another timesink
Years ago I introduced the group to the “Girl Genius” webcomic, having become aware of this via an offhand comment on the “Crooked Timber” blog. The other week, by a similar channel (LGM, I think) I discovered “Dumbing of Age,” a webcomic set in a University of Indiana dormitory with a cast of (mainly) freshmen navigating that waystation en route to adulthood. It was launched in September 2010, and its characters are suspended in time, as comix figures will: it took about ten years of daily strips to get past fall semester, by which time it isn’t necessarily still the first Obama administration.
I’m a little surprised that I’ve enjoyed it this much. 2010 was forty years past my own freshman dorm experience, and for obvious reasons the environment depicted in the strip bears little resemblance to the one into which I stumbled so long ago. The tech, obviously (smartphones, videogames, social media) didn’t figure. Our cultural influences were way different: we’d all left the animated characters of our pre-teens behind, and there were certainly none of those after our pre-teens. The undergraduates of “Dumbing of Age” are far cooler with same-sex canoodling than any of us would have been back at UCR’s Hetero Hall. I mean, no doubt that sort of thing went on, but so far as I’m aware it was kept on the down-low, and they didn’t frighten the horses. Heh-heh.
So, not much I can relate to directly—and most of the male freshman characters seem a lot more childish than we were back in H-Hall—but I’ve been captivated by the writing, mainly clever, and the two dozen characters, vividly rendered. The storylines are diverting. One involves a Batman-like undergraduate costumed heroine, which is silly but interesting. Some related storylines include abusive fathers/father-figures, and these are both overly dramatic and incorporate some implausible resolutions, in the course of which sundry characters get through physical set-tos that should leave them seriously injured and writhing like worms. But we accept this in “action” films, so, meh, get over it.
Anyway, if you’ve got my kind of time on your hands—and keep in mind that I’m an annuitant largely confined to the home to look after a terminally ill spouse, so I’ve got a lot of goddamn inventory in that line—and if I’ve made this sound appealing, the entrance to the rabbit hole is here, and once you enter there are something approaching five thousand clicks to come. You’ve been warned.
cordially,
I’m a little surprised that I’ve enjoyed it this much. 2010 was forty years past my own freshman dorm experience, and for obvious reasons the environment depicted in the strip bears little resemblance to the one into which I stumbled so long ago. The tech, obviously (smartphones, videogames, social media) didn’t figure. Our cultural influences were way different: we’d all left the animated characters of our pre-teens behind, and there were certainly none of those after our pre-teens. The undergraduates of “Dumbing of Age” are far cooler with same-sex canoodling than any of us would have been back at UCR’s Hetero Hall. I mean, no doubt that sort of thing went on, but so far as I’m aware it was kept on the down-low, and they didn’t frighten the horses. Heh-heh.
So, not much I can relate to directly—and most of the male freshman characters seem a lot more childish than we were back in H-Hall—but I’ve been captivated by the writing, mainly clever, and the two dozen characters, vividly rendered. The storylines are diverting. One involves a Batman-like undergraduate costumed heroine, which is silly but interesting. Some related storylines include abusive fathers/father-figures, and these are both overly dramatic and incorporate some implausible resolutions, in the course of which sundry characters get through physical set-tos that should leave them seriously injured and writhing like worms. But we accept this in “action” films, so, meh, get over it.
Anyway, if you’ve got my kind of time on your hands—and keep in mind that I’m an annuitant largely confined to the home to look after a terminally ill spouse, so I’ve got a lot of goddamn inventory in that line—and if I’ve made this sound appealing, the entrance to the rabbit hole is here, and once you enter there are something approaching five thousand clicks to come. You’ve been warned.
cordially,