Discussion (196) ¬
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Ph03n1x24 @ph03n1x24.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Sheryl Weikal (The Leftist Lawyer) @leftistlawyer.com ⋅ 18h
Polling USA @usapolling.bsky.social ⋅ 18h
onion person @junlper.beer ⋅ 1d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
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PAX East
the heat death of the universe sure arrived quickly
=(
[I have this idea of pasting Sarah over, but that idea makes me sad–I hope she just means she has one friend for talking and one friend for shutting the hell up]
Dorothy doesn’t quite count as a friend?
That may depend on which one of them you ask.
I don’t think Sarah is a friend of Dorothy.
Do another one with a different dinosaur running in the opposite direction and have the first in the background.
Or, maybe Becky is… more than a friend…
Pretty much what I was thinking. Also you can have more then one besties!
Yay functional silence!
I like these kind of friends! Double bonus if they also like the same kind of games as me!
I so love seeing these two win at socializing. Yaaaay ^.^
Ahhhhhh, companionable silence.
FRIENDSHIP TO THE MAX
Silent Friendship.
BFF’S 5 EV-
SHHHH!
(er, bffs 5-evah)
Silent but Friendly!
Only the best of friends can pull this off. Here’s hoping the Beckster doesn’t get jealous.
becky can’t get jealous because her relationship with dina is like this, only with more dino facts and repeated ‘hypothesis testing’
One of Becky’s defining characteristics is being jealous of people having a similar relationship to Joyce that Becky herself does. This is explainable by her dire shortage of friends and support, but it remains the case that Becky has skillz at muscling friends-of-friends out.
The friend of my friend is my enemy”.
That’s how that saying goes, right?
hmm. This doesn’t ring true to me somehow. As someone who spent some time being secretly (even from myself) in love with my best friend when I was a kid, I think Becky is jealous of those around JOYCE because she had a whole lot of feelings and no way to properly assess and process them. Now she has a lot better understanding of the way she feels (she knows she is gay now, boy did that drastically change my relationship with my bffl once I figured that out!) and she has addressed her feelings with Joyce, been rebuffed and is in a place where she feels she can move on (that can change, though). I don’t think she will come at this jealously.
But I am an optimist.
Additionally, I think part of the reason she’s so jealous of Dorothy is that Joyce is literally her only friend in the world right now. If she can form more relationships, she won’t have to cling so hard to just one of them. (Plus, Sarah has made it quite clear that she has no interest in kissing Dina, so she’s not competition in that area.)
Also, Joyce has been her best friend for basically her entire life. Even discounting her romantic feelings, a lot of girls would feel irrational jealousy that their best friend has apparently made another one while they were away. Becky’s only 18 – she has time to rationalize her jealousy and grow past it.
I think that is because Joyce was not reciprocating Becky’s affection. If Joyce reciprocated I doubt Becky would be so aggressively possessive.
I’ve heard a lot of people say this, which means I am apparently best of friends with basically all my friends, since being able to do this is essentially a requirement to being my friend.
The first sentence of disloyal subject, not the second, that is.
Jeeze… Normally I like magnificent scheming villains, but your matched name & gravatar fill me with rage.
I guess that means Mary’s a good writer.
Exactly. I can be a chatter-box, and don’t mind other people being chatty sometimes, but I also just like sitting in silence sometimes without anyone feeling forced to fill it.
Dunno about that – the first rule of being friends with an introvert is learning how to be companionably silent with them. Introverts need that to be sociable. It’s not that difficult to do, either.
Awwwww
DinAAAAAAAW you mean? :p
Indeed.
DinAWWWsaurus.
Dina makes it work!
*plays “Enjoy the Silence” on the Muzak*
You seem to like recommending muzak a lot.
A vast improvement over the original Wonder Twins.
I’m sure if I ever meet David Willis at a convention or receive enough mad money for the task, my art commission assignment for him would be the scene of Ruth catching me tampering with the dorm building’s PA systems.
A while back my college played Muzak over the PA system to test the Tsunami alert system was fuctional.
IT WAS YOU WASN’T IT????
That’s Stephen’s thing. I’ve borrowed the PA before, it’s a nice system.
All we need now is Marcie here and they all can be silent besties together…
-_________-
…and yet, i approve
That’s the spirit! ^_^
Throw in Amber with her DS while you’re at it.
and ethan’s midriff vaguely in the background
Just the midriff? I’m pretty sure he needs that to live.
Um no? Silence isn’t the key so much as lack of communicating, which is what both Dina and Sarah find awkward.
Assuming neither of them understand sign language, having Marcie sit with them would be no different from a person who tries to talk to them in say French a few times before giving up. It’s not the same.
Yeah, Marcie likes to do shit.
Marcie isn’t an introvert – she can’t speak, but communication is very important to her socialization. She wouldn’t be happy just sitting.
As noted
So cute, and that sounds like an awesome way to spend a meal to me!
Super Best Friends, assemble!
“Form of…A dilophosaurus!”
“Form of…Old Testament God!”
If Dina gets to be the animal, then Sarah has to be the bucket of water.
“Form of… Wet Blanket!
There is an easy solution to both of your criteria…
“Form of… The Great Flood!”
“Form of…a wet blanket!”
Dammit. Beat me to it.
Oh god I got the reference and I laughed hysterically
…beware her power?
I got the reference because Teen Titans Go but I’m guessing the characters are originally from some comic book or other?
They’re from the old Hannah Barbera Superfriends show.
The Wonder Twins. From Superfriends.
I’m 22, dammit. Stop making me feel old!
Sorry, if you keep on living, you ARE gonna get old: that’s the trade off!
Hmmm…. That’s a pretty tough call…
Naw, being old is pretty damn awesome, as long as you are reasonably healthy and you like your kids (if any). Most people who tell you differently are trying to sell you things.
Would it make you feel better if I told you I’m barely younger than you and the only reason I don’t know this is because I didn’t grow up in the US and therefore never saw this on TV?
It would XD
I’m only 20, DID grow up in the US, and never really watched TV until Netflix came along, so I am only vaguely familiar with the Wonder Twins through the jokes the Internet’s cracked at them.
Does that help at all?
I only know about it because I used to watch Boomerang ALL the TIME.
*sigh* I’m old enough to have watched the original airings, when I was a kid. So old…
Hearts, flowers, and Geritol, my friend. We can be old and tell the kids to get off our lawn together.
…Okay, never mind, we’re not *that* old
You can offer ten bucks to kids to mow your lawn, together, while you drink beers and hang out, talking about economics and listening to old rock music
Awesome. That is all.
D’aaawww.
That’s really adorable
This resolved significantly better than expected. I am appeased.
Dina is the best problem solver!
Dina is the BEST.
Soon Dina will become friends with everyone. Except Mary. She probably doesn’t even have a friend in Jesus.
jesus thinks they should see other people. he’s currently trying to shake her off onto vishnu
And Vishnu is sending her to Kali for “appropriate treatment”.
+2 points for knowledge!
but maybe you can clear this up for me: is kali an incarnation of vishnu or a separate entity? having quite a bit of trouble clearing this up. according to an indian friend of mine, the mythology is mixed depending on your source
Very, very mixed. My Hinduism professor in college basically just told us that we were just going to watch classic bollywood films, eat indian food, and learn the most common stories, because pretty much every little village has it’s own traditions.
I never *heard* of Kali being an aspect of Vishnu, according to her own cult, she’s one of the aspects of the Mother Goddess Durga. But the worshipers of Vishnu might claim her also. It’s also rather common for some hindus to claim that they’re actually monotheistic, because every god is an aspect of one greater deity -further complicating questions like this- though they don’t often agree on what or who that greater deity is.
It’s fantastically complicated and confusing, but for your question specifically I’d say “Most often not.”
According to my sources Kali is separate from Vishnu, but it has been a few years since we studied Kali at my church and they kinda glossed over her lineage.
They taught about Goddess Kali at your church?
Goddess Kali is the fierce form of the mother goddess. While Vishnu is a God who is the ‘Protector’. If you believe in polytheism that is. I’m sure none of them would want Mary.
Kali is an aspect of female shakti and not an incarnation of Vishnu, who’s part of the creation-preservation-destruction triad. If anything, she represents destructive energy as opposed to Vishnu’s nurturing energy. It’s best, in my opinion, to conceptualise the Hindu deities as natural abstractions rather than characters with strict genealogies within structures of incarnation.
Oh, what peace we often forfeit
Oh what needless pain we bear
All because we know of Mary
And she doesn’t have a prayer.
Curse this rollercoaster of emotions you make us ride! (But don’t stop it)
Love the artist, hate the feels?
Something like that but more that the feels seem to cut like an especially sharp razor
His words are knives and often leave scars.
The art comes from the artist, the feels come from you. What is it you’re hating?
I was under the impression that we were mostly joking around, but I’ve underestimated the comments’ emotions before.
We’re a quirky and insightful bunch.
But, don’t worry. I didn’t mean it that strongly.
Just, a question to think about.
I’m joking…but still the feels when they hit they hit like frieght train
Critical 1s in all Speechcraft rolls.
roll to confirm…dice goes down the drain.
pre-historically epic fails!
God, Dina just continues to get amazing.
Something really bad is gonna happen to her, isn’t it?
don’t worry, she’s wearing her hi-vis safety hoody! what could possibly go wro–?[bus’d]
please don’t say things like that about Dina… DOA has plot protection right? RIGHT? I need reassurance that Dina will live forever and ever, she is immortal and will one day resurrect the dinosaurs!!!
Willis did say nobody would die in DoA.
Willis has been known to toy with his audience before crushing their hopes and dreams like grapes.
But DoA is supposed to be the comic that sustains him and his family forever, so he must maintain a certain status quo to remain functional forever.
There are worse things than death.
EXACTly what I was going to say.
Man, I’m enjoying this interaction more than I thought! Haven’t laughed this loud at a comic in a long time.
Well good because its probably the last you’ll ever get from these two.
The adorbsmeter is critical!
Pretty sure it broke a while back.
My best friends are the ones who I can do this with. I love being able to sit with someone and assume they are my friend.
Alt text sums it up perfectly
Glad they found an amicable solution both are visibly pleased with.
D’awwww
Silent BFFs are best BFF’s
careful, willis! don’t toy with the shippers too hard or you’ll break them
This is soooo cuuuuuuuuute
I want to sit in silence with her SO HARD now she is just so adorable and eeeeeeeeeee
I’ll use this approach when eating lunch with people.
And this is why love Dina.
I need a relationship like this in my life.
Well, that ended….shockingly well.
Wow Dina Way to straight up replace Amber.
MY HEART
Being not particularly adept at small talk myself, I approve of this friendship. It’s rare when you can be with someone with whom you can chat with and yet still have periodic contemplative silences without him or her thinking you’re annoyed about something.
So cute! Good for them!
Dina: diplomat of the year. :3
It’s like there’s a locked door in Sarah’s heart, and Dina’s gonna open the door and get on the floor, and then everyone will walk the dinosaur!
Wait…
Shit…
No need to wait, that’s correct!
+1
So, Dina is far more socially adept than Sarah. Which means that Sarah is far less socially adept than Dina. But the amazing thing about DoA is that there are still so many characters who are far less adept than Sarah. Who would YOU prefer to eat lunch with, conversation mandatory: Sarah? Mike? Ruth (assuming that you are not Billie)? Mary? Faz? Malaya?
I think compatibility’s a pretty big factor here, more than social adept-…ness?
Now I’m wondering how Mary interacts with her bible study group or how Malaya interacts with the rest of her Roller Derby team. There has to be more closeness amongst those groups, and if there were stories to be told there it would be a p cool look at the shifted social dynamics
Sarah – panel four: “Wait, is SHE sarcastic? … Wait, am I her FRIEND?”
Note how Sarah speaks entirely in plain, open language the entire strip without any trace of sarcasm or hostility. And she said sorry. This is new and scary ground for her.
Also – awwwwww.
Amber: “What are you doing?”
Dina: “Sharing friendship without the burden of social pressure.”
Amber: *silently pulls up chair*
*and whips out her DS*
All of the :3
Dina, while I will hug you for all of those responses, I do think that good people are allowed to be interested in you genuinely, even if it’s uncomfortable to answer their questions.
This is like the opposite of a hug, but it still feels like a hug.
*fuzzies*
Not at all where I expected this to go, yet it makes perfect sense now that I see it.
Dam it! Now Sarah is on my list of those who need a hug too!
This class at Indiana State is just full of people who have serious social development problems, isn’t it?
Welcome to the Willisverse.
Dorothy is the buoy in the storm.
Sarah’s always needed a hug, though Mike’s mom tried but got threatened with a bat.
Heh, I kinda doubt Dina will enjoy these shared silences with Becky. Maybe she should hook up with Malaya?
why would you say this? why? you’ve made us all sad now 3′:
Someone’s still bitter about Marcilaya sinking the Salarcie.
What? No! I like Malaya and I admire how she was comfortable enough around the cool, new chick on the team to spend an evening just hanging out and reading. Seems like just the kind of social interaction Dina and Sarah would enjoy. (The fact that Marcie was hoping for something else is neither here nor there).
As for Becky… I completely adore Becky’s and Dina’s interaction, but can you seriously see Becky being quiet more than five minutes at the time?
And I really like the ship name Marmelade Jam
It’s okay, dude, Dina can have a different relationship with Becky than she does with Sarah. If there’s one thing I like about Dina, it’s that she’s not afraid to leave her comfort zone. Becky challenges her natural introversion, and she likes her for that.
True, and she did it while respecting Dina as an equal adult, not in any way condescending
Yay, Dina
That would make the three of us besties. Squeeee
Ah, lovely autistic friendship. It’s so nice when you find somebody you can be this plain-spoken and mutually-zero-pressure with.
(I am not being sarcastic
BONDING!
Well Damn.
This will give me a warm fuzzy feeling all the rest of the night.
My two favorite characters. (2 out of 3).
I’m loving Dina more and more lately. I don’t think you’ve ever created another character who can call people on their shit and do it so nicely!
Dina, *you* are my favourite now.
https://41.media.tumblr.com/89a3e37b5eea26541e69ce3a4f03dcd5/tumblr_nlqr9rXYty1ree18wo1_400.jpg
I concur 100%!
More and more, I really love Dina too.
And thus, an agreement was reached.
“You say it best, when you say nothing at all”
Ronan Keating
Jesus fuck, Dina’s now my favorite.
Damn. Finally finished reading Roomies!; It’s Walky!; Joyce and Walky!; and Shortpacked!. Now I have to wait like a normal person.
Anybody else wishing for a GIF of the last panel? Nom. Nom. Nom.
Davis Willis is now my favorite, for writing Dina.
i’m glad this ended well, but this is the first time Sarah has irked me. Her self preservation and guard is so high it’s amazing how she gets through life without a support system (family aside- if she even comes from a good one)
I’m ready to get to the bottom of Sarah. There’s gotta be more to why she’s afraid to let anyone close. I wish there was someone with enough patience and will to find out!!
It’s hard to tell anything for sure about Sarah’s family because she’s never directly brought them up. She has told Dina’s family that they are free to adopt her if they are normally as quiet as they were on the elevator. She has also referred to lying to ones parents as an adult rite of passage, like pretending you love your parents.
We know that she’s on a scholarship, so her family’s not paying her fees. I would guess that her family’s lower middle class or possibly working poor. Blue collar jobs probably.
IF that is the case, there may be some tension between Sarah and her family because they see her going to college and eventually university as her thinking she’s better than them or “getting above her station”. While there are many people without higher education who encourage their children to receive it and use the chances they themselves didn’t have, there are also those who feel threatened by their children becoming “better” than they are. This is one possibility for why Sarah’s family hasn’t shown up, they don’t approve and are making that clear.
Then there’s the situation with her former roommate. Sarah was in a situation she didn’t know how to resolve on a personal level, so she resolved it by telling someone she knew would take action, effectively removing the situation. Unfortunately this made her look like the villain, so she lost the entire support system she had, namely her roommate’s friends.
I can understand it if someone decides to just get their studies done and try to stay out of everyone’s way after that. Building up friendships is hard work if you’re introverted or just plain not good at socialising. Doubly so if you just went back to zero AND got cast as the one who got their rommate thrown out.
A scholarship does not mean one’s family is money constrained.
It does mean your parents might be able to use tuition money for something else.
There was that one time Sarah was in the elevator with Dina’s family and suggested they adopt her since she enjoys sitting quietly (foreshadowing!). So she probably has similar communication issues with her family as she has with people in general. On the other hand, her one reference to her Nana as buying her that vibrator always stuck with me that her family is really cool and supportive of her in some ways.
Sarah’s really an enigma to me. I feel like she’s more considerate than she’s able to handle. Sure she’s also hyper critical of people to a antagonistic extent, but there are also points where she shows compassion/affinity for people but is unable to really follow through on it in a constructive way. It’s what Joyce noticed after the party incident, and what informs a lot of Joyce’s perception of her leading to their fights.
This little arc is a great example. Sarah calls over Dina because she intrinsically recognizes her as a friend and even explicitly thanks her for her company, but she still can’t supress the part of her that wants to pick at people that are near her. It’s a big part of why I love this concluding(?) strip so much: It solidifies that she wasn’t calling Dina over to be mean, she called her over because she considers her to be a friend (or an acquaintance she would like to become a better friend with), but couldn’t stop herself from going into her standard routine with her. It’s also been shown in the Dana flashbacks, where she tried to help personally but probably just ended up making Dana feel worse about the rut she was in, rather than encouraging her to get out of it.
Squeeeee!!!!
I had planned to write that.
When everything spoken is awkward, awkward silence is comforting.
Well sure, but this strip actually shows that these two can sit next to each other without saying a word and it’s not awkward. As in, silence isn’t necessarily awkward.
What brand of cereal does Dina eat? And don’t say Fruity Pebbles; she probably won’t touch the stuff because the Fintstones depict people and dinosaurs co-existing. Dinopuffs? Saurocereal? Dinobits? Jurassic Charms with real marshmallow dinosaurs? No, she might object to that one because it would mix cretaceous and jurassic creatures.
Cocoaviraptors (with dinosuar eggs that stay crunchy, even in milk).
And the puzzle pieces fit oh so perfectly.
This is great!
If there’s one thing I love in stories with large casts is those situations where characters that don’t really interact together usually end up doing just that.
Also, I never noticed Dina didn’t use contractions before Sarah pointed it out… although I could tell something was a bit off with her. Heh.
Yesterday the comment section found that she does use contractions and has used them in front of Sarah (mall arc), she just uses them less than most people (that is, not whenever possible). Sarah was just trying to find something to derail the conversation with -which she did, great lawyer chops girl
There are some small moments between Sarah and Dina that has forshadowed this one by displaying a limited but mutually respectful relationship. My favorite is this one
dawwwwwww this friendship is the best
Jacob: “Dude, how do people get on your good side?”
Sarah: “Mostly by not talking to me.”
FORSHADOWING
Cutest thing ever, the strip can end now!
….it actually would be a high note.
“Black people eat like this”
*Chews with left side of mouth*
“But Asian people eat like this”
*Chews with right side of mouth*
*Audience laughs and applauds*
I was going to ask if there’s a word for shipping two people as friends then I just assumed it’s “friendshipping” so I friendship the hell out of these two.
Me, too. OTFriendship, here.
And the mouse-over text says what the voices in my head are squeeing.
Like Dina, I am well onto the autism spectrum. I am very good at science like Dina (electronics in my case) and achieve accuracy and clarity in all things mechanical. But outside of that, I never know what’s really going on. I often misunderstand people, I don’t understand all the subtle social cues everyone else gets, and I’m often the butt of jokes. But I am not antisocial, not at all. When things are simple I thoroughly enjoy the company of others. However, I especially appreciate a friend who understands “parallel play,” sometimes sitting together silently, but still together. I get that Sarah agreed to the arrangement for very different reasons than Dina, but I have the advantage of the omnipotent view of the story. I hope Sarah doesn’t hurt Dina when she figures it out.
I think a lot people enjoy just sitting with each other without having to talk once in a while. It is just that you feel the social obligation to talk, that the other one might be bored or find it awkward.
Also Sarah might really be happy to have company without talking. Her problem with conversations might be different than Dinas, but are also less easily forgiven.
I’m positive that’s the beginning of breakfast strips where lazy Willis doesn’t have to think of dialogue ;D
Dina is my favorite, as well. That seems to be a popular opinion ’round these parts.
I want to eat breakfast with Dina and Sarah.
* reverts to a comfortable state of silence*
I’m going to need to find this friend.
You’ll have to do as Dina did and ask
I really, really identify with this. And this is really, really cute.
this is all i ever wanted after dina/becky
talkin bout meh BEST FRIEND!!!