Dumbing of Age

Or a big rise.

Usually, when a comic book keeps heaping bad shit on the hero, it's a "darkest before the dawn" scenario.

I say we wait for daybreak.

I'll be charitable and say he's still working off the concussion

Also, that alt text is cursed.

Edited by rmctagg09 on Sep 19th 2019 at 12:30:00 PM

Of course Danny can't just be upset that Amber moved on, or that he set up all the unnecessary expectations for himself and Ethan. He has to start acting like a creepy fuckboi (you know the thing he spent the whole comic developing out of) who's entitled to her vagina and start shitting up his friendship with Sal.

I am really hoping that he has an honest talk with Sal and she helps him get over this. Just, god, let Danny have feels about this.

Edited by RodimusMinor on Sep 19th 2019 at 1:02:12 PM

What? He is literally just upset that Amber moved on.

He's specifically mad that Walky is dating his "sloppy seconds" and going to go hit on Sal because of it.

Like that is a thing he says in this strip.

I'd be fine if he were just upset that Amber moved on from him because that's normal, without all this crazy shit he's doing now.

Edited by RodimusMinor on Sep 19th 2019 at 1:31:00 PM

Danny no.

Somehow Danny is acting worse than freaking Joe. What is this world coming too?

Yeah, that was a thing he did (and hell Joe called him out on it once) but now it's back because ???

This really bugs me because it's like Danny's whole character development doesn't matter and the complete wanker he was at the start of the comic can just surface at any time.

That's actually entirely realistic, though?

Imagine if Ruth just started smacking Billie around again, or if Sal dumped all her friends to be a Too Cool For School rebel.

That's entirely different. Danny isn't working off trauma in an obviously unhealthy way. He's acting out his unrealistic ideas of romance, which I don't think has ever been properly addressed.

Danny's shit is insidious, and that can resurface real easily.

Edited by Kayeka on Sep 19th 2019 at 7:47:25 PM

Or, hear me out, its pure comedy set up where we will laugh at Dannys strange thought patterns and obvious irrationality.

It'd be "realistic" for someone who used to be abusive to backslide into that, but it'd be really frustrating and unsatisfying as a reader if they did. It's tantamount to making the previous stories you read about the character pointless if they can just be reset at any time.

Danny grew up, he dropped his creepy misogynist views and became a genuinely good dude with self respect and... now we're back to square one. If/when this ends up with him getting told off, then it's an old problem he's already dealt with being microwaved to make him deal with it again because... why?

When did he drop anything?

What, does there need to be a point in the comic where Danny outright says "I have decided to stop being a fuckboy"?

But if I had to pick one I'd go with the part where Joe tells Danny to leave Amber alone in her worst moments because he's just going to find someone else to fall in love with, and Danny rebukes him that it's not about love, he just wants to help her because it's the right thing to do.

And then there's his attempts at finding self confidence and his own identity, gradually coming out to some of his friends, actually honestly respecting Sal as a person without creeping on her like he did Dorothy.

He still hasn't really dropped his unrealistic views of romance, though, which is causing the problem here. He's annoyed with Amber moving on and Walky dating his ex after "insufficient" time again. He doesn't even realise it's a problem.

And he's choosing to express that by being a total creepass, denigrating two women he's said he loved, and now using Sal as a prop, which is the problem. I'm saying we're at a point where Danny shouldn't be acting like this. Getting upset that Amber "moved on" too fast, sure okay, but the rest of this is just inexcusable.

Or if nine years can pass and a major character can't go through any significant change, then the heck is even going on?

Edited by RodimusMinor on Sep 19th 2019 at 2:03:48 PM

The Amber outburst says to me he's kinda not ok with constantly making allowances in his life for a mentally fragile ex who jerked him around and for who's sake he avoided actually getting into a relationship with someone. Especially since he found out about this just after finding out about Ethan's current love life.

Is this more or less dumb than Joyce claiming to be the girlfriend?

The dumb dumb quota has surely been surpassed of late.

Well this series is called Dumbing of Age afterall.

I'd say it's slightly less dumb, because Danny has less to lose with this than Joyce did with her stunt, but it is incredibly uncomfortable to watch him go all misogynistic all of a sudden, with basically zero prompt. What's with characters turning their entire development around this book? At least Walky has some excuse for it and isn't being as self-destructive as the others, but Joyce and Danny are really going at it.

Well remember, despite it being years for us, Comic-Book Time is completely in effect here. For them, they're just getting to Halloween, meaning they've been at school for barely two months. You can't expect any form of development made in that short of time to fully take effect yet, since for them it either just happened and they haven't followed through yet, or they've relapsed because of how little time its been since they started to change.

Joe demonstrated this for us pretty clearly the day he came to class in an inappropriate shirt. People's growth are not straight lines.

I thought it was pretty clear that's part of Joe's ongoing character study, that he's reversing to keep himself from changing because he's afraid of being a mature person. That's different than Danny suddenly becoming a sexist dweeb again.

What kind of story reverses on character development for the hell of it?

This one, apparently.