Dumbing of Age

No time for emotions, we gotta have quips.

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What are the list of side effects for reading this comic?

It's a daily gag strip. If you don't like that read something else. seriously though, I am kind of an old school webcomic reader. Reading Sluggy Freelance, Funny Farm, College Roomies from Hell, GPF, Bruno The Bandit, Kevin and Kell, Kid radd, RPG World, It's Walky,...

Most of them have an ongoing arc, sometimes going into serious stories, but they still made a point to deliver a punchline on a daily basis, with sometimes exception. and I like that format (as a matter of fact, I kind of ceased to follow Zebra Girl, when it ceased to do regular punchlines to go more heavy on the story). I like that kind of delivery. Maybe it's why I don't get people complaining about quipping in the MCU.

There is nothing wrong with it, it's just a narrative choice, and in this precise case, it's still a fitting joke that still manage to establish a a more gravy tone at the same time.

posting butt-hurt threads on Yea Forums.

A turn on for christian girls

This

>no FUNdamentalist gf

Fun is right there in the name

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car chases

I disagree with your assessment of DoA. It is not a daily gag strip, it's a soap opera masquerading as a daily gag strip. Each strip has an equal chance of containing an ongoing topical personal tragedy and the aforementioned gag. This might be acceptable if each strip contained either one or the other, but Willis does not regard them as mutually exclusive. The resulting tone is so inconsistent that it becomes confusing.

That's why Loss isn't as funny as it used to be: the farcically abrupt switch in tone is now matched on a much more frequent basis by DoA (and QC, but sufficient unto the day are the trash fires thereof). Are we meant to be feeling bad for whatever character is on screen, or chuckling at whatever quip or shenanigan has just occurred? The happy medium might be a black comedy, except it seems that schadenfreude is verboten; instead, we're supposed to empathize with every (positively framed) character's bullshit problems.

In sum, DoA comes off as manipulative. It feverishly tries to maintain interest with little jokes, like table scraps, yet presumes to lead the reader emotionally by the nose.

>. It is not a daily gag strip, it's a soap opera masquerading as a daily gag strip
So, like many daily gag strips, then ?

>That's why Loss isn't as funny as it used to be
I thought it was because it was 10 years old and everyone had seen it a million times already.

>This might be acceptable if each strip contained either one or the other, but Willis does not regard them as mutually exclusive
There is nothing wrong with that.
> The resulting tone is so inconsistent that it becomes confusing.

Not really, not for me, at least. It was already frequently like this with It's walky (back when nobody complained about him) and it wasnt an issue then. Like I said, it was the norm for many webcomics.

>In sum, DoA comes off as manipulative.
It really doesn't. No more than any normal story telling is manipulative.

Wondering where Becky is.

It's a balancing act and Willis isn't very good at realizing when humor would serve well to lighten the mood and when it clashes. A lot of his jokes fall flat as well, and if your choice is to end the strip on a dud of a joke or no joke at all then the latter is preferable; this strip is a prime example.

I don't know, there was definitely some manipulation going on during the toedad storyline

>It's a balancing act and Willis isn't very good at realizing when humor would serve well to lighten the mood and when it clashes
I disagree, he does a rather good job at it.
That's not what manipulation is, it's simply story telling.

I'll disagree with you there, I think it's one of his major flaws as a writer.

I enjoy him specifically for his balance of drama and funny. then again, I also enjoy all of the Quips in the MCU and don't understand the people who complain about it.

>I disagree with your assessment of DoA. It is not a daily gag strip, it's a soap opera masquerading as a daily gag strip. Each strip has an equal chance of containing an ongoing topical personal tragedy and the aforementioned gag. This might be acceptable if each strip contained either one or the other, but Willis does not regard them as mutually exclusive. The resulting tone is so inconsistent that it becomes confusing.
I would love a purely soap opera DoA. There's so much going on there that, if Willis had actually handled well, could have made for good drama and interesting stories.

Imagine if he had fleshed out Sal's feelings of being the unfavorite before dropping his "you're whiter than me" bomb? Maybe given her some more black interests like rap or street art, some flashbacks to her childhood pre-crime where her parents where blatantly doing things Walky liked and couldn't connect with her?

>Maybe given her some more black interests like rap or street art
and show her listening to "Sunflower" on her Sony headphones?

>Maybe given her some more black interests like rap or street art
Missing the point. It's not that seh was acting "black", but that because she tended to frequent the "wrong crowd", her mom assigned to her all of her prejudice.

I don't mind discovering after the claim why she think like that. the money box was quite the development.

It's not that she was acting bad, it's that she gave the wrong vibe and her mother never bulged from that perception.

Too many of the films use that style of humor when not all of them can pull it off and a general feel that some of the filmmakers don't have any respect for the material.

>her mom assigned to her all of her prejudice
and none of the pride

>Side effects of reading DoA may include:
>crippling addiction
>anger and frustration
>hysterical laughter at inappropriate times
>a deep hatred for David Willis
Thankfully it does serve a purpose of improving self awareness in other creatives by increasing the desire not to become David Willis.

The problem is that the narrative doesn't function under the assumption that Sal is assigning external reasons to her Mom's behavior rather than accept that it was a reaction to her own. Sal's mom dislikes her because she's racist.

>the narrative doesn't function under the assumption that Sal is assigning external reasons to her Mom's behavior rather than accept that it was a reaction to her own.
Sal got worst precisely because her mom started to assign narrative on her. All she did at the beginning was "hanging out with the wrong kids". It became a vicious circle from that point on.

>vicious circle
more like a vicious mobius strip because of the flashback retcons

>I kind of ceased to follow Zebra Girl
Bad move, Zebra Girl owns. It ended permanently not too long ago so it's a good time to catch up.

She was inside us all along