Until otherwise stated, I am going to assume that that particular fan-art was inspired by the comic; then the artist traveled back in time to put it up online one year “before” the comic happened.
Sooner or later we all learn there’s no such thing as excessive backups. The only limit is how much you can afford. (I have THREE backups of every computer I’ve ever used.)
Once, when I was in my teens, I lost an entire hard drive full of non-backed-up stuff because my idiot brother, who liked to sit at the computer using the weirdest possible positions that you’d expect only a gymnast to be able to pull off, managed to kick the whole thing right off the desk and send it all crashing straight down to the ground.
I think I still have psychological scars from that.
My roommate a few weeks ago grabbed the ethernet cable I’d run to the router (too much wifi interference for my satisfaction), didn’t realize what it was (because who uses ethernet cables anymore, right?) and gave it a good yank. Pulled my desktop clean off my … desk top.
It was VERY early in the morning, and woke me up. I was livid.
Faces are dangerous to punch; they’re hard, angular, and full of sharp teeth.
Groins, guts, and kidneys are far safer from a puncher’s point of view, though the pain of facepunchery can be cathartic and/or mitigate the punchee’s anger.
Personally, I’m thinking bludgeoning with slightly-past-ripe whole fish would be appropriate.
You are correct. But others must be able to see the guilty party’s black eyes, so that their humiliation at having to constantly explain why help drive home the lesson. So a hammer punch to the nose accomplishes two things: Prevents broken knuckles and cut skin from your fist impacting hard bone and sharp teeth, and inflicts the correct, therapeutic injury.
One time when I was a teen (and a (rather terrible) aspiring writer, the point being I had several “novels” on my laptop) I had to send my laptop in for some purely cosmetic issue. I think the casing was slightly cracked or something but not like DANGEROUSLY cracked. Just sent it in to be safe plus it was under warranty.
They sent it back with the hard drive reformatted. What the flying fuck motherfuckers?? All they had to do was fix a cosmetic issue, why did they wipe my drive!? I was traumatised. Thanks, Compaq, fuck you.
Lots of these places now have minimum wage “technicians” that have only 2 fixes. If it’s a software problem, revert it to original factory condition. If it’s a hardware problem, send a replacement computer, often with your original serial number on it.
Never ever send a computer or drive for repair with anything valuable on it! Your info. can end up sold as a “refurbished” unit anywhere in the world.
Unless redshift is actually caused by light passing through “dark matter”. It all comes down to which assumptions you accept. I personally prefer the universe is a really big sneeze, theory. 🙂
In the beginning there was Walky!!! Walky doth fart and the new world was begun.
Walky did see the new world and decided to go aquire the big 50 bucket of Chicken McNuggets. And he saw that it was Good…
Of the ~ one thousand different theologies mankind has created, I’m sure that at least one of them involves some god inventing the universe because they sneezed. I know that at least one theology involves the universe being created when a god masturbated.
“The Jatravartids believe that the universe was sneezed out of the nose of the Great Green Arklseizure. They live in permanent fear of a time they call The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief.” — Douglas Adams
Actually, no. Whether expanding or shrinking, uniform change in size applies between all points at an equal rate. Think about it like drawing a bunch of dots on a balloon and then slowly deflating it to half size; all the points would be the same percentage distance closer to each other. It would be the same in reverse, if you inflated it more. If it were sinking to a single point, we wouldn’t notice based on the way things were moving in relation to us; the universe itself would basically be shifting sideways as it shrank, which you can’t notice from an internal point of view.
…I can go get reference links, if you like.
The nature of expansion doesn’t change between a two dimensional and three dimensional space, nor does it change based on speed or acceleration (until you start getting into quantum physics, but let’s not go there). The expansion is the same, it’s just getting faster as time goes by.
“Here’s a question you shouldn’t be able to answer. Computer – what is the nature of the universe?”
“The universe is a spheroid region 705 meters in diameter.“
That’s not exactly the same thing. The space in the universe is expanding. This means that the matter (galaxies) are farther and farther apart over time. That means the distance the light has to travel is constantly increasing mid-travel causing a doppler shift just as though they were moving apart.
In this ‘everything gets bigger or smaller’ kind of size change that they seem to be talking about everything would be changing in size including the matter itself and even the photons making up the traveling light. I don’t think that kind of size change would result in a doppler shift. And.. because anything we could come up with to use for measuring things would also be changing in size… I don’t think we could ever even know it was happening.
Not so much a chair than a padded cell. I suppose that whoever was in charge of furniture acquisition either got them at bargain basement prices or got sacked for wasting money and floor space.
I’ve seen these in a library once. Heavily padded. I think they’re meant to keep the noisy people from disturbing others. They look even more out of scale in real life.
you kidding? i WANT one. which is probably an indication that i spend way too much time around cats, if my first reaction to seeing a cushioned, partially enclosed seating arrangement is “i’m gonna sit in that.”
They’re much better a) in couch form, which are three times as long and b) when you have two pushed together. Climbing in is totally worth the privacy and noise isolation. Especially if you out lots of cushions in there too.
They had chairs sort of like that at a library where I used to live, only they were more circley than boxy and they were slightly smaller. They were glorious.
I’m not really sure that was intended as a burn. I think Dina was hoping Sarah would say “yes”, and then she could ask more questions with the aim of learning how to interact normally with people herself.
I think that Dina is aware enough to recognize that the answer to the question was “no”, but needed to confirm this. Sarah’s question might have made her less sure.
“Pattie knew it was wrong for a sauropod to feel this way about a therapod, but it was like her basal ganglia was in control. She arched her back as Deino, with remarkable delicacy for a carnivore, placed little nibbling kisses along the whole length of her neck, which took him nearly two hours.”
I’m half expecting some sort of sitcom plot to split up Jacob and Raidah. Followed by a decidedly less sitcom-like realization that they’ve done an awful thing.
This comic is so great bc I can see what my kid’s going to be like when he’s in college. He once spent the entire walk home from school berating me for not naming him “Raptor” which is his REAL NAME. (he was 5 at the time, not like… 13)
I once had a very small customer who would answer only to “Green Monster Turtle,” which is what he called the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. His mom explained to me that he’d insisted on that for over a week.
A college where I once did a summer program had a massive, two-headed rubber ducky. But not the way you’d assume it’d be two-headed, it had one in the normal place and one on its butt. For reasons, I assume.
If only people were as good at dinosaur-ing. I’m pretty sure Zhenyuanlong Suni made a more birdlike sound, like ‘bwark’ or ‘kwok’, rather than ‘rargh’.
That chair is so odd. Do you just…rest against the sides? What do you do with your arms? Are they like that for privacy purposes, so students can sit with their laptops without being spied on?
1: Back resting on the seat itself, with the length of the body perpendicular to the sides.
2: Head pressed lightly but snugly against one side, keeping neck and back straight.
3: Legs vertical and pressed against the other side.
4: Back lips of the shoes just barely hooked over the top of that side.
5: Book, ereader, phone, or class notes held above one’s face at a distance of roughly 1ft.
6: Backpack on floor 3ft in front of “chair”, where it may easily be tripped over and/or stolen.
I do. Zhenyuanlong had an enormous wingspan. It just relied on feathers, rather than the arm portion. It had a wing area of about a square meter a side; about the same as a bald eagle. Way bigger than a velociraptors. Dina’s gotta put her arms out waaay more than that!
I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s got a stash of synthetic feathers and is sewing them into a brilliant display to impress Becky with upon their reunion.
Where’s her scarf? It’s not Sarah without her scarf! She looks like generic girl without her trademark headwear. Also, Dina’s in the comic, and Dina always has a hat or head covering. This comic has 50% of the head coverings it should have.
I know, right? Used to be that I couldn’t care less about Dina because she was basically just this wide eyed kewpie doll who’d said something cute for the lolz, and since Walking with Dina she’s rocketed into my favourite characters list.
Zhenyuanlong suni actually had long wings, though. Its limbs were small, relative to, say, velociraptor’s, but it had huge feathering; something like a square meter each. That gives it a wingspan about the same length of its body. It had primaries as well as secondaries. That’s before you also include the larger body size;
We’re talking the difference between a bald eagle and a particularly aggressive chicken.
So you can tell people that if they stop whining they’ll get a replacement family?
(nah, it’s supposed to be a message that piety even through suffering, such as having your entire civilization crushed and deported by Babylonians, will eventually be rewarded)
On a related note, my father desperately wants to believe that Job’s children did something off screen that deserved death.
It was about halfway through that song that I hit my threshold, turned off Frozen, and ended up not watching the rest of the movie for 4 more months. I’m glad I did eventually but the first 20 minutes of that movie requires a brutal suspension of disbelief even for a Disney movie. 😛
I actually thought it to be quite realistic, in a way. I mean, Anna’s been sheltered, sheltered like hell. I think it is safe to assume that she knows practically nothing about love, and that’s the important thing here: In that song, she’s not experiencing love.
What she’s experiencing is, for the first time, talking to a subject that is her ideal of what she should experience when she finally finds that prince. Ideals that, I bet, are based on fairy tales and fairy tales only.
And now she’s finally talking to a handsome guy that pushes all the right buttons the fairy tales says he should. He is listening to her. He’s taking her seriously, treating her like an adult. Even more importantly, he is validating her emotions and making her feel like her opinions matter. -Nobody- has done that in years and years, remember?
How is she supposed to react to this? By getting a huge crush, of course! A tremendous, huge crush. Not love, not even falling in love; but a crush of such proportions, she really thinks it’s the same as love. That, to me, is one hundred percent believable in this situation.
Remember, she is so hyped up by the idea of love, she’s even posing in the front of painting “The Swing” in the song “For the first time in forever”. Now, here is a longer explanation of what that painting is of:
That post is long as hell (just like my comments), so the short of it is, the painting “The Swing” is of a woman having an orgasm. That represents how badly Anna needs a Hans, -any- Hans, in her locked-up life. Utterly naive, and utterly in love with the -idea- of falling in love, and then the first person to even remotely resemble her dreams of how love should be shows up…
Even people that is taught about this stuff is next to defenseless when it really happens to them for the first time. What chance do you think Anna has?
I love this strip.
2 of my favorite characters interacting in their very special ways.
Dina is so freakin’ cute. And Sarah is just, so Sarah. She does have a soft core under that shell, but only for people like Joyce and now Dina.
Not sure either of them are having attitude. This is the way they are.
Sarah is dead serious about life. I think that is a question shes asking in a perfect honest way – looking for an answer. Think about it. Dina is usually behind a door, or sneaking up and roaring at you.
While Dina is not giving a burn-she’s answering in what for her, is a very normal way. She wants to know if Sarah knows. Because so far she hasn’t seen Sarah interact with others well. And she is watching, everyone.
I would say that Sarah’s question is 50/50 attitude/honest question. So far, it seems like her day hasn’t started out all too well (her expression in the first panel indicates things have not improved much since waking up), so it takes little to make her snap at people. Besides, she’s known about Dina’s approach to human interaction for some time now; so this should not be a total surprise to her.
Dina’s response is 100% honest, but unbeknownst to her, happens to contain a burn by accident. I say it’s honest, because while she probably suspects that Sarah’s not interacting with people well, she does not fully know; and for Dina, the only way to know is to make a direct inquiry.
I am reminded of her eating cereal in the dining commons. There might be some sass in there, because she knows she’s doing something that negatively effects nobody, and that makes her happy.
To expand on my first comment, a little thought experiment. Now, for the sake of this experiment, I will obviously simplify things a lot, but bear with me.
My father is an “intuitively” practical man. Being a farmer (that also owned a forest), he’s got a lot of skills and practice. He knows how to build things, fix things, and so on. When he needs to cut planks, he doesn’t have to plan it much, he can just do it, hardly even needing to measure them before marking off where to cut.
Now, I can also understand those things, but not in the same way he does. I have to break it down into components. I have to plan carefully ahead. I’ll spend quite some time just looking at things before working it out. I reverse-engineer things, and constantly think about how I’m doing it. In time, I can probably do any specific task (almost) as well as he does- Rarely, very rarely, I may figure out an improved way of doing things. But whenever we’re faced with a new and different practical task, he’ll need little time to get into it, leaving me behind still just looking at things and figuring out how it really works, before I finally get started.
Maybe he used to do it the way I do, but I do not think so. He grew up helping his father with the practical stuff from early childhood. I grew up reading. He’s a practical man. I’m a theoretical engineer.
Now imagine that we’re talking about talking to people, and you get the idea. And unlike machines and tools, people change practically all the time, often making little to no initial sense. Dina has learned a fair few specific tasks, but every time a new different thing pops up, she can’t just intuitively absorb it. So she’ll spend so much time just figuring out what’s going on, she hardly has any time left to figure out how to actually respond to it in a proper manner; by the time that happens, it’s often too late.
But let the situation “freeze” in time, and eventually, she will come up with the optimised solution.
….
Or, you know, everything I said is just plain BS. In fact, I suspect it is. I hope you all at least understand what I’m trying to say, even if you think it’s baloney.
Out of necessity I’ve had to study people carefully. So I understand humans very well, sometimes better than they understand themselves, but I have no idea how to be good at being a human. These really are separate things to me and presumably her.
It’s like being able to comprehend a ballet (or a football game) versus being able to dance a ballet (or play pro football) to me. You think in your mind you can do the moves, but when you try you find you have 4 left feet and 6 elbows. It makes it even harder to take the floor (or field), but it take practice AND feedback to get better. She is practicing and getting feedback. I need to practice more, but I rarely get HELPFUL feedback.
(It’s probably a good thing no reads these late comments.)
About how to be good at being human. Clue. None of the rest of us know either. Join the club. You could come to one of our confidential meetings, except we can never remember how many elbows in the secret armshake.
I…
I kinda want to make all kinds of jokes now, maybe do one of my “Fudge you ToeDad”-rants, or call him a strawman, or discuss the Radness of his daughter…
…but this is just horrible.
Around here they probably wouldn’t have even arrested him. For example, a guy recently “beat the hell” out of a transgendered woman. Did the police charge him with assault or a hate crime. No. They ticketed him for disturbing the peace! And the police report repeatedly called her “him”.
From the Pardon-me-my-insecurities-are-showing dept.: a few days ago, I posted a DoA/Whateley Academy fanfic micro-scene at the WA website, and after some talk about it on the discussion thread, thought I’d tweet it @damnyouwillis to see what David thought of it. Thing is, now I’m not sure if I posted the tweet right, if he bothered to read it, if he hated it, etc. and I need the ego validation, so… help?
It is a bad idea for me to read fanfic. For a lot of writers in professional areas, it’s considered officially off-limits, even. If you officially write, say, Batman, you open yourself up to fanfic writers yelling at you with “you stole my idea!” And so it’s generally avoided for legal reasons.
Everyone should write the hell out of DoA fanfic, though. I’m not discouraging that.
Oh, and for the majoroity of you who don’t know (and probably don’t want to know) about WA, the characters in the scene are Jericho and Diamondback of the training team Outcast Corner, while the friend they are discussing is Razorback. FYI.
And just to dig myself even deeper, no, Razorback isn’t actually a dinosaur, something even a high-school age Dina would recognize immediately, but the similarities are definitely enough to get her attention, I think. As for powers, psychic invisibility and devising (mad science tinkering, probably of a biological sort in this case) seemed the obvious choices, though bio-gadgeteering might have been better for her peace of mind (no breaking of the laws of physics, so she can feel her work is scientifically sound).
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“need I remind you”
(inb4 NOT FIRST: I had to go and try to rescue a failing hard drive just before midnight huh)
oh n/m I did it even on an iPad
That’s because you’re magic!
At this point it may count as a legitimate super power.
Not only were you the first comment, that comic was posted almost a year ago. That’s about as first as it’s even possible to be.
Until otherwise stated, I’m gonna assume this particular comic was at least slightly inspired by the fanart.
Until otherwise stated, I am going to assume that that particular fan-art was inspired by the comic; then the artist traveled back in time to put it up online one year “before” the comic happened.
And by comic I mean fanart oops
You even took the time to write in the line about not being first and you still won. Ha!
I know what that’s like, but I don’t miss doing that shit. I’m glad I do
a lot of obsessivedata backup these days.Sooner or later we all learn there’s no such thing as excessive backups. The only limit is how much you can afford. (I have THREE backups of every computer I’ve ever used.)
Once, when I was in my teens, I lost an entire hard drive full of non-backed-up stuff because my idiot brother, who liked to sit at the computer using the weirdest possible positions that you’d expect only a gymnast to be able to pull off, managed to kick the whole thing right off the desk and send it all crashing straight down to the ground.
I think I still have psychological scars from that.
My roommate a few weeks ago grabbed the ethernet cable I’d run to the router (too much wifi interference for my satisfaction), didn’t realize what it was (because who uses ethernet cables anymore, right?) and gave it a good yank. Pulled my desktop clean off my … desk top.
It was VERY early in the morning, and woke me up. I was livid.
When life gives you lemons, BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD.
*In end of advertisement side effect list voice* Khorne approves of this message.
Blood and souls for Arioch!
I wouldn’t convict you.
Ethernet for consoles.
Wait, no, I switched to a powerline adapter.
Did you punch him or her in the face repeatedly? Because that’s the only appropriate punishment I can think of for such fucktardery.
Faces are dangerous to punch; they’re hard, angular, and full of sharp teeth.
Groins, guts, and kidneys are far safer from a puncher’s point of view, though the pain of facepunchery can be cathartic and/or mitigate the punchee’s anger.
Personally, I’m thinking bludgeoning with slightly-past-ripe whole fish would be appropriate.
You are correct. But others must be able to see the guilty party’s black eyes, so that their humiliation at having to constantly explain why help drive home the lesson. So a hammer punch to the nose accomplishes two things: Prevents broken knuckles and cut skin from your fist impacting hard bone and sharp teeth, and inflicts the correct, therapeutic injury.
I think you get straight ‘A’s’ for the semester if your room mate commits commits ‘suicide’. Just sayin’.
Not in school, sadly, and I don’t think I’d get a raise at work.
One time when I was a teen (and a (rather terrible) aspiring writer, the point being I had several “novels” on my laptop) I had to send my laptop in for some purely cosmetic issue. I think the casing was slightly cracked or something but not like DANGEROUSLY cracked. Just sent it in to be safe plus it was under warranty.
They sent it back with the hard drive reformatted. What the flying fuck motherfuckers?? All they had to do was fix a cosmetic issue, why did they wipe my drive!? I was traumatised. Thanks, Compaq, fuck you.
Yeah, that sucks hard, loosing all your data…
unless you had evidence to prove it was the same one, I’m inclined to think they just gave you a new drive =/
also Compaq sucks
Lots of these places now have minimum wage “technicians” that have only 2 fixes. If it’s a software problem, revert it to original factory condition. If it’s a hardware problem, send a replacement computer, often with your original serial number on it.
Never ever send a computer or drive for repair with anything valuable on it! Your info. can end up sold as a “refurbished” unit anywhere in the world.
Man that is a HUGE chair.
No one needs a chair that big.
A typical American!
(Just kidding, I’m american myself)
No, but you and that special someone, cuddled up closely together, would find that much space to be just about right.
You shouldn’t jump to conclusions. The characters have probably just shrunk.
What if the entire universe is slowly shrinking and we’ve just never noticed because we lack a frame of reference.
and before you ask, no I am not high
Well according to our best estimates, the exact opposite is happening. he entire universe is expanding, and continuing to expand faster and faster.
Unless redshift is actually caused by light passing through “dark matter”. It all comes down to which assumptions you accept. I personally prefer the universe is a really big sneeze, theory. 🙂
Our entire universe is merely the sneeze (or possible fart) of a dumbing of age character.
How far down does this rabbit hole go?!
I’d rather the universe be a giant quesadilla or chimichanga myself >.>
@Tacos
That does explain why my stomach is always queasy!
Tami, if you fart, you’ll make a new universe.
@Someone
NO! I refuse the crushing responsibility! I’ll leave universe creation to our one true god, Willis.
In the beginning there was Walky!!! Walky doth fart and the new world was begun.
Walky did see the new world and decided to go aquire the big 50 bucket of Chicken McNuggets. And he saw that it was Good…
@Nikkileah
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/fart-joke/
Of the ~ one thousand different theologies mankind has created, I’m sure that at least one of them involves some god inventing the universe because they sneezed. I know that at least one theology involves the universe being created when a god masturbated.
“The Jatravartids believe that the universe was sneezed out of the nose of the Great Green Arklseizure. They live in permanent fear of a time they call The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief.” — Douglas Adams
42!!
Well, unless it was shrinking uniformly to a single point, and in size, we’d notice because other celestial bodies would be moving away from us.
Actually, no. Whether expanding or shrinking, uniform change in size applies between all points at an equal rate. Think about it like drawing a bunch of dots on a balloon and then slowly deflating it to half size; all the points would be the same percentage distance closer to each other. It would be the same in reverse, if you inflated it more. If it were sinking to a single point, we wouldn’t notice based on the way things were moving in relation to us; the universe itself would basically be shifting sideways as it shrank, which you can’t notice from an internal point of view.
…I can go get reference links, if you like.
Sure, but I don’t think that either of those thought exercises can account for the fact that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace.
Simplified version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsXsJtOQnTY
Complicated version: http://www.astronomynotes.com/cosmolgy/s3.htm
The nature of expansion doesn’t change between a two dimensional and three dimensional space, nor does it change based on speed or acceleration (until you start getting into quantum physics, but let’s not go there). The expansion is the same, it’s just getting faster as time goes by.
That’s what I said.
“Here’s a question you shouldn’t be able to answer. Computer – what is the nature of the universe?”
“The universe is a spheroid region 705 meters in diameter.“
Such a good episode.
Why does the porridge bird lay his egg in the air?
Actually, the opposite’s true. The universe is expanding, not shrinking. And we did notice, because it messes with the color of light as it expands.
That’s not exactly the same thing. The space in the universe is expanding. This means that the matter (galaxies) are farther and farther apart over time. That means the distance the light has to travel is constantly increasing mid-travel causing a doppler shift just as though they were moving apart.
In this ‘everything gets bigger or smaller’ kind of size change that they seem to be talking about everything would be changing in size including the matter itself and even the photons making up the traveling light. I don’t think that kind of size change would result in a doppler shift. And.. because anything we could come up with to use for measuring things would also be changing in size… I don’t think we could ever even know it was happening.
that’s no chair…that’s a monkey master shoulder
…or magnet, or something
Maybe it’s that foam crap that holds TVs in place inside the box.
I’ve sat in one of those before. They’re not particularly comfortable.
Not so much a chair than a padded cell. I suppose that whoever was in charge of furniture acquisition either got them at bargain basement prices or got sacked for wasting money and floor space.
I’ve seen these in a library once. Heavily padded. I think they’re meant to keep the noisy people from disturbing others. They look even more out of scale in real life.
They’re for studying in when people are rollerskating in the hallways.
Seriously, I’m kinda frightened by that chair.
you kidding? i WANT one. which is probably an indication that i spend way too much time around cats, if my first reaction to seeing a cushioned, partially enclosed seating arrangement is “i’m gonna sit in that.”
They’re much better a) in couch form, which are three times as long and b) when you have two pushed together. Climbing in is totally worth the privacy and noise isolation. Especially if you out lots of cushions in there too.
They had chairs sort of like that at a library where I used to live, only they were more circley than boxy and they were slightly smaller. They were glorious.
There needs to be a line of chairs like this marketed towards cat people. except with four walls instead of three. Box Chairs.
Man that burn, she’s learning fast.
Sassy Dina somehow manages to be best Dina, despite all other Dinas being best Dina.
Personally I’m pretty fond of Biting-ToeDad-in-the-FAAAACE-Dina, but yeah, Sassy Dina is awesome. as are all Dina.
I’m not really sure that was intended as a burn. I think Dina was hoping Sarah would say “yes”, and then she could ask more questions with the aim of learning how to interact normally with people herself.
I think that Dina is aware enough to recognize that the answer to the question was “no”, but needed to confirm this. Sarah’s question might have made her less sure.
Yeah. But I think she was hoping for a “yes”.
Oh my goodness so cutiiese
*cute eek
Well I see they found Billie’s old chair.
Wait, maybe there’s some booze hidden under it. Profit.
Nope, seems to only be cute tiny Asian girls.
billie kept a diverse stash indeed
I had an infestation of those once. Orkin man couldn’t get rid of them, so I had to call in Faz. That got them to flee.
The cure is worse than the disease…
and then you swallowed a horse, right?
foresight, man
This goes surprisingly well with your “I think Billie has first place with her massive butt” comment from a couple days ago
I hope they become the best of friends
Yes! I need an entire buddy comedy w those two.
I can get behind this idea.
they already are
Sarah’s already Dinah’s second favorite person. And Sarah’s conversational record with Dinah is probably her best so far.
Someone’s in the kitchen with Di-nah, someone’s in the kitchen I know-oh-oh-oh; someone’s in the kitchen with Di-NAH, strummin’ on the ole ban-jo!
Well, of course she isn’t the Raptor, Sarah. You’d know if you were facing the Raptor.
Things would be much less pleasant.
Less pleasant?!?! Dinosaur erotica has been lying to us!
Shocking.
“Pattie knew it was wrong for a sauropod to feel this way about a therapod, but it was like her basal ganglia was in control. She arched her back as Deino, with remarkable delicacy for a carnivore, placed little nibbling kisses along the whole length of her neck, which took him nearly two hours.”
Also, Dina’s clearly more than 2 feet tall.
… not MUCH more, but still.
Suni Shine/Suni Shine/Ladybugs awake…
And as my sister in law said, “Normal is NOT a word you can ever use to describe human beings.”
“But I just DID! Here, I’ll do it again just to prove it!”
“And you are proving my point by doing so.”
People can be perpendicular to surfaces.
+1 for math joke
Clap your hooves and do a little shake :3
Wouldn’t it be claws?
Sarah-Dina weekend adventures! I’m ecstatic.
It will be glorious.
I’m half expecting some sort of sitcom plot to split up Jacob and Raidah. Followed by a decidedly less sitcom-like realization that they’ve done an awful thing.
That’s some good speculating – and plot devicing.
Dina is too adorable.
This comic is so great bc I can see what my kid’s going to be like when he’s in college. He once spent the entire walk home from school berating me for not naming him “Raptor” which is his REAL NAME. (he was 5 at the time, not like… 13)
I once had a very small customer who would answer only to “Green Monster Turtle,” which is what he called the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. His mom explained to me that he’d insisted on that for over a week.
Oh Dina. You are delightful, please never change.
“I’ve decided I like mammoths more”.
BURN THE WITCH.
Heresy! Nobody likes mammoths more than dinosaurs.
Mammoths, no. Minmoths? Hell yeah they’re better than dinos!
This is where the great prehistoric dino/ice age war begins.
Wasn’t that a movie already?
In A.D. 2101 war was beginning
no, no.
In B.C. 2100001 war was beginning.
Well, they do like to deceive
Think about it…
“Pull the wool(y mammoth) over you eyes”
tis a bad joke
Why did you have to say that? This comic is all about change. So now it’s gonna happen.
After the storyline we just had, a good Dina and Sarah storyline is just what we all need to brighten up our day.
They’re both feeling lonely… 🙁
What a ridiculous chair.
Or it could be a cubist throne.
Does Lego sponsor Indiana?
Colleges are weird with that sort of thing, man. My undergrad had four giant, sparkly plastic balls on campus. As an art project called “Pixels.”
I still have no idea what that was about.
A college where I once did a summer program had a massive, two-headed rubber ducky. But not the way you’d assume it’d be two-headed, it had one in the normal place and one on its butt. For reasons, I assume.
Honestly, that’s how I visualized the placement of the second head as I read that post. I say this having never seen an episode of CatDog.
Dang ol’ dinosaurs, being good at people-ing and shit!
If only people were as good at dinosaur-ing. I’m pretty sure Zhenyuanlong Suni made a more birdlike sound, like ‘bwark’ or ‘kwok’, rather than ‘rargh’.
That chair is so odd. Do you just…rest against the sides? What do you do with your arms? Are they like that for privacy purposes, so students can sit with their laptops without being spied on?
It looks like a laptop cubby that she is sitting on instead of using it as a table
I’d guess partially privacy cubbies and partially impromptu nap-cells, hah.
We had similar ones, and students mostly used them for sleeping in public.
So… they used them like normal chairs, benches, and the lawn in front of the library, and classes?
Proper uberchair usage is this:
1: Back resting on the seat itself, with the length of the body perpendicular to the sides.
2: Head pressed lightly but snugly against one side, keeping neck and back straight.
3: Legs vertical and pressed against the other side.
4: Back lips of the shoes just barely hooked over the top of that side.
5: Book, ereader, phone, or class notes held above one’s face at a distance of roughly 1ft.
6: Backpack on floor 3ft in front of “chair”, where it may easily be tripped over and/or stolen.
I just want these two to become bffs and go through their socially awkward lives together, is that really too much to ask?^^
My version of this is AWKWARD T-REX HUGS RARRRRRRRRRRR
Too bad T-rex arms are too short for hugs. Sad, in’it?
Exactly! It is flaily and ineffectual!
Dina may not be a velociraptor, but she’s still a clever girl.
The first thing I thought when I saw Dina’s shorter wings was ‘Hey, it’s a Zhenyuanlong Suni.” Obvious really, I don’t see why Sarah didn’t get it.
I do. Zhenyuanlong had an enormous wingspan. It just relied on feathers, rather than the arm portion. It had a wing area of about a square meter a side; about the same as a bald eagle. Way bigger than a velociraptors. Dina’s gotta put her arms out waaay more than that!
… Or tape pizza boxes to them.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s got a stash of synthetic feathers and is sewing them into a brilliant display to impress Becky with upon their reunion.
HEADCANON
I love it.
“Zhenyuanlong Suni?
Is that Latin for ‘Brontosaurus?'”
[CARY GRANT]Get out.[/CARY GRANT]
Dina is just too cute
Mad friendship adventures, yes please?
SHE is a misantrope with a heart of gold. SHE is a dinosaur with short wingspan. THEY FIGHT CRIME!!!
I assume this is a real chair that is on the IU campus?
Where’s her scarf? It’s not Sarah without her scarf! She looks like generic girl without her trademark headwear. Also, Dina’s in the comic, and Dina always has a hat or head covering. This comic has 50% of the head coverings it should have.
Dina’s hat has scared it off. Dinohat is the alpha headwear.
I feel like Dina is slowly becoming the inadvertently snarkiest character.
Dina is being honest.
Everyone else is snarky. 🙂
One person’s snarky is another person’s adorably clever.
Is this chapter going to have a decently sized Sarah storyline (ft Dina) because heck yeah
You have the best gravatar
Thanks! Imo there’s nothing better than sleepy, grumpy Joyce haha
Wait, sneaking up on people you know and roaring at them isn’t normal human behavior?
Writing that down.
Pfft! As if there is such a thing as “normal human behavior”.
But there is “abnormal human behavior”. Believe me, I’ve heard about it a lot. 🙂
I’ve looked everywhere for a “Being Normal for Dummies” book, but haven’t found it. I’ve decided “Normal human” is an oxymoron.
I’ve been saying that for years. It’s nice to see others arguing it too.
this is the strip in which I became a frothing Dina fan.
A reasonable attitude
Indubitably
I know, right? Used to be that I couldn’t care less about Dina because she was basically just this wide eyed kewpie doll who’d said something cute for the lolz, and since Walking with Dina she’s rocketed into my favourite characters list.
Zhenyuanlong suni actually had long wings, though. Its limbs were small, relative to, say, velociraptor’s, but it had huge feathering; something like a square meter each. That gives it a wingspan about the same length of its body. It had primaries as well as secondaries. That’s before you also include the larger body size;
We’re talking the difference between a bald eagle and a particularly aggressive chicken.
I love this commentator section!
I love how while the title gives a sense of depression, it also gives hope.
You just have to complete the phrase
When God closes the door….he opens a window.
Also it would be kinda awesome if “he opens a window” became the title of the next storyline
Alternate: “When God closes the door, he’s about to gas you to death so that he can win a gentleman’s wager with Satan over the piety of your father.”
See, this is why nobody likes Job. *Internal Question* (Why in the world did we keep that one?)
So you can tell people that if they stop whining they’ll get a replacement family?
(nah, it’s supposed to be a message that piety even through suffering, such as having your entire civilization crushed and deported by Babylonians, will eventually be rewarded)
On a related note, my father desperately wants to believe that Job’s children did something off screen that deserved death.
Maybe they made fun of a prophet’s bald spot, or refused to bear figs out of season.
I just keep getting reminded of ‘Love Is An Open Door’ from Frozen.
Becky is a bit miffed about that song.
I was miffed by that song because it was so cheesy and sappy even for a Disney song, you just KNOW things aren’t going to work out.
My mom said I was psychic because I guessed Hans was going to be a jerk, but really I just don’t trust people who are that cheerful.
It was about halfway through that song that I hit my threshold, turned off Frozen, and ended up not watching the rest of the movie for 4 more months. I’m glad I did eventually but the first 20 minutes of that movie requires a brutal suspension of disbelief even for a Disney movie. 😛
I actually thought it to be quite realistic, in a way. I mean, Anna’s been sheltered, sheltered like hell. I think it is safe to assume that she knows practically nothing about love, and that’s the important thing here: In that song, she’s not experiencing love.
What she’s experiencing is, for the first time, talking to a subject that is her ideal of what she should experience when she finally finds that prince. Ideals that, I bet, are based on fairy tales and fairy tales only.
And now she’s finally talking to a handsome guy that pushes all the right buttons the fairy tales says he should. He is listening to her. He’s taking her seriously, treating her like an adult. Even more importantly, he is validating her emotions and making her feel like her opinions matter. -Nobody- has done that in years and years, remember?
How is she supposed to react to this? By getting a huge crush, of course! A tremendous, huge crush. Not love, not even falling in love; but a crush of such proportions, she really thinks it’s the same as love. That, to me, is one hundred percent believable in this situation.
Remember, she is so hyped up by the idea of love, she’s even posing in the front of painting “The Swing” in the song “For the first time in forever”. Now, here is a longer explanation of what that painting is of:
http://wizzard890.tumblr.com/post/117138441757/so-i-was-going-to-write-a-post-talking
That post is long as hell (just like my comments), so the short of it is, the painting “The Swing” is of a woman having an orgasm. That represents how badly Anna needs a Hans, -any- Hans, in her locked-up life. Utterly naive, and utterly in love with the -idea- of falling in love, and then the first person to even remotely resemble her dreams of how love should be shows up…
Even people that is taught about this stuff is next to defenseless when it really happens to them for the first time. What chance do you think Anna has?
Heh. Yeah, definitely too triggering for her.
Considering the number of commenters who wanted Mary thrown through a window recently, God won’t even have open it.
I was advocating for opening it first anyway. Window panes are expensive.
Ah yes, priorities.
“Yeah, so you have something to jump out of.”
Aw I couldn’t find the clip that’s from so have the trailer because it’s a great movie.
And lights a candle?
I know that’s not how the phrase goes, but it sounds like a nice, hopeful, uplifting addition.
“God opens a window and lights a candle.”
Close the damn window, God. My candle keeps blowing out.
When God closes the door… he’s about to hotbox you.
When God closes the door, he locks it, bars it up, and puts up a big neon sign on another door that says “GO THROUGH THIS ONE.”
And yet some people still try to break the door down. Weird.
Depicted: Sara not worrying about Joyce, being happy for a drama-free weekend.
I love this strip.
2 of my favorite characters interacting in their very special ways.
Dina is so freakin’ cute. And Sarah is just, so Sarah. She does have a soft core under that shell, but only for people like Joyce and now Dina.
“No, do you?” Best way to deal with attitude.
squeeeeee
I’ve been Friendshipping these two since this golden strip. So cute. 🙂
Not sure either of them are having attitude. This is the way they are.
Sarah is dead serious about life. I think that is a question shes asking in a perfect honest way – looking for an answer. Think about it. Dina is usually behind a door, or sneaking up and roaring at you.
While Dina is not giving a burn-she’s answering in what for her, is a very normal way. She wants to know if Sarah knows. Because so far she hasn’t seen Sarah interact with others well. And she is watching, everyone.
I would say that Sarah’s question is 50/50 attitude/honest question. So far, it seems like her day hasn’t started out all too well (her expression in the first panel indicates things have not improved much since waking up), so it takes little to make her snap at people. Besides, she’s known about Dina’s approach to human interaction for some time now; so this should not be a total surprise to her.
Dina’s response is 100% honest, but unbeknownst to her, happens to contain a burn by accident. I say it’s honest, because while she probably suspects that Sarah’s not interacting with people well, she does not fully know; and for Dina, the only way to know is to make a direct inquiry.
I am reminded of her eating cereal in the dining commons. There might be some sass in there, because she knows she’s doing something that negatively effects nobody, and that makes her happy.
At least she isn’t angered by the error.
So… It looks like its Sarah’s turn to ride the character growth carousel!
Ohhhh….
This is so lovebale/adorable it metls me 😀
Can you do a ninjasaur, Dina?
You must defeat Zhenyuanlong to stand a chance.
Sarah looks really disturbed in those first two panels. I hope we find out why.
I’m betting that she’s finally getting the solitude that she always claims that she wants and is finding that she doesn’t like it.
And she is aware enough to see the irony – and she doesn’t like that either.
Yup, it turns out for all her misanthropic posturing, she really does like people and likes their presence in her life… damn it.
Maybe she’s waiting for a text from Joyce. She looked way too bored/annoyed to be playing a game on it.
all of this.
This may be the cutest Dina has ever been I love her
The giant seat of solitude.
And foreboding.
This had me chuckling.
Palaeontological Note: Members of the family Dromeosauridae are always right. It’s a ‘rule of cool’ thing due to them being film stars.
Sneaks into booth and puts on Songs From The Big Chair.
I am so stoked on this friendship! I want more of these two!
Shocked at the lack of “Sarah is so mean/angry/evil” comments.
Sarah is best character.
I mean, she is being kind of a jerk. She’s Sarah; being kind of a jerk is her thing, it’s just that this time Dina gets one over her.
But yes, timemonkey is correct; Sarah is best character.
Sarah is best mean/angry/evil character.
I think every character in DoA has a significant community who think they are an awful terrible evil not-good person. One of the Laws of the Internet.
(Except for Dina. And that is only because all the Dina-haters get eaten by dinosaurs.)
How can she understand the individuals around her so well and still be so clueless when it comes to dealing with people?
She understands them from the point of view of an observer, not as a participant.
To expand on my first comment, a little thought experiment. Now, for the sake of this experiment, I will obviously simplify things a lot, but bear with me.
My father is an “intuitively” practical man. Being a farmer (that also owned a forest), he’s got a lot of skills and practice. He knows how to build things, fix things, and so on. When he needs to cut planks, he doesn’t have to plan it much, he can just do it, hardly even needing to measure them before marking off where to cut.
Now, I can also understand those things, but not in the same way he does. I have to break it down into components. I have to plan carefully ahead. I’ll spend quite some time just looking at things before working it out. I reverse-engineer things, and constantly think about how I’m doing it. In time, I can probably do any specific task (almost) as well as he does- Rarely, very rarely, I may figure out an improved way of doing things. But whenever we’re faced with a new and different practical task, he’ll need little time to get into it, leaving me behind still just looking at things and figuring out how it really works, before I finally get started.
Maybe he used to do it the way I do, but I do not think so. He grew up helping his father with the practical stuff from early childhood. I grew up reading. He’s a practical man. I’m a theoretical engineer.
Now imagine that we’re talking about talking to people, and you get the idea. And unlike machines and tools, people change practically all the time, often making little to no initial sense. Dina has learned a fair few specific tasks, but every time a new different thing pops up, she can’t just intuitively absorb it. So she’ll spend so much time just figuring out what’s going on, she hardly has any time left to figure out how to actually respond to it in a proper manner; by the time that happens, it’s often too late.
But let the situation “freeze” in time, and eventually, she will come up with the optimised solution.
….
Or, you know, everything I said is just plain BS. In fact, I suspect it is. I hope you all at least understand what I’m trying to say, even if you think it’s baloney.
Out of necessity I’ve had to study people carefully. So I understand humans very well, sometimes better than they understand themselves, but I have no idea how to be good at being a human. These really are separate things to me and presumably her.
It’s like being able to comprehend a ballet (or a football game) versus being able to dance a ballet (or play pro football) to me. You think in your mind you can do the moves, but when you try you find you have 4 left feet and 6 elbows. It makes it even harder to take the floor (or field), but it take practice AND feedback to get better. She is practicing and getting feedback. I need to practice more, but I rarely get HELPFUL feedback.
(It’s probably a good thing no reads these late comments.)
Damn, that’s a much better explanation than mine. And it’s not a fricking novel to read either.
About how to be good at being human. Clue. None of the rest of us know either. Join the club. You could come to one of our confidential meetings, except we can never remember how many elbows in the secret armshake.
Dina’s way ahead of me.
Plays “Let My Love Open The Door” on the Muzak
requests ‘matryoshka’
OMG, Toedad’s real.
http://www.advocate.com/crime/2016/2/25/dad-arrested-pointing-loaded-gun-teen-daughter-when-she-came-out
I mean, I knew people actually did such things, but I had no idea that they LOOKED like Toedad as well.
I…
I kinda want to make all kinds of jokes now, maybe do one of my “Fudge you ToeDad”-rants, or call him a strawman, or discuss the Radness of his daughter…
…but this is just horrible.
[internal screaming]
[scream busts out] AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Around here they probably wouldn’t have even arrested him. For example, a guy recently “beat the hell” out of a transgendered woman. Did the police charge him with assault or a hate crime. No. They ticketed him for disturbing the peace! And the police report repeatedly called her “him”.
From the Pardon-me-my-insecurities-are-showing dept.: a few days ago, I posted a DoA/Whateley Academy fanfic micro-scene at the WA website, and after some talk about it on the discussion thread, thought I’d tweet it @damnyouwillis to see what David thought of it. Thing is, now I’m not sure if I posted the tweet right, if he bothered to read it, if he hated it, etc. and I need the ego validation, so… help?
It is a bad idea for me to read fanfic. For a lot of writers in professional areas, it’s considered officially off-limits, even. If you officially write, say, Batman, you open yourself up to fanfic writers yelling at you with “you stole my idea!” And so it’s generally avoided for legal reasons.
Everyone should write the hell out of DoA fanfic, though. I’m not discouraging that.
kicks self for forgetting that Yeah, that’s a good point.
Oh, and for the majoroity of you who don’t know (and probably don’t want to know) about WA, the characters in the scene are Jericho and Diamondback of the training team Outcast Corner, while the friend they are discussing is Razorback. FYI.
And just to dig myself even deeper, no, Razorback isn’t actually a dinosaur, something even a high-school age Dina would recognize immediately, but the similarities are definitely enough to get her attention, I think. As for powers, psychic invisibility and devising (mad science tinkering, probably of a biological sort in this case) seemed the obvious choices, though bio-gadgeteering might have been better for her peace of mind (no breaking of the laws of physics, so she can feel her work is scientifically sound).
I know I’ve seen you elsewhere, but I can’t remember where.
I’m still at the point where seeing Dina makes me make ugly sobbing noises in my head and I can’t quite believe she’ll stay in the comic.