Also, ha, Becky’s internal dialogue. Yup, I was wondering where the hygiene stuff was going to rear up. Guess Becky’s Tuesday is going to involve a trip to the mall* to get a toothbrush.
Dina and Becky, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes slipshine, then comes oh no wait that doesn’t rhyme at all and they’re not in a tree WHO CARES IT’S DINA AND BECKY
Isn’t an American mall the same thing as a shopping centre? That is, a usually multi-storey building with a lot of different shops in it? It’d be a pretty weird shopping centre with no supermarket. Where do you keep your supermarkets, if not in your shopping centres? Or do I misunderstand what a mall is?
Grocery Stores/Supermarkets are usually in stand alone buildings or in a Strip Mall in the US. A strip mall is different than the mall you are thinking of. It’s just a long row building divided into separate businesses, almost always one level, as opposed to the mall you describe, which is expansive, sometime multi-storied, and generally contains department stores, clothing stores, a food court, jewelers, shoes stores, and more.
For some reason that I don’t fully understand, in the U.S., supermarkets are very seldom part of an enclosed mall. They’re either stand-alone buildings, or the centerpiece of a strip mall, which is just a row of attached buildings, not enclosed. Malls frequently have a supermarket in the same shopping complex, but it won’t be part of the mall proper, but will be a standalone or a strip mall set apart a little, across the parking lot from the main mall.
The anchors for U.S. malls are typically overpriced clothing stores.
I think it’s about parking. More than two thirds of the footprint of a typical American mall is devoted to just parking. When you go to a mall, you generally don’t get a good nearby space unless you’re really lucky, but it’s okay because you’re expected to stay there and shop for a while before leaving. Whereas with a supermarket, you want to be able to go in, grab your stuff, and not have to hike a mile and a half back to your car while your ice cream melts. Also, there’s generally shopping carts at a supermarket, and it takes work to send people out to retrieve them all constantly. Having a smaller and closer parking lot mitigates this somewhat.
A mall, such as College Mall in Bloomington, is pretty much as you describe, but here in the US, they rarely feature supermarkets. (Don’t ask me why, they just don’t.) Supermarkets are usually either free-standing stores or the anchor for a strip mall. (A strip mall is typically smaller and doesn’t feature enclosed common areas. You have to go back outside to move from one store to another. Also, as the term “strip” implies, all stores are arranged in a line.) We also have Super Centers (pioneered by Wal-Mart, though other retailers have since gotten in on it), which feature a large department store and a full-service grocery in the same building. These are also usually either free-standing or part of a strip mall.
Yeah, I’m a Brit too and I was thinking of British shopping centres as being like American shopping malls, an expansive covered area with all sorts of stores, dept stores, smaller retailers, food courts, etc etc…and maybe a supermarket. The one several miles away from me, for example, has a (small) Sainsburys in it.
We also have much bigger-than-average supermarkets, genreally termed hypermarkets over here, which do the full groceries experience as well as everything else in a kind of supermassive department store. The nearest one for me is part of a large retail park area some miles away (closer than the shopping centre though, in fact), and takes up a fairly large chunk of said park.
Actually the College Mall in Bloomington has a Target, which would have toothbrushes.
Better resources for toothbrushes would include the various Campus stores in and around the dormitories, the gas station a five-minute walk away from Read hall (where I think they are?), or one of the numerous Kroger supermarkets in Bloomington.
They sell some random things at campus bookstores. Earlier this week when I went to mine, I saw them selling Xbox controllers there. Right next to the chef’s knives.
Well, there’s certainly a market for them.
Really? Chef knives at the campus bookstore? Must be nice to live somewhere that the schools aren’t panicky about anything obviously weaponizable…
Must have a cooking program. You don’t know often a sleep deprived culinary skills student comes running in a 10 pm looking for a deboning knife so they can practice for their final exam in the morning.
In addition to campus bookstores, there’s also numerous drugstores. (Reminder to DoA readers: the university that this takes place at is a real university, and Willis sources visual references for real-life locations for the strip.)
Still less awful than how Illithid actually reproduce, a process called cerebromorphesis, where their tadpoles burrow into a sentient humanoid’s head then slowly eat their brain alive assimilating the host’s sentience till it’s tentacles burst through it’s victim’s face and it assumes full control. From there the subject’s external form slowly changes to become a full-fledged Illithid, when it will add it’s tadpoles to the central spawning pool, which will usually also serve as residence for the Ruling Elder Brain.
I thought there was some gradual conversion of the nervous system too, starting as the brainmunching is nearing completion and ending a while after the tentacles manifest.
Much more elegant than beholders, who reproduce once. The reproductive sack swells up until the beholder can bite it off, and from there the young eat their way out. The parent beholder then eats the sack and ugly offspring before kicking the rest out of its lair.
I dunno. I’m obviously not opposed to porny cartoons (my avatars is from Slipshine, afterall) but the non-consenting variety really squicks me out. And based on my admittedly limited knowledge on the subject, tentacle porn is almost exclusively the latter.
I would’ve thought Drow in the bedroom, given the choice of the walking fetish-bait dominatrix race, or the sexless brain eating parasites that drool acid, I know which I’d prefer in the bedroom.
When it comes to me getting murdered, I personally prefer the good ole giant mantis!
I mean the feeling of an exoskeleton hooking into your flesh, flinging your body face down, snapping your arm behind your back, and eating your head just before…
Lemme stop Im getting hot n bothered just thinkin about it!
… Now, when you say “ended together” are we talking about a night of romance, or are you implying that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a sexy lesbian suicide pact?
It is for the best. On the internet, our internal monologues tend to be channeled into posts anyway. That’s why there are so many not good comments in the world
Indeed. It has been theorized (by me) that Becky’s new haircut is, in fact, a brain parasite, which is now competing with the Tricera-top for control of Dina’s brain.
This reminds me of my first girlfriend.
I could never tell if I was a good kisser or not.
And I didn’t want to ask because… Well. I didn’t want to know.
Hey, I was 16 and still kinda dumb.
Since then….
About the only habit I managed to make my girlfriend at the time end was her smoking because it just tastes foul and told her it was me or smoking…we ended up marrying so it all worked out in the end 🙂
This is adorable and I was so excited BUT BECKY PRACTICE PROPER ORAL HYGIENE PLEASE TAKE JOYCE’S IF NECESSARY WHY MUST YOU DESTROY ME IN THIS WAY but uh anyway yeah, kissing happened and that’s awesome
The pad of one’s thumb can be a makeshift brush for the flat surfaces, at least, and very vigorous swishing can also help mitigate anything getting caught in the nooks and crannies. A few days without a brush isn’t catastrophic.
I want to think that Becky’s been regularly rinsing her mouth and throat at least. Otherwise, Dina’s first taste of human sexual interaction is going to be… blech :p
Mhm, we were shown that back when she was talking about her toedad to Dina earlier, and even before with Joyce, during dinner with dotty and walky, where she was trying to get Joyce angry at her for ‘screwing everything up.’
Yup. Becky feels that the remainder of what she has will abandon her if she doesn’t play a “smooth, confident, happy-go-lucky” persona. And she’s got a lot of self-doubt and stress, which makes sense as that’s one of those things that tend to go with losing your entire support network because of what you are.
Exactly. Early on there wasn’t a whole lot, but it’s been made abundantly clear over the past months that Becky is scared, lonely, and guilt ridden.
It’s a little better nowadays, at least. Not so much “Becky is a perfect Mary Sue” and “Becky’s only personality trait is Lesbian” in the comments anymore.
Sounds familiar to me as emotional armor for dealing with family abuse. Not physical, necessarily, but I doubt life with Toedad has ever been easy. Becky’s learned the lesson well and has been faking that “smooth, confident, happy-go-lucky” persona for long time.
Okay, so that’s kind of gross. Still adorable, though.
In all fairness, Dina was just eating cocoa puffs, then sausage pizza, so she may not be minty fresh herself.
Bad breath aside, this is a sweet moment.
Interesting how Dina assumes that Becky has no anxieties regarding this development, and that’s clearly not the case. When I was their age, I was prone to make similar assumptions regarding those who outwardly presented as outgoing and confident. I relate to Dina in that I had/ have similar difficulties with reading signals. Of course, no one can really know what’s going on in another person’s head, regardless of how good or bad one is at reading others.
It’s an easy mistake for Dina to make considering that Becky specifically plays her outgoing, confident, world-can’t-get-me-down persona entirely to bury down all her fear and anxiety and pain.
If there’s one truth about anxiety, it’s the certainty that absolutely everyone around you got the “How to be normal” handbook and you were out sick that day.
Am I the only one wondering what’s going on over in th RA’s room? We haven’t seen a hint of Ruth nor Billie all day and I’m guessing it’s mid-afternoon to early evening by this point. They are going to end up having to have a fairly heavy discussion pretty soon enough regarding why Billie isn’t going back to her room, especially with the fact that room is clearly designed as a single an it’s hard to picture the both of them in there trying to study.
In real time their first kiss was over two months ago, and I think Dina’s pursuit of Becky is happening so fast because Dina approaches the idea of relationships differently than, say, Walky or Dorothy, who had to work themselves up to it.
Besides, the last strip showed that Dina wanted to kiss her, but her inexperience with relationships made her start panicking that she was ruining things with Becky already.
I’m glad that they both appear to be enjoying themselves by the last panel.
But, wow, what a way to kill the sweet ‘taste’ of the strip with that last dialogue.
Dina and Becky, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes slipshine, then comes oh no wait that doesn’t rhyme at all and they’re not in a tree WHO CARES IT’S DINA AND BECKY
Haha exactly how it was with my first kiss (at age 25). At some point in our relationship i realized that our kisses are weird because i overthink it. Went much better from then on
It is pretty sad, but given this is a largely lady-centric comic, it’s kind of to be expected. There’s only six significant male characters, and only two of them like guys.
Yeah, and the options aren’t great. Mike is whatever sexuality people don’t want him to be, but I wouldn’t inflict him on Ethan or Danny. Joe is… yeah. Jacob is pretty canonically straight. Walky might be bi, but is pretty well taken and that relationship would have to have quite a bit blowing up to do to free him up. Which just leaves secondary characters who haven’t appeared much (like Bryan, who is in fact gay, but has also been in a sum total of 6 comics so far and only in one of them has he had a speaking role. Jim is confirmed straight and Galasso is too old and married. Which leaves… what? One of the background characters who didn’t even get a tag at the Questioning meeting? One of the dudes who’ve just been in the backgrounds of shots so far? (wouldn’t be the first time that a seemingly invisible background character became more important), but given Ethan and Danny’s googly eyes for each other, it might be difficult for them to start other relationships.
Yeah, we might be waiting a while for dude-on-dude.
I like how the speech patterns differ enough between characters and also help you form a voice in your head for them. I bet if we could record imagination sounds that people wouldnt be far off from each other with how each character sounds.
It’s kinda like one of those episodes of Scrubs, where J.D. passes off the internal monologue to another character for the episode. After this kiss, we’ll be hearing Becky’s voice, then she’ll pass it to someone else, etc.
I was gonna comment about how many people were gonna want to link to that Shia Lebouf JUST DO IT thing. Now I’m just gonna laugh at the toothbrush thing. XD
I agree; I’m enjoying this sweetness between them, and I’d rather it not be shattered by a slip shine. Besides sex between the two of them seems really out of character for both of them; Dina is still in early exploration of herself and this sphere of social interaction, and Becky was raised very Christian, so even with her coming out of the closet and everything she’d likely be uncomfortable moving that fast to premarital hanky-panky.
Seems like we have to update the list. Things that makes Dina loose her cool:
– He looks like a giant toe?
– I’ve got the bases concept wrong?
– She is looking at dinosaurs…
– BECKY-KISSES!!!!!!
Contrary to popular media portrayals, going a few days without brushing your teeth or taking a shower will not make you smell horrible. Unless you’re just that filthy. Stop being filthy!
Actually, it will.
Your sense of smell might be a bit less precise than the norm, perhaps?
Brushing is especially important, since the bacteria generate a decaying smell, but likewise if you’ve sweated at all, your body odor’ll get quite musky as well.
Of course, your smell is based off several things, including: General health, intensity of oral care, degree of sweating, and your age.
As you get older, your natural body odor will get a lot stronger and build up a lot faster.
Of course, none of this is relevant-
If you were kissing your new lover, I’m sure you’d fret about silly little things as well, no matter what rationalizations you could put to them normally 🙂
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Apparently Becky is a Mind Flayer in the bedroom.
Also, ha, Becky’s internal dialogue. Yup, I was wondering where the hygiene stuff was going to rear up. Guess Becky’s Tuesday is going to involve a trip to the mall* to get a toothbrush.
*Uh oh
JUST DO IT
DON’T LET YOUR MEMES BE DREAMS
Dina and Becky, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes slipshine, then comes oh no wait that doesn’t rhyme at all and they’re not in a tree WHO CARES IT’S DINA AND BECKY
There IS a conveniently climbable tree outside the room Becky’s been granted Billie’s spot in, though…
Hmmmm now comes the question of who to ship/focus on next….Danny Ethan? nah…erm, crap name’s are blanking on me…Marcie and ….and….whats-er-name?
Malaysian?
Wait no she’s Filipino
Malayarcie
I wouldn’t think of the mall as a place to buy a toothbrush. Maybe if they have a dollar store.
But today’s special is Toedads, so Becky should consider alternatives.
Maybe they’ll offer a trade-in on the one she has.
Maybe one of the others will go to the mall and pick up a new toothbrush for Becky while they’re there. 🙂
Surely there would be a supermarket at the mall?
Not usually, no. Well, unless you’re talking about a strip mall. A full-sized mall doesn’t generally feature a supermarket at least in the US.
Isn’t an American mall the same thing as a shopping centre? That is, a usually multi-storey building with a lot of different shops in it? It’d be a pretty weird shopping centre with no supermarket. Where do you keep your supermarkets, if not in your shopping centres? Or do I misunderstand what a mall is?
Grocery Stores/Supermarkets are usually in stand alone buildings or in a Strip Mall in the US. A strip mall is different than the mall you are thinking of. It’s just a long row building divided into separate businesses, almost always one level, as opposed to the mall you describe, which is expansive, sometime multi-storied, and generally contains department stores, clothing stores, a food court, jewelers, shoes stores, and more.
For some reason that I don’t fully understand, in the U.S., supermarkets are very seldom part of an enclosed mall. They’re either stand-alone buildings, or the centerpiece of a strip mall, which is just a row of attached buildings, not enclosed. Malls frequently have a supermarket in the same shopping complex, but it won’t be part of the mall proper, but will be a standalone or a strip mall set apart a little, across the parking lot from the main mall.
The anchors for U.S. malls are typically overpriced clothing stores.
I think it’s about parking. More than two thirds of the footprint of a typical American mall is devoted to just parking. When you go to a mall, you generally don’t get a good nearby space unless you’re really lucky, but it’s okay because you’re expected to stay there and shop for a while before leaving. Whereas with a supermarket, you want to be able to go in, grab your stuff, and not have to hike a mile and a half back to your car while your ice cream melts. Also, there’s generally shopping carts at a supermarket, and it takes work to send people out to retrieve them all constantly. Having a smaller and closer parking lot mitigates this somewhat.
A mall, such as College Mall in Bloomington, is pretty much as you describe, but here in the US, they rarely feature supermarkets. (Don’t ask me why, they just don’t.) Supermarkets are usually either free-standing stores or the anchor for a strip mall. (A strip mall is typically smaller and doesn’t feature enclosed common areas. You have to go back outside to move from one store to another. Also, as the term “strip” implies, all stores are arranged in a line.) We also have Super Centers (pioneered by Wal-Mart, though other retailers have since gotten in on it), which feature a large department store and a full-service grocery in the same building. These are also usually either free-standing or part of a strip mall.
Yeah, I’m a Brit too and I was thinking of British shopping centres as being like American shopping malls, an expansive covered area with all sorts of stores, dept stores, smaller retailers, food courts, etc etc…and maybe a supermarket. The one several miles away from me, for example, has a (small) Sainsburys in it.
We also have much bigger-than-average supermarkets, genreally termed hypermarkets over here, which do the full groceries experience as well as everything else in a kind of supermassive department store. The nearest one for me is part of a large retail park area some miles away (closer than the shopping centre though, in fact), and takes up a fairly large chunk of said park.
Here in Canada malls may or may not have a supermarket, they almost all have a dollar store or drugstore where you could get a toothbrush though.
Actually the College Mall in Bloomington has a Target, which would have toothbrushes.
Better resources for toothbrushes would include the various Campus stores in and around the dormitories, the gas station a five-minute walk away from Read hall (where I think they are?), or one of the numerous Kroger supermarkets in Bloomington.
Remembering the old ad from when I was growing up — “If you can’t brush after every meal, chew Dentyne!”
Could probably ask Joyce, she likely has a few dozen brand new ones stashed away.
**slow claps for the phrase “Mind Flayer in the bedroom”**
Right from the playbook of being a lady in the streets and haunted clock tower in the sheets, I guess.
Thanks for the link, that website is very funny.
Yeah, that phrase is a real beholder. Be proud, Cerberus.
There’s probably a store on campus which sells toothbrushes.
They sell some random things at campus bookstores. Earlier this week when I went to mine, I saw them selling Xbox controllers there. Right next to the chef’s knives.
Well, there’s certainly a market for them.
Really? Chef knives at the campus bookstore? Must be nice to live somewhere that the schools aren’t panicky about anything obviously weaponizable…
Pfff xbox controllers are not that dangerous.
Shouldn’t have lol’d at that…
Lol’d anyways
Microsoft products and weapons should never be mixed.
Must have a cooking program. You don’t know often a sleep deprived culinary skills student comes running in a 10 pm looking for a deboning knife so they can practice for their final exam in the morning.
In addition to campus bookstores, there’s also numerous drugstores. (Reminder to DoA readers: the university that this takes place at is a real university, and Willis sources visual references for real-life locations for the strip.)
I have some issues with your metaphor. Things with tentacles involving bedrooms and and asian girls….yeah. No. Stop.
Damn I’m ace, I didn’t even think of that…
Bedrooms?
Still less awful than how Illithid actually reproduce, a process called cerebromorphesis, where their tadpoles burrow into a sentient humanoid’s head then slowly eat their brain alive assimilating the host’s sentience till it’s tentacles burst through it’s victim’s face and it assumes full control. From there the subject’s external form slowly changes to become a full-fledged Illithid, when it will add it’s tadpoles to the central spawning pool, which will usually also serve as residence for the Ruling Elder Brain.
I thought there was some gradual conversion of the nervous system too, starting as the brainmunching is nearing completion and ending a while after the tentacles manifest.
Much more elegant than beholders, who reproduce once. The reproductive sack swells up until the beholder can bite it off, and from there the young eat their way out. The parent beholder then eats the sack and ugly offspring before kicking the rest out of its lair.
I don’t understand the problem here.
Mind Flayers are dudes with squids for faces.
It’s a really stretched hentai joke.
Don’t think about it too hard or it’ll eat out your brain.
And we come full circle…
No, I understood that. I don’t understand the problem.
I dunno. I’m obviously not opposed to porny cartoons (my avatars is from Slipshine, afterall) but the non-consenting variety really squicks me out. And based on my admittedly limited knowledge on the subject, tentacle porn is almost exclusively the latter.
…Never been more ace in my life.
It’s a classic phrase: You want a partner who is an elf in public, a halfling in the kitchen, and a mind flayer in the bedroom.
I can’t be the only one who has heard this, right?
I would’ve thought Drow in the bedroom, given the choice of the walking fetish-bait dominatrix race, or the sexless brain eating parasites that drool acid, I know which I’d prefer in the bedroom.
Either way the male gets murdered in the process.
When it comes to me getting murdered, I personally prefer the good ole giant mantis!
I mean the feeling of an exoskeleton hooking into your flesh, flinging your body face down, snapping your arm behind your back, and eating your head just before…
Lemme stop Im getting hot n bothered just thinkin about it!
The fact that your grav is Joe makes this even more awesome/horrifying
Well good thing that’s not a problem here
Tiefling, They are all hot and fiery…
I quess you also want them to be a Dwarf at work…
Is that a thing? I’m not mad or nything, mind, I’m only surprised.
Ew, elf? No thank you.
*unless the mall is in Indianapolis she should be ok
Bloomington has a mall of its own. Toedad was shipped off to the one in Indy, so she’s fine. Or there’s always Dollar Tree.
Don’t worry, Becky! Dina will clean that with her tongue! =D =D =D
…DAMN YOU WILLIS
…uh.
Y’ever had someone use their tongue on your teeth during a kiss? ‘Cuz let me tell you, it’s hot.
Won’t really help with the bad breath, is what I was thinking.
…is that not the purpose of a kiss? Nothing else made sense.
*primary technique of a ‘french’ kiss, rather
Like one of the birds that sits on sits on hippos?
Damn,i really need my morning coffee.
yeah i missed mine but im sddghjiurereewagfoolijmjddsaqeszxf fine
gmzkjgzljnhglkjzknzgm,ml;mezkp
I think Dina may have liked this whole “kissing thing”.
That or Becky’s parasital device is starting to make effect.
Which parasite will win out in the end, the Becky or the hat?
Who says these parasites are in competition? This is clearly symbiosis.
I dunno, look at the way the Tricera-top is getting scrunched up in panel 4 – seems to me like it’s getting displaced by Becky’s hair-parasite.
It wasnt until this post that I realized why people were talking about mind flayers further up.
Yup, this is further evidence by the fact that the internal monologue is catching.
… or maybe Becky has had that all along and this is just the first thought that she hasn’t said aloud?
I think the experiment needs more datapoints
Repeated trials are the only way to confirm statistical significance.
Initial results seem promising however.
They do, however, have yet to examine the relevant figures.
………body of evidence!!!
…curves….
HHHNNNNNGHGGGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWW
Best update ever 8D
Stop thinking that much Dina,just KISS HER!
JUST DO IT!
Don’t let your dream be dreams.
*SMOOOOOOCH*
Very nice touch there at the end.
Luckily Dina is turned on by Dinosaur breath.
The wonderful scent of carrion.
Also lucky for her Dina usee essence of The Rapter tooth past, so there’s isn’t much of a difference.
Some dinosaurs used scent to attract mates,i think that’s why they ended togheter.
… Now, when you say “ended together” are we talking about a night of romance, or are you implying that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a sexy lesbian suicide pact?
I think i have to choose my words carefully next time.
Damit you made me spill my coffee…
when the devil is too busy…and death’s a bit too much…they call on me, by name, you see, for my special touch!
To the gentlemen, I’m misfortune. To the ladies, I’m surprise. But call me by any name. Anyway, it’s all the saaaaaame!
Damn, I love that song.
Dina in that final panel the letters give me the impression she’s vomiting from the fact Becky hasn’t brushed her teeth in three days XD
My first thought was Accelerator’s angel mode but hey.
And then after that the webcomic explodes
And Michael Bay recorded all that and will use the footage in his next movie.
Explosions 3.0 The Internet
I just like commenting to other carla gravitars.
I agree with Dina evslkwpaiwebicmsxksjlksweoiweo indeed.
Oh my god I just noticed the hoodie’s “nose” is scrunching up.
I’m going to be finding lots of little things I love about this page over the next few hours.
SHE IS BLUSHING IN THE LAST PANEL !!
Uh
They’re both blushing in every panel
The interesting part is that it’s scrunching up on nothing but Becky’s hair. She probably needs to buy shampoo too.
So cute and so gross.
I agree with exactly 2/5 of your post!
The first “so” and the “and,” right?
Eh its kinda so so.
8D
You little so-and-so!
Based on the color which dominates the top of my head, my thought bubbles will accordingly be …. black.
Excellent.
And now, a snippet from Andr3wtime’s internal monologue: “[REDACTED]”
It is for the best. On the internet, our internal monologues tend to be channeled into posts anyway. That’s why there are so many not good comments in the world
Oh man, the crinkled tricera-top!
Had it occurred to anyone that maybe that’s what disrupted Dina’s upper brain function??
Indeed. It has been theorized (by me) that Becky’s new haircut is, in fact, a brain parasite, which is now competing with the Tricera-top for control of Dina’s brain.
Dina’s inner monologue here is remarkably similar to mine on the very rare occasions I kiss a girl.
This reminds me of my first girlfriend.
I could never tell if I was a good kisser or not.
And I didn’t want to ask because… Well. I didn’t want to know.
Hey, I was 16 and still kinda dumb.
Since then….
And now we’re all older and still kinda dumb 😀
Yeah. But at least now I make more money.
… I don’t think that’s actually better.
The dino nose is wrinkling ! The dinose is wrinkling aaaaa
IT’S ALIVE!
…I feel this strip. I…FEEL this strip.
Get your hands off your monitor!
It’s not the monitor where otusasio451 is feeling this strip…
Violating someone’s monitor is like sleeping with mother, not cool man.
DOVLEFBEUYGSBLSXXZKPEQ indeed.
Was all sorts of happy, then Becky dropped the bad breath bomb and things went from awesome to… marginally less awesome.
We’ve all been there Becky at least once but at least you’re not a smoker so its all good
Urgh, I have date da smoker once… I swear it was like kissing an ashtray.
This is about when we invested in chewing-gum 😀
About the only habit I managed to make my girlfriend at the time end was her smoking because it just tastes foul and told her it was me or smoking…we ended up marrying so it all worked out in the end 🙂
congrats XD
cris73: More awesome than cigarettes!
She’d probably disagree with that!
Too late, she’s invested. Sunk cost ftw!
The solution is to start smoking yourself!
But seriously, it’s just like garlic. If you are a smoker, you do not taste the ashtray in others either.
I’ll have you know that I can taste smoked garlic regardless of what I’ve eaten
re: first kisses, I am Dina and Dina is me and thank you very much Mr. Willis for making me feel like I am not alone in this and also yay beckasaur
Dina has encountered an unexpected error and needs to shut down.
Abort. Retry. Fail. (Too Much Becky Error)
Becky tend to have that effect on her girlfriends and would-be-girlfriends
Coming up: A strip of Joyce and Dina standing by a wall, rebooting.
Landon from Sandra and Woo can guest star. First time his girlfriend Larissa suggested more than smooching his brain went BSoD, so he’d fit right in.
I’m really looking forward to Landon’s response to Larissa’s latest display of affection.
Just imagine if/when his mom finds out.
Boom.
At this rate,we’ll run out of hard drives.
This is adorable and I was so excited BUT BECKY PRACTICE PROPER ORAL HYGIENE PLEASE TAKE JOYCE’S IF NECESSARY WHY MUST YOU DESTROY ME IN THIS WAY but uh anyway yeah, kissing happened and that’s awesome
I think if Becky ever used Joyce’s toothbrush that would be a friendship over.
Yeah, based on this conversation:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/largecampus/
I’m pretty sure Becky would end up in an undersized box sent to Abu Dhabi if she pulled that.
I would much rather go three days without brushing than borrow a friend’s toothbrush. Ugh, I don’t even like sharing food or drinks with people.
Just stick a dab of toothpaste on your finger and rub it over your teeth. Voila! Field expedient toothbrush.
The pad of one’s thumb can be a makeshift brush for the flat surfaces, at least, and very vigorous swishing can also help mitigate anything getting caught in the nooks and crannies. A few days without a brush isn’t catastrophic.
Prevent, not mitigate. I keep changing my plans for what sentence to write after I’m already halfway through typing…
I want to think that Becky’s been regularly rinsing her mouth and throat at least. Otherwise, Dina’s first taste of human sexual interaction is going to be… blech :p
Yeah, it’s been a while since I smooched someone, so pretty sure I’d be thinking the same thoughts as Dina.
I figured it was a fairly universal reaction.
This is so sweet, I’m getting cavities just from looking at it. Which is also a mouth hygiene thing, so I guess it’s fitting lol.
I am glad that Becky had her own worries, too, even if she can be so flippant about stuff. Like, I dunno, helps her be that much more relatable.
That said, I have more than a little empathy for Dina here, as well.
FWIW, I don’t think that Becky had actually thought of her hygiene issues until that very moment.
Becky has tons of worries, she just acts flippant to try and avoid how much she’s hurting right now.
Mhm, we were shown that back when she was talking about her toedad to Dina earlier, and even before with Joyce, during dinner with dotty and walky, where she was trying to get Joyce angry at her for ‘screwing everything up.’
Yup. Becky feels that the remainder of what she has will abandon her if she doesn’t play a “smooth, confident, happy-go-lucky” persona. And she’s got a lot of self-doubt and stress, which makes sense as that’s one of those things that tend to go with losing your entire support network because of what you are.
Exactly. Early on there wasn’t a whole lot, but it’s been made abundantly clear over the past months that Becky is scared, lonely, and guilt ridden.
It’s a little better nowadays, at least. Not so much “Becky is a perfect Mary Sue” and “Becky’s only personality trait is Lesbian” in the comments anymore.
Err, that is that the comment section isn’t acting like that as much anymore. Not that Becky could ever be boiled down in such a dismissive way.
In hindsight I seemed to be saying as much.
Not just that I think.
Sounds familiar to me as emotional armor for dealing with family abuse. Not physical, necessarily, but I doubt life with Toedad has ever been easy. Becky’s learned the lesson well and has been faking that “smooth, confident, happy-go-lucky” persona for long time.
Trust me, Becks, Dina’s too busy tongue wrestling with you to notice your breath ain’t minty fresh.
“What do we want!”
“Slipshine!”
“When do we want it?”
“NOW!”
“nope!”
Yeah, I’ve been holding back, but I would sign up for this one.
Patience, professor.
anyone else here tried to phonetically pronounce Dina’s last line?
In much the same way that I always tried to pronounce the hundred-letter thunderclaps in Finnegans Wake, yes, I did.
It ended poorly. So I replaced it with a BOOM! noise instead.
Sa-ru-ya-ma. It’s not hard.
(facepalm) I’m an idiot, ignore me.
Okay, so that’s kind of gross. Still adorable, though.
In all fairness, Dina was just eating cocoa puffs, then sausage pizza, so she may not be minty fresh herself.
Bad breath aside, this is a sweet moment.
Interesting how Dina assumes that Becky has no anxieties regarding this development, and that’s clearly not the case. When I was their age, I was prone to make similar assumptions regarding those who outwardly presented as outgoing and confident. I relate to Dina in that I had/ have similar difficulties with reading signals. Of course, no one can really know what’s going on in another person’s head, regardless of how good or bad one is at reading others.
It’s an easy mistake for Dina to make considering that Becky specifically plays her outgoing, confident, world-can’t-get-me-down persona entirely to bury down all her fear and anxiety and pain.
If there’s one truth about anxiety, it’s the certainty that absolutely everyone around you got the “How to be normal” handbook and you were out sick that day.
An almost universal fear, to a smaller or larger extent
Ginger thought bubble.
I could be misreading, but despite Becky’s concerns, Dina does seem to be very much enjoying herself in that last panel.
If so… then that removes one of my main concerns about this relationship.
I love how at first you could see her eyes were scrunched up, but when their lips finally met, her face became visibly more relaxed.
I think “relaxed” is the key word.
The last panel shows Dina finally letting go of her social anxiety and second-guessing of herself when it comes to interpersonal interactions.
D`awwwwwwww
Fleshlings disgust me.
Hey Megatron my friend Ultra Car is your biggest fan.
Not enough violent abuse, constant betrayal, blatant dominant/submissive overtones, frequent murder attempts, or high pitched screeching voices?
(don’t bother to deny it Megs. We all know what goes on with Starscream. We ALL know)
Megatron you tried so hard not to become a fleshling you became Noble, the lamest fleshling of them all.
Nightscream was cooler than you.
Eew
Am I the only one wondering what’s going on over in th RA’s room? We haven’t seen a hint of Ruth nor Billie all day and I’m guessing it’s mid-afternoon to early evening by this point. They are going to end up having to have a fairly heavy discussion pretty soon enough regarding why Billie isn’t going back to her room, especially with the fact that room is clearly designed as a single an it’s hard to picture the both of them in there trying to study.
Billie had already moved in with Ruth before she gave her old place to Becky.
Dina was very close to re-enacting one of my favorite Deathbulge strips.
Didn’t they just meet yesterday?
…And?
In real time their first kiss was over two months ago, and I think Dina’s pursuit of Becky is happening so fast because Dina approaches the idea of relationships differently than, say, Walky or Dorothy, who had to work themselves up to it.
Besides, the last strip showed that Dina wanted to kiss her, but her inexperience with relationships made her start panicking that she was ruining things with Becky already.
Dina is apparently pretty dominant, so I’d tend to agree with this.
If, by yesterday, you mean most of a week, yes.
They were first in the same panel on Thursday but they didn’t have any significant interaction until yesterday’s party.
Either way, it’s not a big deal. Dina’s got game, yo.
I’m glad that they both appear to be enjoying themselves by the last panel.
But, wow, what a way to kill the sweet ‘taste’ of the strip with that last dialogue.
Dina: Becky?
Joyce: M…mouth-smooches?
Dina: Mouth-smooches…?
Butthole dad: No Mouth-smooches!
Dina: You need to leave.
Becky: BUTTHOLE DAD?!!!!
Dina: He needed to leave.
Becky: Dinosaurs?
Dina: Dinosaurs.
Dina *to self*: Mouth-smooches?
Becky *to God*: Mouth-smooches?
Dina: Mouth-smooches!!!!!
Becky: Mouth-smooches!
And there were all the Mouth-smooches.
won”t you come~ and wash away the raain.
Butthole dad now far away: i needed to leave.
Thanks for perfecting it!!!
Fanfix.rtf
walking_with_dina_script.txt (Beckintermission fragment)
This is just so awesome and sweet!
Love it. Reminds me of my concerns on my first kiss, but moreso.
This is very cute, even though Becky needs a breath mint.
Ehehe!! The dinosaur hoodie’s nose in the last panel!!
Yeah, Becky? Kind of late to be worrying about that stuff.
Meanwhile – I’m sorry but your Dina is currently busy and unable to service that information request. Please try reloading the page later!
Considering Dina’s diet of sugary cereals she is hardly one to criticize so I don’t think Becky should be too worried.
Woot!
Also, for the first time, Becky is thinking about the effects her decisions and presence might have on others!
Well… Small beginnings, I suppose…
Have you been reading the same comic as I have? Becky worries about that all the time!
AFTER she makes the decision, yes.
I’m shocked and appalled at such horrible, unclean behavior.
Seriously, brush your teeth first.
Dina and Becky, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes slipshine, then comes oh no wait that doesn’t rhyme at all and they’re not in a tree WHO CARES IT’S DINA AND BECKY
NOT EVEN AN ICEBERG COULD SINK THIS SHIP
Crap, meant to comment this higher up. Ignore pretty please? :3
Dina and Becky are sitting in a tree,K-I-S-S-I-N-G
Let’s hope they don’t start tripping
Here comes the Slipshine
Which is a very nice design!
Thet Titanic thought itself “insubmersible”, as well.
Next up in Dumbing of Age Pornographiques:
Dina performs a sex.
And for a first time it’s exactly as embarrassing but not quite as aggressively terrible as you would expect.
I still think any Beckasaur slipshine should just be the two of them holding hands and looking at pictures of dinosaurs.
And occasionally practicing their kissing skills.
Romance is happening… better call Saul
Haha exactly how it was with my first kiss (at age 25). At some point in our relationship i realized that our kisses are weird because i overthink it. Went much better from then on
I am so expecting that whenever we see more than just Becky and Dina, we’ll be seeing Joyce with her… ah, “expression.”
Probably how I’ll be when I have my first kiss.
Man you know what I realized, we haven’t had a guy-guy kiss that wasn’t part of a fantasy yet.
It is pretty sad, but given this is a largely lady-centric comic, it’s kind of to be expected. There’s only six significant male characters, and only two of them like guys.
Yeah, and the options aren’t great. Mike is whatever sexuality people don’t want him to be, but I wouldn’t inflict him on Ethan or Danny. Joe is… yeah. Jacob is pretty canonically straight. Walky might be bi, but is pretty well taken and that relationship would have to have quite a bit blowing up to do to free him up. Which just leaves secondary characters who haven’t appeared much (like Bryan, who is in fact gay, but has also been in a sum total of 6 comics so far and only in one of them has he had a speaking role. Jim is confirmed straight and Galasso is too old and married. Which leaves… what? One of the background characters who didn’t even get a tag at the Questioning meeting? One of the dudes who’ve just been in the backgrounds of shots so far? (wouldn’t be the first time that a seemingly invisible background character became more important), but given Ethan and Danny’s googly eyes for each other, it might be difficult for them to start other relationships.
Yeah, we might be waiting a while for dude-on-dude.
Which I’m pretty okay with, since Danny deserves his coming out be about himself, and not a lead up to him getting with Ethan.
Becky’s love life may be a bit hit or miss – but no one can deny that her kisses are SPECTACULAR
I like how the speech patterns differ enough between characters and also help you form a voice in your head for them. I bet if we could record imagination sounds that people wouldnt be far off from each other with how each character sounds.
It’s kinda like one of those episodes of Scrubs, where J.D. passes off the internal monologue to another character for the episode. After this kiss, we’ll be hearing Becky’s voice, then she’ll pass it to someone else, etc.
I certainly hope she doesn’t plan to pass it to anyone else in this manner!
Your avatar makes that comment.
my avatar is hopeful :3
I was gonna comment about how many people were gonna want to link to that Shia Lebouf JUST DO IT thing. Now I’m just gonna laugh at the toothbrush thing. XD
Hehe. There’s something about kissing someone special that completely wipes your mind of thought.
They are mind melding! This is a well known feature of vulcans and dinosaurs, of which Dina is at least one.
And thus proving that Dina’s mind control works like a charm. Or maybe Becky’s family just has a genetic weakness to it?
The triceratop looks like it is rolling it’s eyes in that last panel
That’s about how my brain went on my first real kiss. Like how Dina’s face went so relaxed once they started kissing.
Never noticed the nose of the Triceratop getting scrunched until reading the comments and going back…it was all about the kiss!
Oh, and lets not rush the Slipshine people. It’s not all about sex
….I must be getting old 😛
I agree; I’m enjoying this sweetness between them, and I’d rather it not be shattered by a slip shine. Besides sex between the two of them seems really out of character for both of them; Dina is still in early exploration of herself and this sphere of social interaction, and Becky was raised very Christian, so even with her coming out of the closet and everything she’d likely be uncomfortable moving that fast to premarital hanky-panky.
Besides, they met each other under a week ago.
Well that too. I meant it would be out of character for either of them to move to hanky-panky that fast.
I know, I was adding to your list of evidence.
Seems like we have to update the list. Things that makes Dina loose her cool:
– He looks like a giant toe?
– I’ve got the bases concept wrong?
– She is looking at dinosaurs…
– BECKY-KISSES!!!!!!
Becky! Language!
Aww, Dina’s getting crosshatches in the last panel. Looks like this is a successful experiment!
It most certainly looks that way!
But they’d better do another full round of tests.
Y’know, for science.
Heh. Squinchy triceratops beak. 😀
Of all cute things it may be the cutest.
I want it to have an internal monologue that thinks “Ow! My nose!”
Watching Dina’s brain short circuit is priceless.
So, how many megakyoots was that last panel?
I’m trying to calibrate the sensor…
*explodes in a flurry of flower petals*
I love this story more with every strip.
I just noticed. Even Willis is not immune to triangle flounder-mouth when viewing characters in profile.
Squished Trica-Top nose!!
Contrary to popular media portrayals, going a few days without brushing your teeth or taking a shower will not make you smell horrible. Unless you’re just that filthy. Stop being filthy!
Actually, it will.
Your sense of smell might be a bit less precise than the norm, perhaps?
Brushing is especially important, since the bacteria generate a decaying smell, but likewise if you’ve sweated at all, your body odor’ll get quite musky as well.
Of course, your smell is based off several things, including: General health, intensity of oral care, degree of sweating, and your age.
As you get older, your natural body odor will get a lot stronger and build up a lot faster.
Of course, none of this is relevant-
If you were kissing your new lover, I’m sure you’d fret about silly little things as well, no matter what rationalizations you could put to them normally 🙂