#Carla Rutten

[itswalky]

you are the leading authority on cars which are also transgender women

I'm stultified by the insanity, but maybe Carla has some words of wisdom

[inbarfink]

[dumbingofage]

(july 18, 2025)

[wlw-webcomic-bracket]

The six characters who will advance to the championship via wildcard slots (highest overall vote count without being a group winner) are:

Zhusen (Experience Boost, Group H)

White Chain (Kill Six Billion Demons, Group H)

Eddie Kaspbrak (Out of the Blue, Group B)

Penny Spender (Paranatural, Group F)

Carla Rutten (Dumbing of Age, Group J)

Space Dread (Val and Isaac, Group C)

[lauralot89]

Unapologetic Assholes and the Fans Who Love Them

(It's me, I'm the fans, it's me.)

Every child has a character they want to be when they're growing up. Whether it's because they love the character itself (Han Solo is the greatest) or because they want to be part of the character's world (who doesn't want to be a mermaid?), there's always some fictional person a kid would swap lives with in a heartbeat.

For me as a child, that character was Veruca Salt.

Now, Veruca Salt is a spoiled brat. She is THE spoiled brat. She has no redeeming qualities and if I ever met her in real life I wouldn't last five minutes without punching her in the teeth.

But I'd have given anything to be her.

Growing up autistic is growing up being wrong. You talk wrong, you laugh wrong, you interact with your peers wrong. You play wrong. Your interests are wrong and so is the way you talk about them. The things that upset you are irrational and insignificant and wrong. The bullying that other kids do to you isn't really bullying, you're just reacting wrong.

Everything about you and how you experience the world is wrong, and you need to get over it.

I couldn't even breathe without an adult jumping down my throat for how I did it, and I was undiagnosed, so I had no idea that there were others like me and I wasn't just some aberrant freak alone in the world.

But then there was Veruca Salt.

Veruca was never wrong. Even when she clearly was. Even when Veruca demanded the impossible, those around her bent over backwards to achieve it and fell over themselves apologizing when they couldn't. Veruca never apologized. Veruca always got what she wanted. She was like a cruel and angry god who only met her fate because she crossed paths with another god who was even more powerful.

And in the Oompa Loompas' song after she fell down the garbage chute, they didn't even blame her for her horrible behavior, by far the worst of any child in the factory. Even when she lost, she won.

I would have given anything to be Veruca, even if only for a day. To express myself without fear and without regard for everyone I was inconveniencing by being abnormal. The rush of that power would have easily carried me for the rest of my life.

And then I grew up, and there was Carla Rutten.

Carla is not only the greatest character in @itswalky's magnum opus, Dumbing of Age, she is also arguably the greatest character in the history of fiction.

Carla is a student at Indiana University. She's transgender and asexual, and in the hands of lesser writers this might lead to temptation to portray her as perfectly kind and moral and inoffensive, lest she be viewed as a negative stereotype.

Instead, Carla is loud, demanding, self-obsessed, and perfect in every way.

Carla refuses to reign herself in, even if it brings further bigotry and anger her way. She won't hold herself to a different standard than any other jackass.

And in the end, even if you hate her, even if you want her wiped from the face of the earth, that's still acknowledging her. And she's still won.

As an asexual ginger Hoosier I cannot even begin to express what Carla means to me and how thankful I am for her existence. There aren't words for how great it is that a character like this exists and is just allowed to be. Allowed to be as flawed and rude and funny and spoiled as anybody else.

More ladies need to be unrepentant self-absorbed jerks. It's a beautiful thing.

[thatlenguy]

carla dumbingofage doodle from a while back

Id in alt, reblogs appreciated!

[thecholma]

What do you get when you combine your favorite Dumbing of Age character with your least favorite DoA character? Artistic goodness from David Willis, of course! If *anyone* in this comic deserves a pie in the pie (and MANY of them do) then Mary is definitely first in line!

[valdvin]

THEY CAME TOGETHER FOR ONE LAST, STRANGE JOB:

...in a ROUSING SPECACTULAR about

DRINKING UNDERAGEDLY...

...to become

MOM FRIEND, JUGS, and SPEED.

Coming soon to a theater near you in an all-ages, all-genders show.

[thicc-astronaut]

Two ways that dumbing of age characters think and talk about sex:

1. Perplexingly scientific investigation and categorization (Walky, Dotty, Dina, and Galasso. Joe might be as well?)

2. Violence as innuendo (Becky, Carla, Sarah, and Joyce/Anti-Joyce)

[sgpsketch]

Good ol' Charlie Sanchez...

[gaiash]

12 Days of Christmas - Day 11. Carla Rutten

I've drawn at least one Dumbing of Age character for each 12 Days of Christmas project, usually at or near the end of the project, and one of the first characters I drew for it was Carla.

12 Days of Christmas

Previous Years: 2013-2014 2014-2015 2015-2016 2016-2017 2017-2018 2018-2019 2019-2020 2020-2021 2021-2022 2022-2023

The Veteran Doctor

Hydrapple

Best Peely

Interesting Year

Himawari Post-Timeskip

Jake the CatDog

100 Years of Disney

Monkey D Luffy

Future Dynamic Duo

Second Division Girls

Carla Rutten

D'Vana Tendi

[itswalky]

Almost this exact scene has been floating around in my head for years, but eventually it couldn't happen, given Developments, so guess what it's a flashback now

[ademmatta]

Today's mood

[dumbingofage]

(october 25, 2025)

[wlw-webcomic-bracket]

In celebration of Carla being this tournament's 1,000th post, please enjoy that one time she pied a transphobe.

[inbarfink]