It must be way too early in the morning but I read that as Starscream [BW version – ultramammoth – sheesh] and I almost fell out of my chair. You now owe me one butt cheek, this one is bruised.
Willis said she has not been diagnosed with anything. As a diagnosed (mild) Aspie, I think she has got be Aspie, though. And awesome. Don’t forget awesome.
There are some thing Willis doesn’t have to specifically tell us … like which of the characters are sexually active and which ones aren’t. We can figure them out for ourselves.
That term (Asperger’s Syndrome or Disorder) has been tossed out so readily here that I decided to look it up. Now, I find I’m having similar thoughts to Kernanator …..
That’s for a licensed psychologist to diagnose! Which is tricky with fictional characters. The author himself is seldom qualified to say with certainty. I have Asperger’s, and I’m writing a novel about a character largely based on me, but I’m not sure if the doctors who diagnose her are right.
And who, pray tell, is more qualified than the subject him/herself? (Assuming, of course, that the subject seeks outside information on his/her behavior, in an effort to minimize subjective error…)
Yeah, Dina. You might remember a certain… interesting fellow known for his multitude of charts. Or perhaps your parents might be familiar with this fellow. Of course I am referring to none other than:
Chart Wars! H. Ross Perot and Faz have a chart-off (which is only slightly more hygienic than a shart-off) to the death. Or would to the pain be preferable?
Of course, Amber would know about undependable friends considering Ethan traumatized her by realizing he’s gay in the middle of their first time (I think it was their first time…), and Mike is…. well, Mike.
🙁
Sorry, but that shipment has been categorized as extremely hazardous and un-insurable no carriers will accept the shipment. The DOT and EPA have deemed that it shall be buried where it sits, within a sarcophagus to prevent contamination.
That sarcophagus will be placed inside a safe at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’
Sweet, new poll. I can’t help but notice that, as I type this, the seven most popular characters are all female. I wish more male writers (including novelists, cartoonists, screenwriters, etc.) were NEARLY as good at David Willis at creating female characters.
Same. I’m actually considering just saying “Yeah, this universe has a significant gender imbalance favoring females” and actually felt the need to throw in some more dudes just so I have multiple ones who are named, sympathetic, and have the chance to do anything of possible importance. Because of the three I can think of that have any impact whatsoever, one’s actively evil and the other’s an antagonist.
Of course, given that our male options are a guy who will do your mom for a nickel, a guy who will do any attractive female with no prompting whatsoever, a guy who refuses to come to terms with his sexuality, a guy whose approach to sexuality involves throwing toys at people’s heads, a guy whose only role to date has been as a sex object, and Danny, it’s arguably not that high a bar to clear.
Danny couldn’t do your mom for a nickle. Or any amount of money.
Danny also doesn’t have any toys to throw at people.
Also Danny is the opposite of a sex object.
(The others kinda apply though)
At the moment Mary is there, which seems obvious. Danny has a contingent of, if not fans, people who understand that he does not in fact eat human flesh. Mary, on the other hand, really does lack any redeeming characteristics whatsoever. It’s a little confusing that she made the list, and, say, buckets of blood guy didn’t, since they’re about equally appealing.
Mary’s kind of cute, as long as she doesn’t do or say anything to make you remember that she’s, y’know, Mary. Bob Guy doesn’t even have that. I’m pretty sure that not being dressed at 3 PM would not help Bob’s ratings.
The thing is, Mary is on the poll list and BoB isn’t. Now if Willis had a listing for “other” in the poll, some of the characters not on the poll could get in on the “fun”.
There’s actually been at least one study that shows when women begin approaching half the number of people in the room (I think it was around 30%), men perceive them as being in majority – because they’re so used to actually making up most of the representation. I’m trying to find the source of this now.
Really, in the two of his comics I’ve caught up with (Shortpacked! and DoA), women don’t make up nearly 75% of the cast.
In DoA, 10/15 of the cast page characters are women, or 1/3 – 66.7%. (I’m counting Amazi-Girl and Amber as the same character for this purpose.)
In Shortpacked!, 7/16 of the characters on the cast page are women, or less than half at 43.8%. I’m counting Ultracar as neither a man or a woman for this count. Once we include all the other non-listed characters who’ve made frequent appearances (Reagan, Sydney, Joshua, Manny, Drew), the percentage of women drops to 38.1%.
TLDR; whenever women make up more than 30% of a cast or the occupants of a room people mistakenly perceive to be dominating due to the over-representation of men media has made us accustomed to.
well, I don’t know much about the other comics, but in DoA women are definitely the majority; now we even have a (secondary) character who identifies as female despite her probably-not-XX chromosomes 🙂
I think Super didn’t mean literally 75%.
The fact that that person described all his comics, including Shortpacked!, as being mostly female is just wrong and indicative of perception biases with it comes to gender. If you factored in all the repeat male antagonists of Shortpacked! the percentage of women would be even lower – maybe less than 30%.
Sure DoA’s main cast IS more in favour of women than men, but not by much. If it was vice versa people might still perceive it to be mostly women.
I see your point, although about DoA, I wouldn’t say “not by much” if they make up two thirds of the cast, by your calculations.
Anyway, since Joyce is sort of the main character (by Willis’s own admission), this “imbalance” makes perfectly sense.
Alright, a bit more than “not by much.” While digging around trying, unsuccessfully, to find the study I referenced, I came across another one (A Profile of Americans’ Media Use and Political Socialization Effects: television and the Internet’s relationship to social connectedness in the USA) that said only 19% of primetime TV’s characters are women, less than 1 out of 5, which is way skewed. But that kind of ratio is so prevalent that most people don’t notice, and don’t point it out, so that when there are more than a few female characters people either think they’re female-dominated (like a lot of romantic comedies) and/or female-targeted. But as this comic shows, that doesn’t have to be the case! DoA seems to have a pretty mixed audience.
Guys aren’t very good for plot development unless you want to blow things up. Too clueless, too immune to angst. Danny wallows in the angst and drama and everyone hates on him. A comic featuring Walky in this verse would be eat, poop, play games, sleep – see girlfriend occassionaly. Kinda like Garfield.
I was conflicted, but I eventually had to settle on one of my choices not having boobs. This was out of character for me.
My personal opinion is that males just tend to make poorer characters, in ANY work of fiction, due to the cultural position and limitations of men in general. We’re not supposed to have emotions (and by god we’re definitely not supposed to SHOW them), and what emotions we do have are supposed to be all about sex, cars, sports, and sex. Males in our culture are supposed to have the emotional depth of a teaspoon, focused on subjects we don’t want to hear them talk about. If they *do* range away from that, we get Shinji Ikari or Edward Cullen. Yeah.
Yes, you can have fun male characters, by making them clever or witty or silly. Or by making them muscled and armored and gun-toting, if you’re in the mood for that. But a female can do all that too, and *not* be emotionally shallow too. (And also have boobs, which is a bonus in my book.) Which is probably why in the crap I write, every character of any significance who’s not crazed or evil is female.
Look, I don’t have a problem with preferring female characters. That’s all fine and dandy, but to say there are no significant or amazing male characters is really not true at all. Men are not inherently emotionally shallow, and if you see them as such, that’s kind of horrible and degrading in my opinion. Honestly, I can easily off the top of my head name numerous male characters with emotional depth, hell just watch Breaking Bad pretty much every male character on that show is a powder keg of various emotions. Just because you’ve limited yourself to works where men amount to “Badass dude with sword” doesn’t mean every work of art limits men to that portrayal. And hey, for badass dude with sword there are plenty of those with emotion such as Guts from Berserk (puts on a tough guy facade to avoid the fact that he’s been a victim all his life) or Alistair from Dragon Age (hides behind humor to disguise the pain of being unwanted and unloved). Expand your horizons and bit and you might be surprised.
The women in Dumbing of Age are more interesting because they get more screen time by and large. Ethan, Walky and Danny are sort of exceptions but not really. Ethan exists as more of a vehicle for others (Joyce and Amber mostly) to deal with emotional issues. Walky is the same thing for other characters while also being an outlet for low brow humor, and Danny is well, he’s Danny. The male characters in this comic have all the potential to be just as interesting, but we don’t really get to see it because we routinely rush back to see how Amber or Joyce are dealing with their latest crisis.
But hey, let’s talk about Danny for a second. I don’t get why people hate Danny in this comic. Yes, he doesn’t know Amber is Amazigirl and that’s really stupid, but you know what neither does anyone else in the comic, so that’s really not a knock against him. Danny is the one male character in this comic who routinely displays an emotion that’s not there for joke purposes and people despise him because “wen r we gunna get moar Dina.” He’s a character who struggles with his own identity so he’s always attached himself to another stronger person to find it. Everyone is trying to push him to be what they want from Joe trying to make him into another version of him to his parents who chastise him for not doing a better job of holding onto the girl they like because it shows he’s not such a failure. Yeah, he rejected Amber, but it’s because he’s devoted on a deep level to the idea of living for the person he’s attached to, and he doesn’t honestly worry about what he actually wants. If anything Danny is one of the most sympathetic character in this comic because he gives everything of himself for others with no regard to his own wants or needs, and it constantly comes back to haunt him. He is a social failure, but in a realistic way. He doesn’t belong to the ASPIE parade (Dina, Walky), and he doesn’t fall into the “I’m a terrible person, but it’s okay because lessonz!” club (Joyce, Ethan, Billie, Ruth, Amber). And amazingly he’s more hated than the morally superior group that’s there to reveal why everyone else is a failure through exposition (Sarah, Dorothy, Mike). Danny is a character with layers and depth that people don’t like because frankly everyone can identify on some level with his struggle which isn’t wacky or silly, and it’s not fun to actually be reminded of a flaw that doesn’t have a simple fix (ie substituting devotion for identity, love and acceptance) especially when that flaw is hurting other characters people like. We’d rather see social retards be wacky and succeed despite their incredible selfishness or obliviousness to the needs of others, or the pretty stupid conservative girl learn to be liberal and independent.
Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy Dumbing of Age, it’s one of my favorite webcomics nowadays. I just kind of get blown away by how the fans of it react to certain characters as if they’re the devil and treat others as if they’re sacrosanct (and yes, admittedly, I love Dina as a character).
I actually only ripped into other characters to kind of draw comparisons that at a base level you can rip into all of them as being a terrible flawed people. The only DoA character (non random appearance asshole) who I think is completely reprehensible and despicable is Ethan, which is strange because I still like him and sympathize with him. It’s just that, as a gay dude, I find his choices in the strip to be terrible on every level, and it’s something he should know better than to do, and that his character has been informed by other characters about why it’s wrong and hurtful. Yeah his mom is horrible, and yeah his dad is a coward, and yeah his best friend basically dumped him in college because she needed a break from his “drama,” but that doesn’t change that he’s still pulling a naive person into his vortex of self destruction knowingly and selfishly.
That said, most of the cast are interesting and flawed, which is one of the reasons I like the strip. The only real “Mary Sue” type characters of the strip are Walky and Dorothy, but frankly, I have faith in Willis as a writer to reveal that they too have failings and flaws deep down eventually (he’s already started hinting at that with Walky). That, or they will get super powers and fight crime.
This deserves a reworking of the same reply I made further down the page: Every defense of Danny seems to forget that he turned down Amber a long time ago, before he even went on any dates with Amazi-girl. He didn’t do it out of “loyalty” to anyone the first time around. He did it because he was scared of another real relationship and preferred a “long distance” (infrequent and detached) relationship with a costumed fantasy persona.
I don’t know about “freak out”. I’m picturing her standing stiffly with her arms at her side, looking about confusedly. “That indicates affection, yes?”
Amber. There was a flashback of her watching the show and playing with the toys. (Followed by a return to the present of her still playing with Transformers.)
Funny thing about that. The only dinosaurs whose fossils indicate feathers all lived in what is now China, Mongolia, and Siberia. The African, European, and American dinosaurs left scales in their fossil imprints, not feathers.
Turning “Chinese dinosaurs had feathers” into “all dinosaurs had feathers” is quite the stretch. So it would seem that “modern” birds evolved in China (not sure where Archeopteryx was found, but while commonly held as the first bird it is not the ancestor of the chicken).
Saying only examples were found in China is just plain not true – there has been multiple finds in both in Germany and Canada as well. (In particular Archeopteryx you mention – I think all of the finds for it are German actually.)
The problem is that feathers are super hard to preserve, and China is one of the few places that had the conditions ideal for it. Additionally people previously probably unearthered the fossils in ways that would of damanged the preservation hints for feathers – since they were only focused on the bones.
China’s also got what I am pretty sure is the largest focused dinosaur excavation groups in the world – other places in the world do not have the same kind of resources that China’s putting into excavating it’s sites.
The reason why they think feathers are more likely to be widespread is they’ve found evidence (or inferrable evidence such as Quill Knobs) in a very wide range of species and they think it’s more likely that there’s a common ancestor with a combination of feathers and scales (and then some groups going more one way and others another – having one doesn’t stop them from having the other; birds have scaley feet) rather than it evolving completely independantly in those different groups.
Three of the Asperger kids I went to school with now have PhDs. One is a well-known science writer. Asperger’s Syndrome and genius seem to be tightly interwoven.
I don’t want to minimize the role of brilliance in those kids, but part of the association is due to their exaggerated ability to think intently about one subject for a very long time. That capacity doesn’t help one lead a warm, friend-filled, and well-balanced life, but it’s pure gold in the pursuit of a Ph.D.
To Dina’s credit, you are allowed a certain amount of mistakes. You can’t just go around fucking up everything and keep your friends.
Maybe your family….
but not your friends.
Um, isn’t Bruce Wayne a billionaire who has a butler, unlimited different bat-vehicles, sidekicks, connections with the cops, and superhero friends who live on a space station on speed dial?
Compared to Parker who works his hardest and still barely has a bike and an apartment, seems pretty good.
Batman’s rich, is athletic as F***, and has an intellect that’s on par with the greatest minds of his generation. The only thing that sucks about Batman is that he won’t stop whining about his problems and using beating up bad guys as stress release instead of using his Vast VAST fortune to make things better in Gotham.
…He does? He funds youth groups and the like in poor inner city areas, have numerous college scholarships in addition to employment schemes for former criminals who genuinely wish to go straight, he donates millions to charities each year, including improved equipment to the GCPD and gives millions to Arkham Asylum for them to improve their facilities…
…Admittedly graft is so bad in both the GCPD and AA that not all the money Bruce donates goes were its meant to go (AA’s board of directors gave it to themselves as bonuses while laying off a bunch of staff, for example) but he’s not exactly ignoring the potential causes of crime and the like either.
Batman is basically mentally crippled. He’s smart but locked into the mindset of an eight year old. Instead of all that training he did he should have been getting therapy instead.
Batman: Dead parents. Obscene wealth. Awesome former secret agent butler. Unable to have lasting relationships with women, but still manages some impressive hookups. Good buddy at the Daily Planet. At the top of just about every other superhero’s list when they need help with something.
Spider-Man: Dead parents. No money. Sweet but largely ineffectual great-aunt. Has lasting relationships with women, only to have them end in highly painful ways. Constant victim of slander and defamation. Only gets called in if Wolverine is busy.
Yeah, all things told, think I’d rather be Batman.
And Batman always has cool wheels.
Spidey once had a cheezed out dune buggy, like early 70’s bug chassis dune buggy with preschooler color scheme, which he like drove off a pier.
Batman does his research, and finds out Spider-man can punch out cosmic powers. If you push him far enough, he will kill you. So a sudden ambush with gas grenades seems like the best approach. But Spider-man has been drugged by ambush like fifty times before, he’s figured out how to hold his breath. So then it’s going to be Batman lobbing a thousand and one gadgets from his belt and Spider-man webbing them down and/or dodging. And then it’s going to be fisticuffs, where Batman’s rigorous training and discipline puts him at the top of the field among humans, but Spider-man is much stronger, much, much tougher and much, much, much faster than him and reacts before he even does anything. I don’t think Batman is in any danger of pushing Spidey too far.
If Batman and Spider-man somehow got into a fight, Bruce would probably deduce his identity and defeat him with his chequebook, by buying the Daily Bugle (like he did with the Daily Planet) telling JJJ to drop his Spider-Man fixation and stop Peter from making a living selling selfies.
Point of order: Peter no longer works for the Bugle – that was only during his high school and college days. (Plus he’s still getting royalties from his picture-book, Webs, reprinting many of the Spidey photos he took over the years.)
Nowadays Peter is working at a think-tank in Manhattan putting his own impressive intellect and MS in Chemistry to good use. This was after a long stint as a science teacher at his old high school and a different think-tank in the Pacific Northwest. All those gadgets and chemical formulae he came up with fighting various bad guys are being put to good use and the results are slowly getting out to the public. (Unlike Reed Richards who invents the best stuff and just sits on it.)
Peter is considered one of the ten top minds in the Marvel Universe. It doesn’t hurt that he spent some time as Tony Stark’s protege prior to the (godsawful) Civil War arc. Guy’s in his 30s now; he’s been crime-fighting for the past 15 years in-universe. That he’s been on several Avengers teams recently plus a stand-in for the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four have also helped his reputation.
Good-paying job and living in the middle class (by Manhattan standards)? Check. No smear campaigns in the Bugle (esp. now that JJJ is mayor of New York and Robbie is running the paper)? Check.
(Now if only they could undo One More Day and give him back his happy marriage…. DAMN YOU, QUESADA!)
Point of order – Peter doesn’t work for Horizon Labs. Otto Octavius does, while inhabiting Peter’s body. And incidentally, that’s something they’d have to fix before even starting to worry about One More Day.
Batman always feels like an odd one to imagine in this scenario. He’s smart, he’s a businessman; seems to me he’d always find a way to negotiate rather than get in a fight with another hero. (Regardless of Frank Miller.)
So no one thinks she’s referring to Danny in the last panel as well? Like, she realizes Danny is also allowed a mistake?
Not that I really sympathize much with a guy that’s deliberately not pursuing a real relationship in favor of something based on masks, fantasy personas, and emotional distance.
Nobody seems to notice the resemblance between Amazi Girl and amber. Billie seems to think that Sal of all people is Amazi girl. SHe must need better glasses
It’s not that he’s dense enough not to notice the similarities, that’s (as you noted) almost a feature of the universe.
I hate Danny because he’s deliberately choosing the relationship based on falsehoods and imaginary personas over an actual, human relationship. Not only that, but he actively does not want to make the fantasy relationship any more real.
In a sense, I hate him because I think he’s NOT trying. He’s running.
See, I don’t think of that as running, I see it as simply accepting what is giving and trusting it’s there for a reason. It’s a really interesting dynamic because he’s NOT Lois Lane. Whoever identifies as AG, he’s cool with her being AG. He doesn’t have to prove something to her, the world, or himself. He’s happy to be with AG, whoever she is.
This is not intended to be offensive, but: what if we look at the superhero identity as analogous to trans
Goddamn it, that got cut off at the worst possible place. I mean, what if we consider it as Amber’s identity, similar to how Jocelyn is Josh’s identity. If someone is dating Jocelyn, are they gonna be considered a dunce for not wondering who her “real” identity is?
I realize there are a MASSIVE number of differences between these two scenarios. But I feel like Danny is being incredibly accepting, and kind of zen about the whole thing. If AG wants to tell him who she is, she will, but he won’t make her. I dig that attitude.
Every defense of Danny seems to forget that he turned down Amber, who he was pursuing *first*. Because of a dumb comment Joe made.
Loyalty my ass. He’s running. He turned down the real person in favor of the costumed superhero and actively doesn’t want to know who’s behind the mask.
That’s all very adorable until you consider that Dina doesn’t know if someone’s her friend or not. And she’s constantly been like this until now. Imagine not knowing if you truly have friends, and the people around you are just there for their own reasons.
That’s worse than I thought. My image was that Dina never had any friends. However, your scenario is far worse. Better no friends than false friends, or being on edge because you don’t know if your friends are false friends.
It’s not really “on edge” – you just kind of get used to the idea that what you think is friendship might not mean that to someone else, and that they get uncomfortable if you ask. You take what you can get, you know?
I watched Chronicle yesterday and now I’m picturing Dina more like Andrew, going “Do you like me” when she gets a moment alone with someone. And maybe rampaging through Indianapolis when her dinosaur powers manifest. . .
I’m going to guess and say that Dina didn’t have friends really. Being quiet and “weird” (which i am sure Dina would qualify) would be…well rather ostracizing. A feeling I know well.
Middle school could NOT of been fun.
I am basically a chemistry-obsessed version of Dina (except I’d hide in the closet or under the bed instead of behind the door, and my always food was mushrooms and caesar salad dressing with a side of PB & nutella sandwich, plus coffee), and yeahno. Middle school wasn’t fun. Neither was elementary school. Or high school. Or, hell, even preschool. Neither was having a roommate at uni, because she was not a nice person and soon figured out that I was socially oblivious and gullible enough to be easily manipulated. Plus, co-ed dorms are loud and noisy and chaotic, and I don’t tolerate any of the previous very well.
I got frustrated and eventually wrote myself up some flow charts on how to do small talk and how to interpret body language so that I would quit accidentally pissing people off (because another side-effect of being that socially oblivious is not knowing people’s sore spots and not knowing what’s okay to joke about and what’s not – eventually, you decide it’s safer to be thought of as a humorless wooden block than an asshole and stop trying to joke).
I lucked out in finding my partner, who helps me navigate the minefield that is human socialization behaviors.
Still, many wonder why I prefer books, video games, and chemistry to socializing. Simply this: those all make sense. They have rules that can be figured out, and they are self-consistent. People don’t make sense, don’t have rules, and are self-inconsistent. It would be interesting if it weren’t so frustrating and confusing.
I decided people were interesting and spent most of my time studying them. It makes my socialization very robotic but I can do it based on what I’ve read in sociology books and psychology books. I try to make conclusions about people quickly and go with them based on the trivia in my head. I treat everyone like they are a patient and I’m their psychologist >_< its the only way I can cope with others. I make tons of snap decisions and inferences based on data and whats statistically likely based on what information I have of them correlates to the statistical average of people that are similar. It is really awkward when I end up being wrong in a conclusion.
Okay, I never really had your experience, but personally, the way I see it?
Everyone is consistent. Personally. Every person has their own individual way of thinking that has to control their actions and thoughts. For instance take two nearly identical people and have them be the exact same in every possible way except one. Have the top priority of one be family and the top priority of the other be business. Their second top priority is the others top one.
In any given situation, they’ll focus on their priorities. Mostly without even thinking about it. But gives these two people a situation where they have to choose and they become frustrated, because their priorities are so close. And then they’ll pick differently but phrase it so that they can feel like they aren’t totally giving up on the other.
“I can always find another job. My family needs me.”
“If I leave, I’ll get fired. My family needs this money.”
Each person will always act consistently with this process. But it’s completely different for each person. Although the priorities of families seem to run more close together.
I guess you could say that the only true way to understand a person is to know what they care about. And what they value more than others.
If you value your life more than others. You’d more likely kill to live. If you value money more than your life, you’d more likely risk mixing with a loan shark.
If you value your family, more than your life, but less than money. Then in a situation where you must choose between family and money, the person would most likely save their family while risking their life to still get the money.
And it gets more complicated when you have to figure out HOW people define these priorities.
Is family Immediate?
Extended?
Does it include friends?
Does marriage add a family member or lose one?
If it adds, is it immediate? At the Engagement? At the marriage? Afterwards?
Yeah, people are complicated like this, but this is debating the nuances. The fringe situations.
If you’re looking to understand people, just talk. It doesn’t have to be about anything other than something they may find meaningless. Just ask why, when they say something. It’s the best way to poke around that hidden list in their mind.
Now most of this was written late at night, and I know it’s in a comment section, that’s probably dead. But I’m still posting it. Because really. I want to. Even if I know nobody will read it.
Because.
I want someone to have the chance to read it.
I want to share.
I want to share my thoughts.
I want to share my thoughts because I want people to be interested in me.
Because it makes me feel not alone.
That’s one of my priorities.
Diana really -is- the anti-Faz. They both have the same… slightly off-kilter approach to interactions, but the base personality behind the interface attempts couldn’t be more different.
This is why Diana is adorable and Faz must be burned with fire, even though I suspect they both could produce Charts at a moment’s notice.
Not in this universe. I think we might see her getting more of a presence if Joyce ever needs a foil on the religion thing, but she’s… pretty unlikable.
This may be, one of the best things I’ve read.
It’s actually hilarious, and the characters have more depth and complexity than the soaps my girlfriend makes me watch.
Well done Mr Willis.
Hey, Willis, not sure if you’ll read this down here (curse my GMT time zone!) but is Dina Dyspraxic or something, because she reminds me of myself. And we need more Dyspraxic people in fiction.
Dyspraxia is also hereditory, so that also explains her parents.
Dina isn’t diagnosed with anything.
That said, undiagnosed *insert thing that a verbal girl could get to college with it undiagnosed* is fair game. I read her as autistic. Which has a wee bit of a tendency to come with dyspraxic…
Damnit, why did I vote before reading this strip ?
I spent so much time trying to choose my favorite characters, ended with “well Dina’s recent appearances weren’t that great” … and then she totally gets awesomer than ever !?
Sorry Dotty but I want to change my vote.
AWWWWW
Dangit, this is sweet. I’m looking forward to Dina developing her social skills further, especially if it leads to a moment where she can help out Amber and “balance” their friendship.
Apropos of nothing, I hate the term “autistic spectrum”. Seems like a self-serving label by which *everybody* can be labeled as autistic since a spectrum by definition covers a very wide range, like a bell curve, and literally everyone in creation would fall onto some point along it.
A propos of what you just said, that’s a foolish way to view it. There are also spectra for sexual orientation, gender identity, and many other things in life. It’s not “self-serving,” and it’s not intended to place EVERYBODY along the autistic spectrum – it’s meant to describe a class of interrelated developmental problems, which can scale in their severity and be present in varying combinations – hence, a “spectrum” of autistic disorders.
Sure, there are people who use it self-servingly (self-diagnosed asperger’s cases, anyone?) but to say you *hate* the term “autistic spectrum,” because it’s misused by idiots is insane. EVERYTHING’S misused by idiots. Wake up.
Thank you, Narf. As a person who has been diagnosed by doctors with autism, and who is part of a program helping autistic students adjust to college, I can definitely say that autism is a spectrum. I’ve seen people whose symptoms ranged from the barely noticeable to the blindingly obvious. It bugs me that people still have such backwards views of autism, that people appropriate it or use it as an excuse, and that people seem to prefer fictional portrayals of people with autism to real accounts. As you may have noticed, this is a topic I feel passionate about.
I’m with you, Kernanator. I can pass for “just weird” in public, but what is executive functioning? And then people thinking ability to write a blog means ability to consistently cook and eat food (hahaha) and not be the person who misses major injuries due to body awareness issues and yeah.
And then people think there’s only one dimension of spectrumness and sad. Because “high IQ” and “can usually word” also doesn’t lead to “cook” or “not obvious” or anything else.
/Speaks from experience here, yes, diagnosed.
/Does read Dina as undiagnosed autistic, which happens extra-much with girls who can talk and such.
/Wishes people would pay attention to real accounts and likes to see fictional portrayals where the autistic people are treated like real people because reflections in media are nice too.
/AUTISTIC CHARACTERS WRITTEN BY AUTISTIC PEOPLE SHOULD BE A THING.
Apropos of nothing, I hate how some people, when confronted with ideas that folks have new or unfamiliar problems, quickly dismiss these ideas as nothing more than self-serving excuses. It’s always a much easier personal solution to diminish the validity of others’ claims than to grow one’s worldview to accommodate them — which is in itself a self-serving excuse.
Kudos on the proper use of the phrase “apropos of nothing” in your comment, as opposed to other places, where it is ackwardly shoehorned in like a grammatic tic.
“Spectrum” does not mean “everyone falls onto it somewhere.” There are very specific aspects required for falling within the spectrum, and there may be related underlying mechanisms, but there’s a wide variety of secondary aspects (and severity) that make it so you need to differentiate between the various ‘flavors’, so to speak.
If I could, I’d post a figure that I see pretty regularly from one of the labs at my school when they give research talks, but alas, I don’t have it.
Appropos of statement, an autistic person’s coming in to point out that there are issues with “autistic spectrum” but they aren’t the ones you said.
[Think people assuming it’s a single linear one of high to low functioning. Which isn’t how it works. Speech issues, sensory issues, language issues, stimming, body awareness, ton of other things, think tons-of-dimensions spectrums and then *all* problems, related or not are part of the autism if LF, *none* are if HF. And self-fulfillingness therein.]
At some point in your life, you come to understand that people are the most important thing, possibly from the many many stories we tell with that moral.
You come to understand this, knowing that you are terrible at people.
You realize that being unlike you is a quality to be celebrated in humans, and it’s a short step from that to the conclusion Dina comes to: There is a wrong way to be, and you are that way. A nice person like Amber (at least you think she’s been nice, but you wouldn’t know, would you?) may claim otherwise, but that’s because she’s a nice person. It doesn’t make her right, and as far as you can tell, she isn’t.
Whether she’s meant to be an Aspie or not, Willis has done a damn fine job portraying one.
Loading ...
That T-shirt just became remarkably more appropriate
Dina does not look like she’s preparing to eat Amber. what are you talking about?
Give the shippers time, they are still busy drawing fanart of Joyce and Dorothy.
speak for yourself
*draws faz and dina*
That is just sick and wrong.
It’s wrong-sick!
The best kind of sick!
Wrong like Donkey Kong’s schlong getting stuck in a bong.
Worse than licking the inside of Ursula’s Purse.
If you rehearse your verse, will it turn out more terse? It seems that it’s getting worse in reverse.
Dr Seuss is on the loose and he is full of juice and he likes what this thread has produced.
Donkey Kong’s schlong getting stuck in a bong should be part of the DK Rap.
Kill it with fire!!!!!!
She are lerrning.
Isn’t a smiling Dina the cutest thing??
((She still reminds me of my patron, Nepeta.))
She reminds me of Starfire from Teen Titans… I’m pretty sure I read all her lines in that voice.
Dina, at the very least, we are your friend.
All of us
Except Mike, who was your mother’s friend last night for a nickel.
Even mike is Dina’s friend. Especially in the other ‘verse.
Too soon?
It’s been like 5 years or something.
Ten.
Ow, my age!
This comic is NOT age appropriate for you. Go read a book.
Every time someone asks if something is “too soon”, I unfailingly think of Steve Irwin and conclude that, yes, it’s still too soon.
But manta ray is delicious!
Awwww…
I’m not the only one who hears Michelle Ruff as Yuki Nagato when Dina speaks, right?
Well it was, now that you’ve said that though…..
I…I don’t know what she sounds like. I have never seen it. I fail as a geek, I know 🙁
It’s ridiculous and doesn’t make sense but Dina has a light British accent in my head.
*shrug*
To me it’s Starfire.
Way too cheerful and upbeat, if you ask me.
Funny, I hear a less cynical-ish version of Tara Strong’s Raven.
That one sorta works.
It must be way too early in the morning but I read that as Starscream [BW version – ultramammoth – sheesh] and I almost fell out of my chair. You now owe me one butt cheek, this one is bruised.
Oh dear God Now I’m going to hear her as Starfire every time I read it…
Same here. I had to think about where the voice came from as it was unconscious at first and realized it was Starfire.
I still hear BeMo.
BMO is pretty much the best voice. Just generally.
Yaaaay, Dina is the smartest and most pretty!
Dammit, now I can’t NOT hear that voice for her ;O
I’ll be your friend, Dina.
F is for friends that do stuff together-
U is for you and me~!
“N is for Nanosaurus, a small ornithopod of the hypsilophodont family!
Did I do it right?”
Definitely, you did it right down here in the deep blue sea.
Very right!
The best.
Absolutely wonderful.
Fantastic!
K is for “knowing how to derail a meme.” ;^)
And “Y” is for “Why not?”
Why is Dina so great
*throws confetty in the air and dances around in a cloud of shredded paper(s)*
Go! Dina! Go! Dina! Go Go Go!
She’s autistic, right?
Somewhere on the scale, yes. Along with the savant characteristics that sometimes go along with having autistic spectrum disorder.
Also awkwardly adorable.
Aspie at least.
Now now, don’t make assumptions.
Willis said she has not been diagnosed with anything. As a diagnosed (mild) Aspie, I think she has got be Aspie, though. And awesome. Don’t forget awesome.
Yeah, she’s showing classic signs of Asperger’s syndome.
Willis hasn’t made any mention of her being autistic, to my knowledge. So, her (potential) autism isn’t canon. Thus far it’s been up to the audience.
Oh oops. I guess he has!
I thought the official statement was “she hasn’t been diagnosed with anythng”
I think that’s what the Big Bang creators said about Sheldon.
There are some thing Willis doesn’t have to specifically tell us … like which of the characters are sexually active and which ones aren’t. We can figure them out for ourselves.
Asperger Syndrome, to be precise.
Unsure, but the fact I so easily identify with her is telling.
(For the record, I am on the autism spectrum)
Same and same. That whole “needing explicit confirmation we’re friends” thing? Yeah, that’s a thing I empathize with.
That term (Asperger’s Syndrome or Disorder) has been tossed out so readily here that I decided to look it up. Now, I find I’m having similar thoughts to Kernanator …..
That’s for a licensed psychologist to diagnose! Which is tricky with fictional characters. The author himself is seldom qualified to say with certainty. I have Asperger’s, and I’m writing a novel about a character largely based on me, but I’m not sure if the doctors who diagnose her are right.
It’s odd to see someone advocating death of the author in the same sentence as they profess to be an author.
↑ (begbert) ??
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_Author
That’s how much I don’t like when people give unqualified diagnoses of Autism spectrum disorders.
And who, pray tell, is more qualified than the subject him/herself? (Assuming, of course, that the subject seeks outside information on his/her behavior, in an effort to minimize subjective error…)
A doctor.
is this a trick question
She can be taught!
Just don’t make any charts, Dina.
Yeah, Dina. You might remember a certain… interesting fellow known for his multitude of charts. Or perhaps your parents might be familiar with this fellow. Of course I am referring to none other than:
Former Presidential candidate H. Ross Perot.
Seriously, do a Google image search for Ross Perot Charts. DO IT.
Chart Wars! H. Ross Perot and Faz have a chart-off (which is only slightly more hygienic than a shart-off) to the death. Or would to the pain be preferable?
I want to see a shart-off!
You don’t know what you’re doin’.
YOU JUST MAKE ME SHIP THEM HARDER!
Perot/Dina 2016
Dina / Perot 2016. Beauty before age in this case.
D’aww, Dina’s kinda like the Abed of IU.
Dina should have multiple personalities of different dinosaurs to fit the situation.
No, Abed is the Dina of Community. Get your facts straight, Man/Woman!
Congratulations, Dina. Part of finding the solution to a problem is acknowledging the problem.
Amber could learn from HER.
And knowing is half the battle!
The other half is having a pack of trained raptors at your beck and call.
Just saying..
Of course, Amber would know about undependable friends considering Ethan traumatized her by realizing he’s gay in the middle of their first time (I think it was their first time…), and Mike is…. well, Mike.
🙁
Hey, Mike is very dependable. You can always depend on him to be Mike, make people miserable, and beat up alien when necessary.
Spreadsheets? Obviously, Dina has been playing too much EVE.
She had been forced to spend time with Faz, and some of the Faz-ness rubbed off on her.
He’s contagious?! Get the CDC on the phone, NOW.
Shipping it.
I’M SHIPPING IT.
You… Seem to want everyone to know too.
Sorry, but that shipment has been categorized as extremely hazardous and un-insurable no carriers will accept the shipment. The DOT and EPA have deemed that it shall be buried where it sits, within a sarcophagus to prevent contamination.
That sarcophagus will be placed inside a safe at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’
They were on display.
At least Faz hopes you think he was rubbing on her! Hey-ooo!
Aww, Dina, so adorable. Please never change.
*Bruno Mars voice*
Because you’re amaaaaziiiiing, juuust the waaaay you aaaare!
Goes quite well with that smile in the last panel.
“Girl you make me feel like…… I’ve been locked out of heaven….. for too long…… “Yeah!
“Beautiful ‘saurs all over the world I could be chasin’ but my time would be waste ’cause they got nothing on you babe.”
And so begins Dina’s journey to find herself. Wishing her the best.
She should check behind a door.
Tomorrow night . . .
Amber: Ow! Hey, I’m bleeding! WTF was that??
Dina: That was another stab in the dark. I’m getting pretty good at this!
I’m just practicing tracking prey. How else will I pass hunting 101.
She is a clever girl
Sweet, new poll. I can’t help but notice that, as I type this, the seven most popular characters are all female. I wish more male writers (including novelists, cartoonists, screenwriters, etc.) were NEARLY as good at David Willis at creating female characters.
Maybe if I got off my ass.
Cuz Basically ALL my characters are females. To the point where I’m really bad at drawing dudes.
Same. I’m actually considering just saying “Yeah, this universe has a significant gender imbalance favoring females” and actually felt the need to throw in some more dudes just so I have multiple ones who are named, sympathetic, and have the chance to do anything of possible importance. Because of the three I can think of that have any impact whatsoever, one’s actively evil and the other’s an antagonist.
Nothing wrong with having the tables turned for once. Dudes can learn to deal.
Of course, given that our male options are a guy who will do your mom for a nickel, a guy who will do any attractive female with no prompting whatsoever, a guy who refuses to come to terms with his sexuality, a guy whose approach to sexuality involves throwing toys at people’s heads, a guy whose only role to date has been as a sex object, and Danny, it’s arguably not that high a bar to clear.
I like that Danny is at the bottom of that list. Y’know. Where he belongs.
Weren’t all of those Danny to some degree?
Danny couldn’t do your mom for a nickle. Or any amount of money.
Danny also doesn’t have any toys to throw at people.
Also Danny is the opposite of a sex object.
(The others kinda apply though)
Danny also won’t do any attractive woman on a whim. Remember Billie?
Guess jury’s technically still out on the sexuality thing, though.
At the moment Mary is there, which seems obvious. Danny has a contingent of, if not fans, people who understand that he does not in fact eat human flesh. Mary, on the other hand, really does lack any redeeming characteristics whatsoever. It’s a little confusing that she made the list, and, say, buckets of blood guy didn’t, since they’re about equally appealing.
Mary’s kind of cute, as long as she doesn’t do or say anything to make you remember that she’s, y’know, Mary. Bob Guy doesn’t even have that. I’m pretty sure that not being dressed at 3 PM would not help Bob’s ratings.
The thing is, Mary is on the poll list and BoB isn’t. Now if Willis had a listing for “other” in the poll, some of the characters not on the poll could get in on the “fun”.
Yeah, Danny–who can’t see through a mask that wouldn’t fool a two-year-old.
Its David Willis. In his comics, 75% of the human population have two X Chromosomes.
There’s actually been at least one study that shows when women begin approaching half the number of people in the room (I think it was around 30%), men perceive them as being in majority – because they’re so used to actually making up most of the representation. I’m trying to find the source of this now.
Really, in the two of his comics I’ve caught up with (Shortpacked! and DoA), women don’t make up nearly 75% of the cast.
In DoA, 10/15 of the cast page characters are women, or 1/3 – 66.7%. (I’m counting Amazi-Girl and Amber as the same character for this purpose.)
In Shortpacked!, 7/16 of the characters on the cast page are women, or less than half at 43.8%. I’m counting Ultracar as neither a man or a woman for this count. Once we include all the other non-listed characters who’ve made frequent appearances (Reagan, Sydney, Joshua, Manny, Drew), the percentage of women drops to 38.1%.
TLDR; whenever women make up more than 30% of a cast or the occupants of a room people mistakenly perceive to be dominating due to the over-representation of men media has made us accustomed to.
Uh, ~~ would be the car.
well, I don’t know much about the other comics, but in DoA women are definitely the majority; now we even have a (secondary) character who identifies as female despite her probably-not-XX chromosomes 🙂
I think Super didn’t mean literally 75%.
The fact that that person described all his comics, including Shortpacked!, as being mostly female is just wrong and indicative of perception biases with it comes to gender. If you factored in all the repeat male antagonists of Shortpacked! the percentage of women would be even lower – maybe less than 30%.
Sure DoA’s main cast IS more in favour of women than men, but not by much. If it was vice versa people might still perceive it to be mostly women.
I see your point, although about DoA, I wouldn’t say “not by much” if they make up two thirds of the cast, by your calculations.
Anyway, since Joyce is sort of the main character (by Willis’s own admission), this “imbalance” makes perfectly sense.
Alright, a bit more than “not by much.” While digging around trying, unsuccessfully, to find the study I referenced, I came across another one (A Profile of Americans’ Media Use and Political Socialization Effects: television and the Internet’s relationship to social connectedness in the USA) that said only 19% of primetime TV’s characters are women, less than 1 out of 5, which is way skewed. But that kind of ratio is so prevalent that most people don’t notice, and don’t point it out, so that when there are more than a few female characters people either think they’re female-dominated (like a lot of romantic comedies) and/or female-targeted. But as this comic shows, that doesn’t have to be the case! DoA seems to have a pretty mixed audience.
Saying Joyce is the main character “by my own admission” sounds like it’s some shameful thing I was coerced into declaring.
sorry, maybe “admission” was not the right word. English is not my native language.
“statement”, maybe?
Guys aren’t very good for plot development unless you want to blow things up. Too clueless, too immune to angst. Danny wallows in the angst and drama and everyone hates on him. A comic featuring Walky in this verse would be eat, poop, play games, sleep – see girlfriend occassionaly. Kinda like Garfield.
Now I want to see a comic with Walky as Garfield and Danny as Jon Arbuckle.
I was conflicted, but I eventually had to settle on one of my choices not having boobs. This was out of character for me.
My personal opinion is that males just tend to make poorer characters, in ANY work of fiction, due to the cultural position and limitations of men in general. We’re not supposed to have emotions (and by god we’re definitely not supposed to SHOW them), and what emotions we do have are supposed to be all about sex, cars, sports, and sex. Males in our culture are supposed to have the emotional depth of a teaspoon, focused on subjects we don’t want to hear them talk about. If they *do* range away from that, we get Shinji Ikari or Edward Cullen. Yeah.
Yes, you can have fun male characters, by making them clever or witty or silly. Or by making them muscled and armored and gun-toting, if you’re in the mood for that. But a female can do all that too, and *not* be emotionally shallow too. (And also have boobs, which is a bonus in my book.) Which is probably why in the crap I write, every character of any significance who’s not crazed or evil is female.
Ummm… No…
Look, I don’t have a problem with preferring female characters. That’s all fine and dandy, but to say there are no significant or amazing male characters is really not true at all. Men are not inherently emotionally shallow, and if you see them as such, that’s kind of horrible and degrading in my opinion. Honestly, I can easily off the top of my head name numerous male characters with emotional depth, hell just watch Breaking Bad pretty much every male character on that show is a powder keg of various emotions. Just because you’ve limited yourself to works where men amount to “Badass dude with sword” doesn’t mean every work of art limits men to that portrayal. And hey, for badass dude with sword there are plenty of those with emotion such as Guts from Berserk (puts on a tough guy facade to avoid the fact that he’s been a victim all his life) or Alistair from Dragon Age (hides behind humor to disguise the pain of being unwanted and unloved). Expand your horizons and bit and you might be surprised.
The women in Dumbing of Age are more interesting because they get more screen time by and large. Ethan, Walky and Danny are sort of exceptions but not really. Ethan exists as more of a vehicle for others (Joyce and Amber mostly) to deal with emotional issues. Walky is the same thing for other characters while also being an outlet for low brow humor, and Danny is well, he’s Danny. The male characters in this comic have all the potential to be just as interesting, but we don’t really get to see it because we routinely rush back to see how Amber or Joyce are dealing with their latest crisis.
But hey, let’s talk about Danny for a second. I don’t get why people hate Danny in this comic. Yes, he doesn’t know Amber is Amazigirl and that’s really stupid, but you know what neither does anyone else in the comic, so that’s really not a knock against him. Danny is the one male character in this comic who routinely displays an emotion that’s not there for joke purposes and people despise him because “wen r we gunna get moar Dina.” He’s a character who struggles with his own identity so he’s always attached himself to another stronger person to find it. Everyone is trying to push him to be what they want from Joe trying to make him into another version of him to his parents who chastise him for not doing a better job of holding onto the girl they like because it shows he’s not such a failure. Yeah, he rejected Amber, but it’s because he’s devoted on a deep level to the idea of living for the person he’s attached to, and he doesn’t honestly worry about what he actually wants. If anything Danny is one of the most sympathetic character in this comic because he gives everything of himself for others with no regard to his own wants or needs, and it constantly comes back to haunt him. He is a social failure, but in a realistic way. He doesn’t belong to the ASPIE parade (Dina, Walky), and he doesn’t fall into the “I’m a terrible person, but it’s okay because lessonz!” club (Joyce, Ethan, Billie, Ruth, Amber). And amazingly he’s more hated than the morally superior group that’s there to reveal why everyone else is a failure through exposition (Sarah, Dorothy, Mike). Danny is a character with layers and depth that people don’t like because frankly everyone can identify on some level with his struggle which isn’t wacky or silly, and it’s not fun to actually be reminded of a flaw that doesn’t have a simple fix (ie substituting devotion for identity, love and acceptance) especially when that flaw is hurting other characters people like. We’d rather see social retards be wacky and succeed despite their incredible selfishness or obliviousness to the needs of others, or the pretty stupid conservative girl learn to be liberal and independent.
Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy Dumbing of Age, it’s one of my favorite webcomics nowadays. I just kind of get blown away by how the fans of it react to certain characters as if they’re the devil and treat others as if they’re sacrosanct (and yes, admittedly, I love Dina as a character).
Everyone should read this comment to its fullest, because it’s completely true.
And that is probably why he’s hated. He reminds everyone too much of themselves.
Agreed. 100%.
At least on the Danny love.
I actually only ripped into other characters to kind of draw comparisons that at a base level you can rip into all of them as being a terrible flawed people. The only DoA character (non random appearance asshole) who I think is completely reprehensible and despicable is Ethan, which is strange because I still like him and sympathize with him. It’s just that, as a gay dude, I find his choices in the strip to be terrible on every level, and it’s something he should know better than to do, and that his character has been informed by other characters about why it’s wrong and hurtful. Yeah his mom is horrible, and yeah his dad is a coward, and yeah his best friend basically dumped him in college because she needed a break from his “drama,” but that doesn’t change that he’s still pulling a naive person into his vortex of self destruction knowingly and selfishly.
That said, most of the cast are interesting and flawed, which is one of the reasons I like the strip. The only real “Mary Sue” type characters of the strip are Walky and Dorothy, but frankly, I have faith in Willis as a writer to reveal that they too have failings and flaws deep down eventually (he’s already started hinting at that with Walky). That, or they will get super powers and fight crime.
This deserves a reworking of the same reply I made further down the page: Every defense of Danny seems to forget that he turned down Amber a long time ago, before he even went on any dates with Amazi-girl. He didn’t do it out of “loyalty” to anyone the first time around. He did it because he was scared of another real relationship and preferred a “long distance” (infrequent and detached) relationship with a costumed fantasy persona.
You’re not doing a darn thing to cure the urge to hug you, Dina.
I would but she’d probably freak out at the prospect. Also, she’s fictional. And a cartoon. But otherwise would totally give her a huge hug.
I don’t know about “freak out”. I’m picturing her standing stiffly with her arms at her side, looking about confusedly. “That indicates affection, yes?”
“What… what should I do?”
Does anyone knows if the Transformer poster in the background belongs to Amber or Dina?
Amber. There was a flashback of her watching the show and playing with the toys. (Followed by a return to the present of her still playing with Transformers.)
…Now kiss!
Most likely the poster belongs to Amber. Dina likes Dinos remember?
Simple litmus test: does it involve dinosaurs? (Y/N)
With Transformers, that’s not as simple as you think.
Me Grimlock say “Dinobots rule”!
Amber, based on a Willis response from yesterday (i.e. Amber is a way bigger Transformers fan than Ethan in the Dumbiverse).
All she needs is a friend to understand her, and I think she found one.
Asper maybe, but she’s in college and learning, and developing, or trying to anyway, social skills. So she’s high functioning at any rate.
Huggable little rascal. Stay cute.
is she an Asper…
OR AN ESPER!?
PSYCHIC DINA!!!
The adventures of Psychic Dina:
*Danny falls Down*
Dina: “I knew that was going to happen.”
More like:
*Danny falls Down*
Dina: “I made that happen”.
Her name is Dina, not Carrie.
“Also? I can kill you with my brain.”
Dina: Dinosaurs had feathers.
Joyce: Dinosaurs had feathers.
*Happy Dina Grin*
Funny thing about that. The only dinosaurs whose fossils indicate feathers all lived in what is now China, Mongolia, and Siberia. The African, European, and American dinosaurs left scales in their fossil imprints, not feathers.
Turning “Chinese dinosaurs had feathers” into “all dinosaurs had feathers” is quite the stretch. So it would seem that “modern” birds evolved in China (not sure where Archeopteryx was found, but while commonly held as the first bird it is not the ancestor of the chicken).
Saying only examples were found in China is just plain not true – there has been multiple finds in both in Germany and Canada as well. (In particular Archeopteryx you mention – I think all of the finds for it are German actually.)
The problem is that feathers are super hard to preserve, and China is one of the few places that had the conditions ideal for it. Additionally people previously probably unearthered the fossils in ways that would of damanged the preservation hints for feathers – since they were only focused on the bones.
China’s also got what I am pretty sure is the largest focused dinosaur excavation groups in the world – other places in the world do not have the same kind of resources that China’s putting into excavating it’s sites.
The reason why they think feathers are more likely to be widespread is they’ve found evidence (or inferrable evidence such as Quill Knobs) in a very wide range of species and they think it’s more likely that there’s a common ancestor with a combination of feathers and scales (and then some groups going more one way and others another – having one doesn’t stop them from having the other; birds have scaley feet) rather than it evolving completely independantly in those different groups.
Three of the Asperger kids I went to school with now have PhDs. One is a well-known science writer. Asperger’s Syndrome and genius seem to be tightly interwoven.
I don’t want to minimize the role of brilliance in those kids, but part of the association is due to their exaggerated ability to think intently about one subject for a very long time. That capacity doesn’t help one lead a warm, friend-filled, and well-balanced life, but it’s pure gold in the pursuit of a Ph.D.
All the same, let’s not talk about what is a tremendous personal success as thought it were the natural result of some cerebral accident.
as though*
“All she needs is a friend to understand her”
Boy, can I relate to that. Fortunately for me, I also have at least one good friend who understands me.
Damnit Dina, stop being so adorable…
To Dina’s credit, you are allowed a certain amount of mistakes. You can’t just go around fucking up everything and keep your friends.
Maybe your family….
but not your friends.
Joe hasn’t left Danny yet.
He’s pretty close tho.
And yet, we know it will never happen.
I just love Dina. Love, love, love. Platonically. She is adorable.
Dina is now worthy of wearing that shirt in addittion to the fact that it is a Jurassic Park reference.
This is probably the best Dina strip ever.
Dina, can’t you see Amber already feels bad man. If you feel bad too, you just make Amber feel even more Batman.
But isn’t that almost a good thing? Batman’s awesome!
Nobody in their right mind would want to be Batman. Freakin’ Spiderman has a comparatively better life than Batman.
I hate my gravatar.
Um, isn’t Bruce Wayne a billionaire who has a butler, unlimited different bat-vehicles, sidekicks, connections with the cops, and superhero friends who live on a space station on speed dial?
Compared to Parker who works his hardest and still barely has a bike and an apartment, seems pretty good.
Batman’s rich, is athletic as F***, and has an intellect that’s on par with the greatest minds of his generation. The only thing that sucks about Batman is that he won’t stop whining about his problems and using beating up bad guys as stress release instead of using his Vast VAST fortune to make things better in Gotham.
…He does? He funds youth groups and the like in poor inner city areas, have numerous college scholarships in addition to employment schemes for former criminals who genuinely wish to go straight, he donates millions to charities each year, including improved equipment to the GCPD and gives millions to Arkham Asylum for them to improve their facilities…
…Admittedly graft is so bad in both the GCPD and AA that not all the money Bruce donates goes were its meant to go (AA’s board of directors gave it to themselves as bonuses while laying off a bunch of staff, for example) but he’s not exactly ignoring the potential causes of crime and the like either.
Batman is basically mentally crippled. He’s smart but locked into the mindset of an eight year old. Instead of all that training he did he should have been getting therapy instead.
Well, let’s think about that for a minute.
Batman: Dead parents. Obscene wealth. Awesome former secret agent butler. Unable to have lasting relationships with women, but still manages some impressive hookups. Good buddy at the Daily Planet. At the top of just about every other superhero’s list when they need help with something.
Spider-Man: Dead parents. No money. Sweet but largely ineffectual great-aunt. Has lasting relationships with women, only to have them end in highly painful ways. Constant victim of slander and defamation. Only gets called in if Wolverine is busy.
Yeah, all things told, think I’d rather be Batman.
And Batman always has cool wheels.
Spidey once had a cheezed out dune buggy, like early 70’s bug chassis dune buggy with preschooler color scheme, which he like drove off a pier.
But who would win in a fight?
Batman does his research, and finds out Spider-man can punch out cosmic powers. If you push him far enough, he will kill you. So a sudden ambush with gas grenades seems like the best approach. But Spider-man has been drugged by ambush like fifty times before, he’s figured out how to hold his breath. So then it’s going to be Batman lobbing a thousand and one gadgets from his belt and Spider-man webbing them down and/or dodging. And then it’s going to be fisticuffs, where Batman’s rigorous training and discipline puts him at the top of the field among humans, but Spider-man is much stronger, much, much tougher and much, much, much faster than him and reacts before he even does anything. I don’t think Batman is in any danger of pushing Spidey too far.
If Batman and Spider-man somehow got into a fight, Bruce would probably deduce his identity and defeat him with his chequebook, by buying the Daily Bugle (like he did with the Daily Planet) telling JJJ to drop his Spider-Man fixation and stop Peter from making a living selling selfies.
Point of order: Peter no longer works for the Bugle – that was only during his high school and college days. (Plus he’s still getting royalties from his picture-book, Webs, reprinting many of the Spidey photos he took over the years.)
Nowadays Peter is working at a think-tank in Manhattan putting his own impressive intellect and MS in Chemistry to good use. This was after a long stint as a science teacher at his old high school and a different think-tank in the Pacific Northwest. All those gadgets and chemical formulae he came up with fighting various bad guys are being put to good use and the results are slowly getting out to the public. (Unlike Reed Richards who invents the best stuff and just sits on it.)
Peter is considered one of the ten top minds in the Marvel Universe. It doesn’t hurt that he spent some time as Tony Stark’s protege prior to the (godsawful) Civil War arc. Guy’s in his 30s now; he’s been crime-fighting for the past 15 years in-universe. That he’s been on several Avengers teams recently plus a stand-in for the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four have also helped his reputation.
Good-paying job and living in the middle class (by Manhattan standards)? Check. No smear campaigns in the Bugle (esp. now that JJJ is mayor of New York and Robbie is running the paper)? Check.
(Now if only they could undo One More Day and give him back his happy marriage…. DAMN YOU, QUESADA!)
But it’s more fun when everything and everyone stays the same forever with no major changes!
I thought nowadays Peter Parker was dead.
Point of order – Peter doesn’t work for Horizon Labs. Otto Octavius does, while inhabiting Peter’s body. And incidentally, that’s something they’d have to fix before even starting to worry about One More Day.
Batman always feels like an odd one to imagine in this scenario. He’s smart, he’s a businessman; seems to me he’d always find a way to negotiate rather than get in a fight with another hero. (Regardless of Frank Miller.)
Willis: They’ll bring him back. It’s the mainstream universe; they always bring folks back.
Actually, I think this is good for Amber at this moment. Dina is trying to care properly after realizing it doesn’t come naturally to her.
Friendship Confirmed!
According to Joyce’s parents, you’re allowed seventy times seven mistakes.
So no one thinks she’s referring to Danny in the last panel as well? Like, she realizes Danny is also allowed a mistake?
Not that I really sympathize much with a guy that’s deliberately not pursuing a real relationship in favor of something based on masks, fantasy personas, and emotional distance.
Why do I feel the need to defend this fictional character so much? I guess because he seems like he’s genuinely trying?
Nobody seems to notice the resemblance between Amazi Girl and amber. Billie seems to think that Sal of all people is Amazi girl. SHe must need better glasses
It’s not that he’s dense enough not to notice the similarities, that’s (as you noted) almost a feature of the universe.
I hate Danny because he’s deliberately choosing the relationship based on falsehoods and imaginary personas over an actual, human relationship. Not only that, but he actively does not want to make the fantasy relationship any more real.
In a sense, I hate him because I think he’s NOT trying. He’s running.
See, I don’t think of that as running, I see it as simply accepting what is giving and trusting it’s there for a reason. It’s a really interesting dynamic because he’s NOT Lois Lane. Whoever identifies as AG, he’s cool with her being AG. He doesn’t have to prove something to her, the world, or himself. He’s happy to be with AG, whoever she is.
This is not intended to be offensive, but: what if we look at the superhero identity as analogous to trans
Goddamn it, that got cut off at the worst possible place. I mean, what if we consider it as Amber’s identity, similar to how Jocelyn is Josh’s identity. If someone is dating Jocelyn, are they gonna be considered a dunce for not wondering who her “real” identity is?
I realize there are a MASSIVE number of differences between these two scenarios. But I feel like Danny is being incredibly accepting, and kind of zen about the whole thing. If AG wants to tell him who she is, she will, but he won’t make her. I dig that attitude.
The problem is that Amber WANTS him to know, but he would rather selfishly remain oblivious.
Every defense of Danny seems to forget that he turned down Amber, who he was pursuing *first*. Because of a dumb comment Joe made.
Loyalty my ass. He’s running. He turned down the real person in favor of the costumed superhero and actively doesn’t want to know who’s behind the mask.
That’s all very adorable until you consider that Dina doesn’t know if someone’s her friend or not. And she’s constantly been like this until now. Imagine not knowing if you truly have friends, and the people around you are just there for their own reasons.
That’s worse than I thought. My image was that Dina never had any friends. However, your scenario is far worse. Better no friends than false friends, or being on edge because you don’t know if your friends are false friends.
It’s not really “on edge” – you just kind of get used to the idea that what you think is friendship might not mean that to someone else, and that they get uncomfortable if you ask. You take what you can get, you know?
I watched Chronicle yesterday and now I’m picturing Dina more like Andrew, going “Do you like me” when she gets a moment alone with someone. And maybe rampaging through Indianapolis when her dinosaur powers manifest. . .
I’m going to guess and say that Dina didn’t have friends really. Being quiet and “weird” (which i am sure Dina would qualify) would be…well rather ostracizing. A feeling I know well.
Middle school could NOT of been fun.
I am basically a chemistry-obsessed version of Dina (except I’d hide in the closet or under the bed instead of behind the door, and my always food was mushrooms and caesar salad dressing with a side of PB & nutella sandwich, plus coffee), and yeahno. Middle school wasn’t fun. Neither was elementary school. Or high school. Or, hell, even preschool. Neither was having a roommate at uni, because she was not a nice person and soon figured out that I was socially oblivious and gullible enough to be easily manipulated. Plus, co-ed dorms are loud and noisy and chaotic, and I don’t tolerate any of the previous very well.
I got frustrated and eventually wrote myself up some flow charts on how to do small talk and how to interpret body language so that I would quit accidentally pissing people off (because another side-effect of being that socially oblivious is not knowing people’s sore spots and not knowing what’s okay to joke about and what’s not – eventually, you decide it’s safer to be thought of as a humorless wooden block than an asshole and stop trying to joke).
I lucked out in finding my partner, who helps me navigate the minefield that is human socialization behaviors.
Still, many wonder why I prefer books, video games, and chemistry to socializing. Simply this: those all make sense. They have rules that can be figured out, and they are self-consistent. People don’t make sense, don’t have rules, and are self-inconsistent. It would be interesting if it weren’t so frustrating and confusing.
I decided people were interesting and spent most of my time studying them. It makes my socialization very robotic but I can do it based on what I’ve read in sociology books and psychology books. I try to make conclusions about people quickly and go with them based on the trivia in my head. I treat everyone like they are a patient and I’m their psychologist >_< its the only way I can cope with others. I make tons of snap decisions and inferences based on data and whats statistically likely based on what information I have of them correlates to the statistical average of people that are similar. It is really awkward when I end up being wrong in a conclusion.
Okay, I never really had your experience, but personally, the way I see it?
Everyone is consistent. Personally. Every person has their own individual way of thinking that has to control their actions and thoughts. For instance take two nearly identical people and have them be the exact same in every possible way except one. Have the top priority of one be family and the top priority of the other be business. Their second top priority is the others top one.
In any given situation, they’ll focus on their priorities. Mostly without even thinking about it. But gives these two people a situation where they have to choose and they become frustrated, because their priorities are so close. And then they’ll pick differently but phrase it so that they can feel like they aren’t totally giving up on the other.
“I can always find another job. My family needs me.”
“If I leave, I’ll get fired. My family needs this money.”
Each person will always act consistently with this process. But it’s completely different for each person. Although the priorities of families seem to run more close together.
I guess you could say that the only true way to understand a person is to know what they care about. And what they value more than others.
If you value your life more than others. You’d more likely kill to live. If you value money more than your life, you’d more likely risk mixing with a loan shark.
If you value your family, more than your life, but less than money. Then in a situation where you must choose between family and money, the person would most likely save their family while risking their life to still get the money.
And it gets more complicated when you have to figure out HOW people define these priorities.
Is family Immediate?
Extended?
Does it include friends?
Does marriage add a family member or lose one?
If it adds, is it immediate? At the Engagement? At the marriage? Afterwards?
Yeah, people are complicated like this, but this is debating the nuances. The fringe situations.
If you’re looking to understand people, just talk. It doesn’t have to be about anything other than something they may find meaningless. Just ask why, when they say something. It’s the best way to poke around that hidden list in their mind.
Now most of this was written late at night, and I know it’s in a comment section, that’s probably dead. But I’m still posting it. Because really. I want to. Even if I know nobody will read it.
Because.
I want someone to have the chance to read it.
I want to share.
I want to share my thoughts.
I want to share my thoughts because I want people to be interested in me.
Because it makes me feel not alone.
That’s one of my priorities.
This is awesome.
Eh, considering I feel that half the time, I’m still going to list it as adorable because she DOES have a friend now.
Aww cutie
i feel like there isnt even a point in adding choices that aren’t Dina in polls… xD
What would happen if Danna’s spreadsheet meets with Faz’s Grath’s?
Who’s Danna?
And what’s a Grath?
Diana really -is- the anti-Faz. They both have the same… slightly off-kilter approach to interactions, but the base personality behind the interface attempts couldn’t be more different.
This is why Diana is adorable and Faz must be burned with fire, even though I suspect they both could produce Charts at a moment’s notice.
All Dina’s charts are in her head, and I think she’s just realizing that that’s not what’s going on in other people’s minds.
d’awwwww
I can’t decide if this is adorable, or really sad
Adorable! Because she was right! And she’s making positive steps! It would be very sad if Amber didn’t claim her as a friend.
Dina will become Amber’s sidekick. It’s confirmed in my mind.
Yess!! She’s already demonstrated prowess with the grappling hook.
But if she goes as DinoGirl everyone will figure it out in two seconds.
Don’t underestimate the really really thin secret identity.
Clever Girl wears fuchsia! Dina wears earth tones! They could not possibly be the same girl inna dinosaur hat!
If Willis really wanted us to vote for someone other than Dina, he should not make a series of Dina comics while the poll is up.
Once again, Marcie or Raidah wasn’t an option… oh well 😀
I voted for Mary for that reason. What I wonder is who are the others who voted for her.
Has Mary even had a story for herself? I think all other characters in the poll had at least *one* story by now.
Not in this universe. I think we might see her getting more of a presence if Joyce ever needs a foil on the religion thing, but she’s… pretty unlikable.
She’s had more screen time than Jacob.
That’s true, I can only think of a single panel with Jacob getting a speaking part. 😛
This may be, one of the best things I’ve read.
It’s actually hilarious, and the characters have more depth and complexity than the soaps my girlfriend makes me watch.
Well done Mr Willis.
I identify way too much with Dina here…
I resemble that remark…
Dina, can’t I just vote for you as my 3 favorite DoA characters 3 times over?
*WHAM*
That was Dina suddenly becoming top in my list of favourite DoA characters defeating each and every one of the others with a single line.
This is still my favorite Dina moment in DoA.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/02-guess-whos-coming-to-galassos/derelict/
But today’s was REEEEEALY close.
Hey, Willis, not sure if you’ll read this down here (curse my GMT time zone!) but is Dina Dyspraxic or something, because she reminds me of myself. And we need more Dyspraxic people in fiction.
Dyspraxia is also hereditory, so that also explains her parents.
Dina isn’t diagnosed with anything.
That said, undiagnosed *insert thing that a verbal girl could get to college with it undiagnosed* is fair game. I read her as autistic. Which has a wee bit of a tendency to come with dyspraxic…
Damnit, why did I vote before reading this strip ?
I spent so much time trying to choose my favorite characters, ended with “well Dina’s recent appearances weren’t that great” … and then she totally gets awesomer than ever !?
Sorry Dotty but I want to change my vote.
I wonder if Willis is keeping tabs on how the polls change every day?
…you could vote for three characters and you still didn’t pick Dina?
I called it! (Check the comments for yesterday, near the bottom.) Yay for character growth. 😉
AWWWWW
Dangit, this is sweet. I’m looking forward to Dina developing her social skills further, especially if it leads to a moment where she can help out Amber and “balance” their friendship.
Dina, YEEEEEEEEEEEES!
She’s learning!
I managed not to tear up at yesterday’s strip, but dammit, this last panel!
…and yeah, probably the most dependable person in my life these days is on the autistic spectrum. Has its virtues.
Apropos of nothing, I hate the term “autistic spectrum”. Seems like a self-serving label by which *everybody* can be labeled as autistic since a spectrum by definition covers a very wide range, like a bell curve, and literally everyone in creation would fall onto some point along it.
A propos of what you just said, that’s a foolish way to view it. There are also spectra for sexual orientation, gender identity, and many other things in life. It’s not “self-serving,” and it’s not intended to place EVERYBODY along the autistic spectrum – it’s meant to describe a class of interrelated developmental problems, which can scale in their severity and be present in varying combinations – hence, a “spectrum” of autistic disorders.
Sure, there are people who use it self-servingly (self-diagnosed asperger’s cases, anyone?) but to say you *hate* the term “autistic spectrum,” because it’s misused by idiots is insane. EVERYTHING’S misused by idiots. Wake up.
Thank you, Narf. As a person who has been diagnosed by doctors with autism, and who is part of a program helping autistic students adjust to college, I can definitely say that autism is a spectrum. I’ve seen people whose symptoms ranged from the barely noticeable to the blindingly obvious. It bugs me that people still have such backwards views of autism, that people appropriate it or use it as an excuse, and that people seem to prefer fictional portrayals of people with autism to real accounts. As you may have noticed, this is a topic I feel passionate about.
I’m with you, Kernanator. I can pass for “just weird” in public, but what is executive functioning? And then people thinking ability to write a blog means ability to consistently cook and eat food (hahaha) and not be the person who misses major injuries due to body awareness issues and yeah.
And then people think there’s only one dimension of spectrumness and sad. Because “high IQ” and “can usually word” also doesn’t lead to “cook” or “not obvious” or anything else.
/Speaks from experience here, yes, diagnosed.
/Does read Dina as undiagnosed autistic, which happens extra-much with girls who can talk and such.
/Wishes people would pay attention to real accounts and likes to see fictional portrayals where the autistic people are treated like real people because reflections in media are nice too.
/AUTISTIC CHARACTERS WRITTEN BY AUTISTIC PEOPLE SHOULD BE A THING.
“AUTISTIC CHARACTERS WRITTEN BY AUTISTIC PEOPLE SHOULD BE A THING.”
Yes, yes, YES! That’s what I want too! In fact, I plan to one day write such a thing.
It’s why Abed Nadir is so real.
Apropos of nothing, I hate how some people, when confronted with ideas that folks have new or unfamiliar problems, quickly dismiss these ideas as nothing more than self-serving excuses. It’s always a much easier personal solution to diminish the validity of others’ claims than to grow one’s worldview to accommodate them — which is in itself a self-serving excuse.
Kudos on the proper use of the phrase “apropos of nothing” in your comment, as opposed to other places, where it is ackwardly shoehorned in like a grammatic tic.
“Spectrum” does not mean “everyone falls onto it somewhere.” There are very specific aspects required for falling within the spectrum, and there may be related underlying mechanisms, but there’s a wide variety of secondary aspects (and severity) that make it so you need to differentiate between the various ‘flavors’, so to speak.
If I could, I’d post a figure that I see pretty regularly from one of the labs at my school when they give research talks, but alas, I don’t have it.
Appropos of statement, an autistic person’s coming in to point out that there are issues with “autistic spectrum” but they aren’t the ones you said.
[Think people assuming it’s a single linear one of high to low functioning. Which isn’t how it works. Speech issues, sensory issues, language issues, stimming, body awareness, ton of other things, think tons-of-dimensions spectrums and then *all* problems, related or not are part of the autism if LF, *none* are if HF. And self-fulfillingness therein.]
I’m sorry, despite the greatness of the strip, all I can think of due to that one panel is this
Dina’s cute! I think it’s time for a love interest for her. (Faz excluded). Consider the possibilities!
a t-rex
Nope. Arms are too short to give her the huggies she needs.
I’m thinking more of one of the pterasaurs. She could wrap up in those wings and snuggle.
Adorable! Total warm fuzzies in my heart! 😀
Welp. That’s it. This comic has peaked
I really want Dina’s hat and shirt.
“Friends? Oh no, Dina, you are mistaken…”
*tosses Dina a costume*
“…you are now my sidekick.”
Nah, Dina needs to make her own outfit, albeit with Amber’s expertise in making one. Amazi-Girl and the Raptor, anyone?
At some point in your life, you come to understand that people are the most important thing, possibly from the many many stories we tell with that moral.
You come to understand this, knowing that you are terrible at people.
You realize that being unlike you is a quality to be celebrated in humans, and it’s a short step from that to the conclusion Dina comes to: There is a wrong way to be, and you are that way. A nice person like Amber (at least you think she’s been nice, but you wouldn’t know, would you?) may claim otherwise, but that’s because she’s a nice person. It doesn’t make her right, and as far as you can tell, she isn’t.
Whether she’s meant to be an Aspie or not, Willis has done a damn fine job portraying one.
I don’t know why but I now have Starfire in my head as the voice for Dina
You’re not alone.
In this chapter, Dina is possesed by the spirit of Twilight Sparkle.
D’AAWWW
And since ponies’ve already been brought up… HOW MANY POINTS DO I RECEIVE?!!! 😀
….D’awws coming from that face just ain’t right