robin. Especially since she’s a lot smarter than Robin so adopting more of her amoral approach to life could be kind of yikes in the future.
The problem is that “make mistakes together” was actually good advice.
Basically. We’ve also seen that Becky makes frankly significantly better decisions in who to date than Leslie has, so Becky honestly shouldn’t want to be too much either of these two.
Heck, Leslie was the one who invited Robin to speak in her class when she was still a running as a MAGA Republican – because she had a crush on her.
And it had to be pointed out to her how bad of an idea that was.
Talkin’ ’bout dang ol’ broken clocks, man.
-Boomhauer, probably
well she might be willing to take some advice but i don’t think she really ‘respects’ robin as far as i know/fairly skeptical of her motives and such
chibi Robin and Leslie hovering next to Becky’s head, dressed as an angel and devil, yes in that order.
Well Robin is definitely an imp – that’s basically just a tiny chibi devil right?
This is a vs match not a tag team one!
So they’re skipping over teh marriage right onto their divorce arc lol
I am reminded of how much I dislike Robin in this universe. And not in a remotely cathartic way, like when Mary makes an appearance. I guess I… find her so uncomfortable, perhaps because aspects of her remind me of people in my past who caused a lot of pain.
If we ever see another storyline where she pops up for more than a couple of strips I’ll probably have to check out until it’s over.
I found that part of Dumbing of Age’s… thing is “people whose personalities might seem quirky in a pure comedy-focused setting become way less funny in a more grounded one”.
Just look at Mike whose behaviour became way more disturbing and as a result of being transplanted into the more grounded DoA setting.
Sure, I get that. But Mike seemed… I guess a bit broken, not happy. Robin seems delighted with herself and like almost everything goes her well. Here she is, in a new job she seems happy with, and able to be right alongside the woman who’s house she broke into and who’s boundaries she absolutely trampled- continuing to ignore her discomfort and seeming perfectly happy in being, well, awful.
Like, that makes it much more galling and harder to observe, for me at least. Much like how her attitude reminds me of people from my past, so does the fact that she just seems to be totally happy with her situation and facing no real consequences. It… isn’t pleasant to witness, that’s all.
Oh Leslie. It’s very possible the point might be Becky might fear she’d lose you. It might not be a logical fear at all but eh. You are the closest thing to a parental figure and she’d definitely have some emotions about that. But really who would give a shit if they lost Robin? Robin is acceptable collateral honestly. Even ignoring her zaniness.
Like if Robin ever (ever?) disapproves or something it’s kind of a coin toss on whether it’s actually bad or not. Hell Robin barely feels like an adult. Some of the freshman cast feels more adult that her. A lot of them do in fact. Hell: Joe since he’s been growing feels more grown up than she does. I think the two were probably neck and neck in terms of maturity BEFORE Joe started growing as a person. She’s pre-hit with the character development stick Joe mature. That Joe like got the occasional thing right but it seemed almost accidental.
Ladies, it’s not good for Becky for her Mums to fight like this. You need to be a United front.
Just forget Becky, Leslie. You did your help, it’s not like you’d bought her with your kindness.
Nobody should own anybody by being nice.
I do think Becky and Leslie will remain in each others’ lives, but you are right about this, and this is something that’s sometimes lost here: Leslie offered Becky help without strings attached, and did help her, help which Becky was appreciative of, if not always comfortable accepting. Becky wasn’t agreeing to become part of a family by doing that, not in the same way Becky became family with Jocelyne and Joyce.
That’s also part of it, though. I suspect Becky does consider Leslie family and that makes talking frankly about this more difficult, much like how she’s hiding it from Joyce despite their issues as of late. I’d bet she probably isn’t going to tell Jocelyne or Hank about it, either, for similar reasons, not readily, anyway.
I do think Becky has an affection for Robin, and she likely respects her more for dropping out of the race, but she’s not going to lose Robin’s respect for this, and even if she did, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, given the whole reason the two became acquainted was Becky trolling her by using her twitter to advocate for progressive policies while pretending to be Robin.
Yep, Robin is a pretty horrible person…
I realize I’m roughly 20 years late with this, but I’d really appreciate if someone could help me out. The truth is: I never really understood Robin’s character. I don’t get what kind of trope or what caricature she is meant to portray. I’ve only read Shortpacked besides DoA, and admittedly I was younger (and knew less English) back then so I’m sure a lot of things flew over my head, but I never really got what exactly Robin was meant to be. Is she funny? Is she a comedic character? Is she a parody of something in particular? I just don’t know how to feel about her. If anyone could give some pointers to me I’d be really thankful.
As I recall she started out as a parody of Sara Palin.
Robin honestly could probably be best compared to Daffy Duck. She can be self-centered and irresponsible, and some of the humor with her is due to her being oblivious to things that’d be obvious if she was paying more attention, like in Shortpacked where she was oblivious to Ethan being gay because she was interested in him, or in Dumbing of Age, her being oblivious to the negative things she was doing politically because she only focused on the benefit to her.
Honestly, there is an irony in that she is in some ways a worse person in Shortpacked but is paying for it more in Dumbing of Age, arguably. I guess it’s just an example of the differences in the settings.
Honestly looney toons character in a world with more serious consequences makes me think of the Joker really (thought that was a cool meta idea too given the animated show was also Warner Bros).
She was originally a hyperactive dumbass (mostly through lack of willingness to stop and think things through) who had literal superspeed powers to make the “hyperactive” even more pointed, in a setting that had drama, yes, but it was basically superhero drama – centered around human reactions to absurd things, in It’s Walky!. Then in Shortpacked, she moved into a setting that was a little more grounded so she occasionally faced consequences, but things were still basically absurd enough she could stumble through with nonsense.
Now, DOA is way more grounded, and she’s someone who failed upwards through things like connections, luck, and being a useful token minority upholding shitty politics. Her self-absorbed flightiness is a lot less endearing, especially since it does reflect an unfortunate number of ghastly little chucklefucks in our politics who have done the same thing and keep getting treated as serious and important voices in how the country should be run. It’s pretty much guaranteed that after her “soft reboot” time out of the limelight, she’ll be able to go back into national politics or punditry and cause more damage.
She’s someone who can be funny in the moment but is Not Great if you actually pull back and look at how she’s acting overall.
In some ways Robin is a parody of politicians, like I think she was reintroduced in this as partly a parody of Sarah Palin.
In Shortpacked and the other prior comics, she was a comedic character mostly just there on occasion to be a hyperactive speedster.
In this she is more… occasionally funny in sometimes endearing ways, sometimes absurd ways (lamp assistant), but mostly she’s someone with likely ADHD that mostly made her way into politics through shallow charm and connections. Who has some stronger morals when she thinks for herself but has often let others carry her through life and guide her into acting immorally with little thought for those she harmed, who barely knows what she is doing and mostly skates through on shallow appearances and charm.
In some ways she is supposed to be fucked up – like you know, the immoral politic stuff, the fact she basically has no teaching ability, and the time she entered Leslie’s house and refused to leave for several days.
But she’s not really supposed to be evil in the sense that she actually chooses to do stuff that hurts people because she doesn’t care or is fine with people being hurt. When thinking for herself, she struggled to answer Joyce and Dorothy’s questions in class, fired her staff instead of covering for a rapist who tried to attack people with a knife, and gave up her reelection to prove to Becky that her care was genuine, not a charade she was putting on. When she thinks for herself and is TRYING to do the right thing, she often does.
But when she lets herself skate by and doesn’t put true thought into what she is doing out of self-interest and selfish desires, she hurts people but avoids the guilt by just simply not thinking about it.
Love these two bickering lovebirds <3
DoA Graph 2.0 update
– Now, the graph is full-size. Click in the eye to see it.
– Fix in character avatar size.
– Fix in character selecition.
Da g, this is impressive! Nice job.
Where’s Milu?? I need to tell her I returned to improve the graph. (Thank you, Needfuldoer).
Yeah, come to think of it, I haven’t seen them around here in quite a while.
I sure hope they’re alright 🥺
What’s the opposite of shipping two people? Because that is what I am doing here.
NoTP?
Titanic’ing?
Embargoing? Mooring? Grounding? Oh, hey, arrested!
You know, “Leslie and Robin Pound Each Other in the Most Epic of Hatefucks” has a certain ring to it….
Ahh, kismesis, we love to see it.
omg literally just came here to see if anyone had posted exactly that,
but yes, they are extremely ♠ and we do love to see it
oh dammit now I’m going to be stuck analysing the whole of DoA in terms of quadrants.
Leslie is princess Leila, Robin is Palpatine. I wonder who exactly Becky is.
Becky is Han Solo.
oh my god theyre opponents………