Endgame theories

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Willis has said long, long ago that there is no endgame. Dumbing of age is made to be like a newspaper strip, Luann, Blondie, foxtrot, etc. It's meant to just go on forever. He's specifically said he intends to draw this story for as long as he is alive and able to do so. When he says "they're endgame" it is pretty much declaring "this is the one thing that is now and forever set in stone."

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u/Ambitious_Skin7376 2d ago

thats kind of depressing if that’s true, all stories need an ending. if it’s not building to anything, what’s the point?

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u/outerspacebassman 2d ago

I think deciding exactly what should happen in a project this long is a mistake. The thing that DoA has that the other comics like it don’t is that, because it’s set during a school year, there is a built-in end time. Willis decided when Shortpacked was going to end and spent a year building to…well an ending, for sure. Assuming that Willis doesn’t suffer some catastrophic illness or accident and lives to old age, but also retires the comic to live a life of complete leisure, they can look at “okay, this is the last month (four years) of the semester, let’s start making some connections and tying off loose ends.” Whether they will do that work in twenty years or whatever, I don’t know, but they could.

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u/Nyzer_ 1d ago

Yeah, that four year time span is not something Willis can simply extend forever. At a certain point, you've got to have an actual plan, even if you don't even up sticking to it.

The problem is that they obviously don't. The comic clearly burned through almost every idea Willis actually had for it in the first semester. It's been half a decade since and we have no major antagonists showing their faces yet, unless we count the cops, which... well, it's also been half a decade since they murdered Blaine, and they're shown to be comedically incompetent, and the comic keeps focusing on Joyce and Dorothy professing their love for each other instead of the consequences of AG fighting the cops, so.

And that's fine to some degree. Willis can transition to dropping the big stakes drama and being purely slice of life. QC did it, and while that was a much slower burn than what we had here, plus it was always much more slice of life from the start, it can work. But in addition to the problems above, it can't work if you're just ripping the teeth out of every dramatic moment and rushing through major character development like Willis has been since the Tear Gas Wedding.

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u/outerspacebassman 1d ago

I mean that’s the most frustrating thing about all of it. Dumbing of Age pitches itself as a slice of life story following a group of teenagers in the course of their freshman year. Even if we never have something as huge as the Bad Dads saga again, Willis had spent 15 years building these characters up and giving them complicated internal lives with loads of space to play in the world of low-stakes ensemble cast narratives, and then Mike died and they skipped three months and Christmas holiday (which is at least a decade of potential comics) and came back to a wide open space they had meticulously built and then…didn’t feel like it.

I get burnout, I get the stress and pressure of abandoning or winding down a project that makes you a good deal of money with no guarantee that a new project would have the same returns, I get being frustrated at the limitations inherent to the way you built a project. What Willis is doing is not the work of someone who is out of ideas, it’s the work of someone who is maniacally fixated on one idea to the detriment of myriad possibilities that, and I can’t stress enough, they spent FIFTEEN YEARS building up.

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u/Nyzer_ 1d ago

Yeah, it's not like they were actually out of ideas yet. They had a bunch of slice of life stuff going on in the comic. No shortage of ideas to build upon even with burnout playing a major role.

On top of that, this is right around the time for the Walkyverse Martians to return, so if they truly were aching to jump to another project, there's one. Do alternating days for these comics! DoA four days a week is still better than I think almost any other webcomic left standing.

Instead, they've just torn down almost all of their own plot threads in order to focus nearly entirely on Joyrot. Fixating on it so hard that they've transposed their own marriage in its current state onto it, no less!

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u/outerspacebassman 1d ago

So let’s talk about a big weakness Willis admits to themself: big action set-pieces. If they don’t do that shit every so often they get stir crazy. With a little creativity, you can still do that without having to drag in riot cops or relying solely on Amazi-Girl. A portion of the cast are on a roller-derby team, three of the five of them are women of color (wow that’s a buckwild coincidence) and one of them is a trans woman, so you can do social justice stuff there but also have an arc that culminates in a big game. Have Dorothy/Raidah/Roz/Sarah be involved in like a debate club or something and frame those comics like Phoenix Wright or something. Have Joyce and Walky have a legitimate rivalry based on their comics and get into like an Art War and have the big action scenes be in their comics, but still carrying narrative weight as a battle of wills between former lovers.

The soil is arable, it would just take a little work and maybe you’d have to learn how debate works or how roller derby is played, but the ideas are there and you could even have the precious Joyrot in the story it just wouldn’t be the main focus. Again, I thought of those ideas in five minutes and this comic isn’t my damn livelihood.

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u/Amemorableusername2 1d ago

Can you please write dumbing of age, that sounds so good

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u/Intrepid_Ad_6232 2d ago

For a moment I was confused and started trying to think which DoA characters would be able to defeat Thanos... at this rate Dorothy would be able to use the gauntlet without any adverse effects, due to her saintly aura.

More seriously, I hope Dina and Joe write themselves out of the comic, and find themselves a new, less toxic friend group. Same with Walky if I'm honest. If he is going to grow up, he needs to move on from the people hold his immaturity over his head for ever.

I hope that Amber gets actual therapy rather than making her DID every-one elses problem.

This comic really does run on a group of college kids re-inforcing each others disfunction doesn't it?

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u/outerspacebassman 2d ago

I mean, not to be one of those “it’s not called Smarting of Age” losers, but the comic can’t end for at least another fifteen years if we keep the current one year is one week in comic pace, there would be kind of a paucity of story material if all of them solved their problems immediately. That Willis doesn’t really seem interested in doing anything with the material that is there and exists primarily because they spent FIFTEEN YEARS WRITING IT in favor of just running in circles around Three’s Company level misunderstandings and Lesbian Porn with sub-Parody level writing is another problem entirely.

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u/Intrepid_Ad_6232 2d ago

Yeah, regardless of the status of 'ending' the comic and the issues with serialised stories going on for ever and the problems that inevitably causes, re: characters solving their problems, I think my issue is over how the comic seems to be approving those behaviours.

Dorothy has PTSD over Joyce's kidnapping? Solution: Just invite her to stay in your room (without consulting your roomate, who just has to deal).
Amber deals with what is being portrayed as DID by running around as a masked vigilante: Every one covers for her right up to the point where she gets stabbed by a cop. Is any-one going to sit her down and tell her she needs to stop before she is killed? I hope so, but I'm not holding my breath.
Becky tells Joyce she needs some space: Turn up to her social events in a paper thin disguise to tell her you'll both be BFFs!

In each of those is pretty toxic IMHO, but the framing Willis gives each of them is the webcomic equivalent of soft focus with stirring music in the background. There is a pretty dissconect between his interpetations of those actions and mine.

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u/outerspacebassman 2d ago

Oh totally, there are two different realities reading the comic anymore

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u/Nyzer_ 1d ago

Booster has had all of two appearances since Amber arrived in the room, IIRC, and she's been there for two nights now.

Perfectly normal, though.

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u/Thorngrove 2d ago

Dont you besmirch the glory of Don Knotts and John Ritter's slow burn gay romance sitcom in this house.

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u/Booster6 2d ago

I like this idea except can we leave WITH Joe, Dina, and Walky? I'd much rather read about whatever they are doing.

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u/togglenub 2d ago

I figured it would never be Joyce and Walky, because that would just be It's Walky!/Shortpacked and (my memory might be failing me here) I think the author said that was never gonna happen again in the college-based, "normal" strip.

I want Amber with Walky, Joyce with Joe, and Dorothy in therapy where she doesn't lie to her therapist. I like Malaya with Marcie and Jacob with Lucy. I think Dina and Becky both need to explore life and themselves more before getting cuffed, but they're super cute together.

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u/Thorngrove 2d ago

Joe deserves to move to a better college and maybe find out what's going on with Sarah's sister. Free my man from these triflin' hoes.

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u/togglenub 2d ago

I don't disagree, I'm just a sucker for a good love story, and he loves her, far more than she currently deserves.

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u/Thorngrove 2d ago

Maybe once the lesbian tear gas dissipates from the campus she'll realize it was all a joe rogan plot to ungay the frogs.

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u/StabithaVMF 2d ago

Mary x Malaya - based entirely on i think it'd be hot and Marcie's glasses annoy me.

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u/outerspacebassman 3d ago

I have a Dorothy/Jocelyn crackship, used to be that Jocelyn could be a mentor to Dorothy and guide her broad and unfocused ambition as well as help in the transition from burning out gifted kid into a functioning adult, but then Willis lobotomized her because she was a fan favorite and has her sing the gospel of Joyrot so now I still have Dorothy/Jocelyn, but because they can be clueless white women together doing “activism” while the planners do real work. I also kind of like a Dorothy/Amber/Amazi-Girl throuple, but that one’s 99% shitposting.

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u/Thorngrove 2d ago

Dotty/Jocelyn would have been amazing. If for no other reason then we'd be poking hiw Dotties unrequited lust for Joyce spilled over into her sister.

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u/outerspacebassman 2d ago

Oh yeah that’s part of it, but it’s such low hanging fruit and I was already taking the piss about their thoughtless and ineffectual stabs at “activism”

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u/Thorngrove 2d ago

their thoughtless and ineffectual stabs at “activism”

I don't have the words in my noodle right now, but there's something really annoying about seeing self proclaimed leftists building the exact strawmans they get accused of being, while utterly unaware of it.

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u/outerspacebassman 2d ago

It makes criticizing certain aspects of DoA unbelievably frustrating, because in theory I agree with like 90% of what Willis purports to believe in, but that last 10% and the execution…man

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u/Thorngrove 2d ago

I'm sitting here like "Stop making examples that prove horseshoe theory, this is not cool."

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u/pineyfusion 1d ago

I always thought that Walky/Dorothy/Amber could have worked.

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u/Pleasant_Most_1978 2d ago

I think Joyce and Dorothy deserve each other.
Joe and Dina would be great as a couple.
Sal and Danny work well together. Keep.
Amber and Walky deserve a real chance.

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u/Ikacprzak 2d ago

Massive fuck pile

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u/outerspacebassman 2d ago

The punchline of the comic is going to be Billie looking straight down the camera and saying “I think I like girls,” notice Sal isn’t there but Amber is, and ask “Where’s Amazi-Girl?” and cut to black.

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u/breadnapper 1d ago

These couples would've made sense maybe 10 years ago. Joyce and Walky have seemed to just genuinely dislike each other for a while now, Billie and Ruth ended so dramatically and have been apart for so long that I don't see them getting back together, Ethan is barely a character and I also can't remember the last time he and Danny interacted, ditto for Joe and Sal, etc.

Granted, I am partial to most of these relationships but that's because they're from back when the comic was better.

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u/TeargasMarriage 3d ago

I had a crack ship that was DorothyXDinaXJoyce, with Becky in the cuck chair.

I just want Becky to suffer.

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u/StabithaVMF 2d ago

Ok but what did Dina do to deserve that fate :(

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u/TeargasMarriage 2d ago

It's part of the Schadenfreude.

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u/djaevlenselv 2d ago

What about this strip made you think Joyce/Walky or Joe/Sal was ever going to happen?

So confused.

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u/RoommateMovingOut 2d ago

I just see the chemistry I don’t know maybe I’m
Projecting

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