Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “Dumbing of Age”
communion, tarot, and Lavina Fielding Anderson: some thoughts on sacraments
- kudos:My kid is being raised by a mother who is entirely done with anything that smacks of religion and a father who is very non-literal and not very exclusivist, so it’s unsurprising that she tends to pick and choose when she wants to do church stuff with me. If I’m driving over to Louisville to attend church in person, she’ll usually come with me. If I’m attending church via Zoom because Louisville is over an hour away, she tends to read or play in her room instead.
the new Reeder is exactly the app I want right now
- kudos:introduction and history I’ve experimented for a while with consuming a range of media through an RSS reader. I don’t remember how long I subscribed to Feedbin, but being able to follow both Twitter accounts and email newsletters in the same app as my RSS subscriptions was a real game-changer. Eventually, I jumped ship for NetNewsWire—I don’t remember all the reasons behind the switch, but knowing that I could keep subscribing to Twitter and start following some subreddits was definitely a major factor.
abandoning the false god of control
- kudos:Two books that I’ve recently (re)read have been helpful in making sense of some thoughts I’ve been mulling over for the past few weeks. Let’s begin with my rereading of Gérard Siegwalt’s La réinvention du nom de Dieu (“Reinventing God’s Name”). At a few points in his book, Siegwalt makes some points about “rationalism” having replaced God in the modern world and the need to keep rationalism but put it in its place as we develop a new conception of God that this world needs better.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for My Peer Group's Smoochy Chart Is Basically Now an Ouroboros (A Thirteenth Dumbing of Age Collection), by David Willis
- kudos:Well, I did it! This is my second readthrough of Dumbing of Age (up through Book 13 at least) in 2024. I enjoyed it, and I’m glad I’m done so I can read some other PDFs I’ve been waiting on. I like where this series is going (mostly), and I’m sure I have a lot to learn from it still.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Her Hugs Are Traps (A Twelfth Dumbing of Age Collection), by David Willis
- kudos:I think this collection has some of my favorite Joyce moments in them. The way Willis treats religion is something I really respect. Past me might not have loved it so much, but he gets a lot of things right about faith transition, including the way some people immediately take up new dogmas that are just as inflexible and judgmental as the ones they left behind. Can’t believe I’m almost caught up!
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for I Excised All My Anxieties into Cartoon Characters Who Definitely Don't Have Feelings for Each Other (An Eleventh Dumbing of Age Collection), by David Willis
- kudos:Comic continues to be good post timeskip! I am glad to almost be done with this reread, since I’d like to turn my attention to other books, but the reread is totally worth it for additional Willis insight and bonus strips.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Renounce Magical Thinking and Embrace Empirical Evidence (A Tenth Dumbing of Age Collection), by David Willis
- kudos:You know, I’d kind of been dreading getting to this book because I remembered the climax, and I remembered not liking it. After reading it, though, I’m starting to think that it’s better done than I remembered but just that it stresses me out. At any rate, this comic continues to be good, and I also feel like we’re getting more Carla, which I appreciate. She’s the best.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Now Let's Go Commit Something Mildly Subversive (A Ninth Dumbing of Age Collection), by David Willis
- kudos:This actually has an absurdly long(er) title that I refuse to include in its entirety. I appreciate the effort, but I think it might break something somewhere on my web workflow. It’s interesting to read this volume with knowledge of what’s coming up in the series! I can see plots being set up that I might not notice otherwise. Not all of those plots are my favorite, but I still really like this comic, so I’m looking forward to them anyway.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Just Put Down the Ukulele Only Then Can the Healing Begin (A Seventh Dumbing of Age Collection), by David Willis
- kudos:This continues to be good, the bonus material keeps getting better, and even though I can’t be bothered to write thorough reviews for these volumes (still 6 to go!), I’m really glad I own them.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for The Machinations of my Revenge Will Be Cold, Swift, and Absolutely Ridiculous (A Sixth Dumbing of Age Collection), by David Willis
- kudos:The lines between books continue to blur, and as much as I like Becky’s growing importance, I’m not always a huge fan of Amazi-Girl scenes. This continues to be a good comic, though, and I’m enjoying the reread.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Hey, Guess What, I'm a Lesbian! (A Fifth Dumbing of Age Collection), by David Willis
- kudos:Lots of plot developments that will go on to define the comic here, and I enjoyed revisiting them. The bonus material is also really starting to pick up here with the inclusion of Patreon strips, so that’s fun, too.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Amazi-Girl is Always Prepared for Anything (A Fourth Dumbing of Age Collection), by David Willis
- kudos:To be honest, the collections are starting to blur together some, so I don’t exactly remember where the dividing line is between this one and the last. The series continues to be good and fun, though, so it gets this rating nonetheless! I think one reason I like DoA so much is because it’s so different than my own college freshman experience. Some of that is clearly because it’s a work of fiction, but it’s also because BYU is a very different place than other universities, so it’s still interesting to consider different experiences.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Your Stupid Overconfidence is Nostalgic (A Third Dumbing of Age Collection), by David Willis
- kudos:DoA can get kind of melodramatic sometimes, and there’s plenty of that in this book. Sometimes it strains credulity, but it doesn’t get in the way of a fantastic webcomic.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for I Beg You, Don't Cast Your Body Into the Cragged Shame Pits of the Lustwolves (A Second Dumbing of Age Collection), by David Willis
- kudos:Like the first volume, this was familiar (since I’d just read these comics a few months ago) but worth rereading—both because the comic is good and because the bonus materials are interesting.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for This Campus is a Friggin' Escher Print (The First Dumbing of Age Collection), by David Willis
- kudos:It was just earlier this year that I archive binged this comic, but I recently bought PDFs of the collections through a Kickstarter and decided to reread it with the commentary and bonus material. I can see the rough spots that have been improved in over a decade of webcomic history (in art and choice of language, for example), but this still makes for an excellent introduction to the universe, and I feel such a connection with Joyce that it’s interesting to meet her again in her original characterization.
some praise for Dumbing of Age
- kudos:I’ve been a big fan of webcomics since I first discovered they existed in the early-to-mid 2000s. I’ve been following Order of the Stick for about twenty years(!), I’ve read the entire web run of Dr. McNinja, xkcd makes frequent appearance in my lecture slides, and there are other comics that I’ve jumped in and out of over time. It hasn’t been that long since I started following Dork Tower again, but last Fall, it did a crossover with Dumbing of Age, which I mentally noted I should check out sometime.