Dumbing of Age Book 5 is now available in the online store! I GUESS holiday shopping season has officially started as of today, so have at it! You can buy it normal and plain, or upgrade to a signed/sketched version.
Also new to the store is a set of 8 character magnets left over from the Book 4 Kickstarter. It’s missing the ninth magnet, Joyce, because I’m kinda out of her Book 4 magnet, but for now there are eight magnets left you can get as a set.
Also also new in the store is the “To Those Who Ground Me” 11″x17″ poster! It’s new to the store because I forgot to put it in the store last spring when it was actually new. But it’s pretty!
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is this SFW D=
There are kids reading this comic!
Eh, they gotta learn at sometime.
Also he markets slip shine on the side and welcome to the fuck zone in the description
What kid hasn’t willingly looked up porn before lets be real
There are kids in that restaurant! Avert your eyes, innocent ones!
*holds hands in front of kids’ eyes*
Augh! Kids!? I don’t wanna see that! D:
I thought he’d pixellate her head and we would only be able to see it on Slipshine. Also, this is so cute I want to squish them both. Dinecky/Beina FTW
This needs to go on Slipshine!
We shouldn’t be seeing this for free!
This is the internets! OF COURSE we should be seeing this for free!!
Artists asking for money? How dare they, when they were born in the internet era!
Goes really well with your gravatar
Honestly, if there hadn’t been an entire storyline built around it, I wouldn’t have been surprised if this had been a WTTFZ moment.
given dina’s nature, how easy would it be for Becky to get her to do other things?
That would depend on how she asked.
“Soooooooo I’ve been reading these books about evolution you gave me, and they keep talking about this ‘mating’ thing; can you show me how that works?”
Dina: “No i cannot, as that would require a male and a female”
Mike: Oh, I’ll help.
For a nickel
You don’t even need a female. Mike’s already a Foxtrot Charlie if you know what I mean.
No. No. Please explain.
Life, uh, finds a way.
Well, as we’ve seen, very very difficult. Which is good because trying to trick someone into sexy actions is a very very bad thing.
What if she asks politely and directly? Where would she draw the line? My line is, 95% of the time, anything that involves me having to take off my hat. Just does not happen :3
Cover your shame, Dina!
Dina has cute hat-hair! :3
Also props to a fellow Whovian! 😀
Cue the lady syrup.
Which is NSFW.
….. I think?
…. actually, it depends on your job. I’m pretty sure that’d be workplace appropriate for some jobs.
*Finds Screwball frozen, looking at Dumbing Of Age.*
*Looks to see what the problem is this time.*
*Sees today’s strip.*
…. -_- ….
*Pulls out permanent markers…*
No no, not until the wedding night!
But at the rate at which time passes in DoA relative to the real world, by the time Dina and Becky get to their wedding night, we in the real world will have been dead for approximately 212 years! xD
INDECENT
LEWD
KINKY
LASCIVIOUS
INDECOROUS
MORE PLEASE
crap, now I’m imagining Oliver Twist at a Porn Shop
okay I know I might regret asking, but what does that even mean?
SFW? Safe For Work maybe? Mind you, you can see Dina’s top-of-head in this………….
Daniel Here. Guess who’s frozen again. I don’t think he’s ever gonna be a problem for the ladies, he freezes all the time…
When did I get a subscription to slipshine?
The student has become the master!
QUICK SHE’S EXPOSED HER SCALP LET US FEED
We have to really eat the hat?
I suspect Galasso would take exception to that. Anyone eating something other than pizza (and subs) or other sundries from his shop while still in it would do well to be wary.
After overhearing this conversation, Galasso adds a hat pizza to his menu.
Not to be confused with a pizza hat. (Does TF2 have one of those yet? I haven’t played in a while.)
“Girl Genius” has a hat sandwich…
Pizza Hat is from the Alien Hand Syndrome ‘verse. It’s a popular restaurant chain there.
on the other hand, Pizza Cat is from Cat Ninja Legend Teyandee
DINA IS BEST DOOFUS!
this strip makes me happy in so many ways for so many reasons!!!
My reaction was a huge d’awwwwwwww ^_^
What’s she lookin’ at now?
Tree frogs.
I think Becky was just looking away from Dina because she was sad. She hurt her girlfriend’s feelings and then didn’t get her wish.
Now she’s gonna turn back around with stars in her eyes and these two doofuses will continue to be adorable. So adorable. Impossibly adorable.
i call happy drool
This is the perfect end to my thanksgiving holiday ;u;
Let’s see if I can figure this Gravatar thing out all over again
whoa there what’s with all this naked scalp action i thought this was a family webcomic harrumph
Awwwww.
VULGAR
Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcjpags7JT8
YOU MOTHERFUCKERS ITS IN MY BRAIN NOW I AM INFECTED HATE YOU ALL!!!!
Best way to get a song out of your brain is to listen to it.
I thought it was singing “Fuck and Run” by Liz Phair.
Is that the song usually in your brain?
Poor Brain
That usually just ingrains it for me, but blaring the Imperial March or other suitably bombastic music tends to overwrite the unwanted earworm.
Yup. I usualy overwrite it with a earworm that I like, such as Final Countdown, or Scatman.
I have found nothing that can stand against Everything Is Awesome. Truly, it is the earworm to end all earworms.
Don’t mention Final Cou… coun …count … Countdown! Now I getting flashbacks to my first girlfriend, first kiss and dancing in the summer night with that blaring at full volume!
So much embarrassments, … so much … so much
Imperial March? Traditional or are other versions OK too?
I’m partial to John Williams’ original orchestrated, but Rage Against the Machine had an interesting take on it.
All the best jokes have already been typed and there are only FOUR OTHER COMMENTS dammit!
Or
at least
there were only four other comments…
like, when I refreshed the page
Comments breed faster than bunnies.
…. faster than bacteria, I think.
Faster than Catholics.
(I’m sorry.)
Well, they do say every sperm is sacred…
Falsehood. It is now 13 hours since comic post time and no one has yet commented this:
God does answer lesbian prayers. Even when they involve lady-syrup.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/misreading/
Upvote!
i just realized she does the same thing I do when I’m tired, except with dinosaurs instead of alphabetized pokemon
Dina’s hair is so adorable!
Dina is best character, always.
*looks at final panel*
Hey, when did Malaya get there? Did we switch scenes?
*starts reading panel*
HOLY FUDGE ROCKETS.
You should have known that’s not Malaya, she’s smiling.
Oh my gosh it’s cutely ruffled nearly bed-head. *little squee*
“Hat hair”.
By the way, Bagge… Do you read the webcomic “Always Human”?
I checked their first page and found what looks like suitably adorable dofuses, so… I might!
You really should. It’s ridiculously pretty.
I have a feeling you’d probably love it.
They are extremely adorable doofuses.
That’s exactly what they are.
It’s basically a PURE ADORABLE DOOFUS COMIC!
So should be right up your alley.
OMG. (And I’m not someone who uses that)
This is exactly the type of webcomic I tried to find. It’s what I like about Questionable Content, too. It’s just, well, nice. No drama.
Instead, people recommended stuff like DofA, which, while I love it, is nothing at all like QC.
This is what it was like for a kid in the 80s to see what Cobra Commander looked like under that hood.
So i’m a bit disappointed that Dina doesn’t have a bunch of spider eyes under her hat.
Wouldn’t she have raptor plumage instead?
I’m confident she has a raptor plumage hat.
And she spent the day after the party desperately second guessing herself if she should have worn that instead of the triceratop(TM)
Splosh.
She really should’ve put down a tarp first
I am so proud of Dina honestly. The character progression has been great. Even if things don’t end up working out with Becky, I think being with Becky is good for her, as it opens her up and lets her socialize in a safe space.
I was expecting either greasy matted unwashed hair, or that Dina would be bald under the hat. Maybe a transparent dome, with a tiny dinosaur sitting at a control panel underneath.
Dina is not a Gallamite, silly.
So the opposite of a Dino Rider then?
D’aaawww that’s adorable.
Where’s the bomb?
That was the worst Willis could do; now we’re seeing the best.
this is absolutely the cutest, purest thing I’ve ever seen
oh my GOD
+1,000,000
Thank you, Willis, I needed that smile. And what an awesome way to mark 2k strips!
Oh my glob Dina told a joke! :O -Hell freezes over-
Strip 2000?
Strip 2000!
Yay, Dina. Yay Becky for fessing up in a neat way. Just yay. I love how this comic avoids the irritating stupid, and sticks to the good people being momentarily dumb thing.
I don’t know how, but she might be even more adorable with the hat off.
That sound you just made is so adorable.
Don’t ever make that sound again.
So… Will Dina die this time? Despite Willis claiming no deaths in the DoA-verse?
She might.
Within the next 24 hours, it is entirely possible that Jesus visits Willis and tells him to stop being such a sinner. Willis will then convert back to fundamentalist Christianity, and his first act of zealotry will be to delete everything DoA-related. Thus, Dina will effectively “die” in that we will never see anything new with her.
Why would you say these horrible things
Because I want to confuse and anger you, remember?
*angry fist shaking*
That’s not a fist, that’s a foot.
Die Hard taught us that we can make fists with our feet.
And the Die Hard sequels taught us that Bruce Willis becomes less funny with age. I mourn that fact… then I watch Hudson Hawk and pretend it never happened.
wait
what
Fist to the face. Boot to the head. Fists and feet are practically interchangeable. It’s like dying hard or hardly dying.
Because he knows us well enough to invent for us an appropriate lie.
An Internet because.
I am become Dina, Liar of Worlds!
But surely a greater way for God to use Willis would be by keeping DoA and gradually transforming it into something with a strongly Christian message by which to reach all of us obviously non-Christian* heathens.
* Non-Christians include “Christians” that aren’t “real” Christians.
Honestly I think DOA already does a much better job of communicating the Christian message than most “Christian” outlets…
….. which Christian message is The Christian Message, again? And how does one convince all the Christians with Not-The-Real-Message of that?
“Be excellent to each other”?
I thought that was Bill and Ted.
Didn’t he only say that nobody will get hit by a truck?
No, he said no deaths. Time moves slowly in DoA, and a character death would make the strip depressing for years.
Nope, he said nobody dies in DoA. The mourning would grind the strip to a halt. He wouldn’t want to write it, and we wouldn’t want to read it because a decent mourning period, our time, would go for DECADES in DoA-Time
This is just too cute. And hats off indeed Mr. Willis.
But I just put this one on!
SHE’S DOING IT IN PUBLIC?
Now the other people around will die from that much cuteness.
Also from the spiders
Because girls are full of spiders.
*doesn’t have the old IW link for proof*
Here you go: http://www.itswalky.com/comic/grandfatherly/
As is Dina in particular
“What are little girls made of?”
Sugar, spice, and everything SPIDERS
Dina just keeps getting cuter and cuter. Happy 2000th.
Don’t take off your hat, Dina! You’ll die!
2000th strip. Wow. That’s quite an accomplishment. I’m guessing that majority of the stripping is on Slipshine huh?
For all the comments I could give a +1 to right now…
*sigh* +1
I very much appreciate this joke.
Woo-hoo!
what? there’s no secondary, grotesque alien mouth in there? DISAPPOINT
Maybe it’s still hidden cause it hasn’t opened yet…?
This made me smile. Great 2k comic
Dina has learned Humor, Dina has forgotten one dinosaur.
Dina has learned Socially Acceptable Revenge. It is SUPER EFFECTIVE.
dina u rascal
Ain’t I a stinker?
Where’s the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!
Heh heh heh…
Still too soon.
Hey, you are in panel 3!
I am in every panel of DoA ever. Willis has a fever, and the only prescription is butts.
Seems legit!
tomorrow’s strip is just everyone being washed out of the restaurant by a wave of lady syrup
SOGGIES MAY RULE!!!
i love how shaggy her hair is!!!!!!!
Hats off to the new age hairstyle made of bones
Hats off to the use of hats
Only took 2,000 strips for us to uncover the truth
…It’s just hat hair.
I don’t know what I expected.
dead dove
do not eat
I was rooting for “another hat”, personally.
Half a blender.
Spiders
I think I know what Cerberus will write on this one.
She will give us insights on how important it is to communicate and use your words. She will express joy with Becky clearly learning the importance of consent. She will remind us how it’s great to see Dina taking it in stride and just accepting Becky for what Becky is, once Becky’s just being honest.
But above all, she will join the rest of us in saying how Dina is the best!
Has Cerb been around lately? I haven’t seen them(?) much.
Cerberus has mentioned they have a job as a teacher and right now there’s some sort of administrative meltdown going on regarding the sexual assault of one the students and that the (principal?) does not want to acknowledge and is threatening to fire Cerberus for making a stink about it.
Cerberus has mentioned that the slur t**nny has been thrown at them, so I think most of us assume their pronouns are she/her but personally I haven’t seen confirmation so I’ll use them until I know otherwise.
she/her pronouns, yeah, and I’ve been absent a bit because of that and also because my mental health has been screwy because Thanksgiving and Xmas are rough for disowned folks because of all the people emphasizing the importance of family and how happy they all are to be seeing family. That and dealing with a private crisis with my fiancee who had a bit of an election-induced breakdown.
So yeah, it’s been exciting times at Chez Cerberus.
Sympathy via internet comment.
Sympathy via belated internet comment.
Concur.
Hahahahahahahahajahahahahahahahahahahahahajahahahahahahahahahahahahajahahahahahahahahahahahahajahahahahahahahahahahahahajahahahahahahahahahahahahajahahahahaha
Heh…heh
Um
hahahahahahahajahahahahahahahahahahahahajahahahahahahahahahahahahajahahahahahahahahahahahahajahahahahahahahahahahahahajahahahahahahahahahahahahajahahahahahahahahahahahahajahahahahaha
Side view Dina is really adorable in a way I can’t really articulate
Lady syrup? Oh geez… Willis, you redeemed yourself for more than a few annoyances for that one.
There’s almost a joke about giving head there…
I was totally expecting her hair to look exactly like her hat all in black yet somehow still with teeth and eyes.
A momentous strip for a joyous milestone.
DINA’S HEAD
IT LIVES
CENSOR THIS.
Was…that supposed to be a challenge? 😛
Whoa whoa whoa, I thought this was a family strip!
Yeah, seeing Dina without her hat counts as seeing her naked!
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
these doofuses~ <3
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeee
ALL PERSONNEL, REPORT TO THE MOTHERFUCKING BRIDGE! WE HAVE A CODE GODDAMN ORANGE! REPEAT, CODE ORANGE!
Good Goddess, that’s some art of sexy right there.
This is it. The apex of DoA. Its all over boys. Go home.
But the girls can stay?
Somebody should pixellate Dina’s head in the last panel.
But she’s not Japanese. Is she? (I thought she was Vietnamese?)
No, she’s Japanese.
Okay:
http://i.imgur.com/2umeWhu.png
Ask now & you’ll get this lovely censor bar version for only the tiny price of your Spark-er, soul… 😛
This is my favorite webcomic, but I don’t think I can read it anymore after that godawful pun in the alt text.
According to the archives, it’s only been 1983 strips.
I assume he’s counting bonus strips as well.
Ahh, okay!
SHE MADE A JOKE!
And it’s as ADORABLE AS SHE IS!!!!
On that note
DINA HOW DARE YOU BE SO CUTE WHO GAVE YOU THE RIGHT YOU ARE GROUNDED YOUNG LADY
Dang, Dina – Brava! Thank heavens for vinyl seats
Dina the dino girl is so cute.
though.. historically hatless dina usually gets involved in something crazy shortly there after..
GANBATTE
Aww, Dina looks cute without her hat on.
Daw!
Quick Becky, turn around before she puts it back on.
So will Conquest show up with pizza during scalpnuzzles, or will Galasso grace us with an appearance?
Dina, I love you.
But give me Park avenue.
Meh, the yellow squares are where you can really trip people up.
ok, be honest, who else expected her head to look like a butt under her hat?
I love Dina so much right now.
And it’s a pity her interest in evolutionary biology is so focused on dinosaurs. I’d love to see her propounding on Desmond Morris’s theories about humor from “The Naked Ape.” The idea that humor is about the conflict between danger and safety actually fits really well with the sort of joke.
I have to imagine Dina’s delivery on jokes of that sort is flawless. She has the ideal personality to sell that kind of joke.
So Dina takes her hat off for the 2000th strip. I wonder what she’ll take off for the 5000th.
You can leave your hat on… (Badabadabadam…)
Oh you precious cinnamon buns, never change!~
Woo hoo!
Great joke, Dina. I see your cuteness has delved the depths of your own humor.
So, Dave, is Dina based on a real person?
yes, but she died in a lab explosion
STOP RIGHT NOW.
I’m sorry Willis. It was the best she could do.
Somewhere along the line here, I feel my reply here got ninjaed.
Come on guys, I think this comment chain is starting to get a Brit forced.
I guess I needed to get up earlier if I planned on making this joke. XD
Damn.
I was not ready for this. I have seen beyond the veil and can no longer return to my normal life.
welp time for the next slipshine
This strip is the censored version. The slipshine shows Dina’s head with a bald patch.
OH NO! Dina’s containment has been dropped! The cuteness, it’s getting EVERYWHERE!
As of today, Willis is officially lying to his fans
http://www.dumbingofage.com/cast/attachment/2014castdina/
Well to be honest people have seen her without her T-Rex hat in her triceratops hoodie so
Countdown to embarrassing Beckyspolosion in 5… 4… 3…
Meanwhile, I’m increasingly sure that either Walky or maybe even Mike have been tutoring Dina in how humour is supposed to work.
It was Becky herself:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/item/
And she has practiced all weekend, to Sarah’s chagrin
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/ldr/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/understudy/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/awesome-2/
Yup, it’s the grand conclusion of her training, used against the person she taught and to masterful effect by choosing a very appropriate lie for Becky to believe.
2001: a Becky sploosh-oddysey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0APF3SO9tqE
Welp, that’s so adorable I’m puking kittens now.
I’m kind of worried about what happens in the next comic. The only other time I remember seeing Dina’s head uncovered she exploded.
Becky will explode this time, but in a good way.
Dina might end up needing a snorkel, but I think she’ll survive
such appropriate faces
God, it makes everything better, doesn’t it?
Aww…
Now the comic can end in peace!
Well if Walky can get his act together, Leslie could find someone less amoral and Mike could die again…
As mentioned above, death would take way too much time out of the plot.
Now, if we could arrange it so he has pancreatitis and needs to stay in a hospital for a few months…
We-elll… Willis says no death because of mourning and shit.
Who’s going to mourn Mike?
Your mom. For a nickel.
Amber and Ethan maybe? Joyce because she’s a good human? Pooooooossssssibly Walky though I doubt it.
Walky would probably be happy and relieved until he learned that the “if your roommate dies, you get a 4.0 for the semester” thing is an urban legend.
Mike falls in love with Ethan, gains a conscience, becomes a reformed character, goes to work in a charity for rescuing kittens?
THIS IS ADORABLE!!!!!!
…I’m not sure I have anything more meaningsfull than that to say, but that has never stopped me.
Heh, you can almost hear Becky’s emotional roller coster going “WEEEEEEE”
Panel 1: SAD DINA IS SAD, MAKE DINA HAPPY
Panel 2: HORNY. LADY-SYRUP TALKING
Panel 3: BAD BECKY, BAD!
Panel 4: NO SCALP FOR YOU BECKY, RESPECT THAT. LIVE A SAD SCALP-LESS LIFE.
Panel 5: WAIT, WHAT? DO NOT COMPUTE? I’M SO CONFUUUUUUSED.
Dina’s sense of timing is perfect, and I ADORE that little question mark. “This was an appropriate joke… right?”
I also adore how Becky swallows her joke line hook and sinker. “Yeah, that makes sense. Of course she wouldn’t show anything sexy before marriage. What was I thinking.”
The expressions in the last panel are perfection!
So, in other words, ADORABLE!!!!
Insightful as usual, Cerb.
Please, I’m only up to ONE paragraph of analysis. Yesterday Cerberus did THREE, and that was just in threads she started.
Bravo, Dina! Your training in the Art of Humour is progressing well. Soon you will surpass even the Masters. 🙂
The cuteness level has increased to 11.
Joke: accomplished.
Cuteness level: over 9000.
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! THIS IS THE CUTEST, MOST PERFECT THING!!!
God, I feel like such an asshole but
I keep adding up the strip numbers in the archive and getting 1983.
Willis is probably including the bonus patreon strips. Since they are canon, I think that’s reasonable.
My archive count makes this #1983.
Maybe he’s counting the porn ones? There’s been a few of those by now.
I’d say Paterson bonus strips, but I would have assumed there were more of them.
Congrats Willis. 2000 strips Woot!
“In local news, a restaurant in Bloomington, Indiana had to close suddenly after experiencing very localized flooding. Traumatized first responders say that it was “a force of nature” and something to do with “lady syrup””
I’m put in mind of the Boston Molasses Flood, in which a collapsing storage tank produced a 25-foot-high wall of molasses moving at 35 mph, that killed 21 people and several horses, injured 150 more, damaged railroad tracks, crushed buildings, hurled a truck into the harbor, and flooded several blocks with knee-deep molasses.
Only with lady-syrups.
hi there this is the first time ive ever commented on a doa comic. what the fuck is a gravatar. i just wanted to say that dina and beckys relationship is the best thing about doa and talking as a lesbian myself, i dunno how u write lesbian relationships so well but u do. anyways this is Good
The cake is a lie.
Dina lied.
Dina is cake.
Flawless logic.
The cake is a lie, but not all lies are cake, just like not all Skittles are sour Skittles. FLAW EXPOSED.
I was expecting a bald spot.
Yeah, I was expecting a greasy mess full of spiderwebs
Okay, that was adorable.
This made me smile so much!
Becky’s body is not ready.
HATS OFF: A DUMBING OF AGE PORNOGRAPHIQUE
*grabs backs of their heads and forces them very close together*
NOW KISS
Next panel: Becky gnawing on the head of a confused and mystified Dina.
So, now we’re getting into strip-teases? XD
Spouse: “What are you laughing at?”
Me: “Dumbing Of Age”
Spouse: (rolls eyes)
This strip is just perfect.
Fluffy Dina!
Bravo! This is a fantastic way to end the series after 2000 strips. Well done. I felt multiple emotions. Looking forward to your next series.
Showing the top of her head in public? *GASP* Scandalous!
—
Really tho, this strip is so cute and it makes me so happy.
Today ends the world as we knew it. Let us wander into uncertainty as the great flood razes the ancient world.
Comic Reactions:
*sideeyes Bagge and Emperor who guessed my main thrusts already* I fear I hath become predictable…
But no seriously, there’s a lot here that I love love love to death.
Panel 1: Oh, of course Dina interprets the request in that way at first, because yeah, she is still feeling insecure that there’s something about her that Becky doesn’t like, because she’s told enough by the world that she’s weird and offputting and hard to put up with, so she just assumes that her quirks and idiosyncrasies (i.e. the very things that Becky loves) are being revealed to be as offputting as she assumes they are.
And I love Becky’s response, hammering home that no, she loves Dina’s hat and Dina’s quirks and that this is a request of intimacy rather than a request of dissatisfaction. And I also love how directly and imploringly she’s looking in her eyes. Cause this is important damnitt, more important than her screaming ladybits and doing what’s important and wonderful and accidentally being a wonderful girlfriend is Becky’s natural rhythm.
Panel 2: I love how cute and meek this request is after the open explosion of lust that the one yesterday was. As I exuberated yesterday, I love love love how Becky failed so hard and so unmistakably in her attempts to follow sitcom and religious training in asking without asking and that before she succeeds she’s having to use her words, directly and unambiguously.
Cause, yes, this is good consent practice, this right here. That despite all the training that good girls never want or ask, one should actually state a request for intimacy or sexy activities before initiating and allow a free and nonjudgmental state for that consent to be freely given (more on that later).
And in many ways this makes Becky the anti-Joe, because just like Joe, she’s very horned up, but unlike Joe, she wants to do this shit right and it’s why Dina is such a perfect fit for her, because she’s never going to go along with any bad habits she ever tries to slip into because of careful training.
And I also like that she has to ask twice. Once with the explosion of lust and intensity and another time gently and direct and then the follow up… oh the wonderful wonderful follow-up…
Becky is awesome here. She knows she has fudged up big time, but she never lose focus on what is most important – TELL DINA HOW AWESOME SHE IS AND HOW MUCH SHE LOVE HER AND ALL THAT SHE IS.
And I agree, that second panel is just adorable.
Panel 3: That Becky face and response is so perfect. Like, yeah, she has been a butt and has been doing wrong by her partner, trying to trick her into an intimacy and especially attempting to do so by exploiting her girlfriend’s lack of situational awareness. If she had “succeeded” she would have been a monster. That she attempted at all was already disappointing as she’s been so good on consent so far.
Which is why I love her contrite face here. She knows she fucks up. That her girlfriend prefers the direct approach, but more importantly, that the direct approach is the right action to follow.
That just like with the surprise kiss on Joyce, she let the fantasy she was taught blind her to what is right and respectful of boundaries and I think from here on out, we’re going to continue to see some of the best consent practices in the comic from Becky going forward. As yes, this is something she is taking right here deeply to heart.
Panel 4: And this is the moment I’m going to gush about the most, because it’s so critical. Yes, Dina is selecting an appropriate lie for her to believe and Becky comes from a background where that is actually a common statement and boundary (more on that later), but more importantly, she fully accepts it.
A Joe? A Joe sees that as a challenge to harangue or seduce or overcome, because something something mypenis.
But Becky takes it deeply to heart. Yeah, you can see on her face she’s not happy about it. It’s not what she would want in an ideal world, but she’s fully prepared to take that on face value and provide no social pressure on Dina to “push past” that boundary and is ready to fully abandon that request of intimacy for now and wait if need be.
And that… that’s how you’re supposed to do it. Like, sexy stuff with partners is great, and sometimes a specific type of sexy stuff with a partner is something that you’ve gotten super excited about. And so what you do if they say no, maybe no ever, maybe no, not for a long time. What you do when you’ve built up a lot of expectation and hopes and dreams about what something would be like.
What you do next at that point is a firm test of your character and whether or not you believe this consent stuff when the chips are down or see it as negotiable. And the fact that Becky goes all in here on valuing the consent above any possible explosion of juices, that… that needs to be seen more, modeled more in media.
Because that is someone who actually respects consent. Fully and utterly. And it is nice to see Becky restored to that once more.
Your comic reactions are beautiful as always. 🙂
I’d like to see Joe have a moment like this sometime. I don’t know how realistic that would be; his particular variety of “values consent in theory but has harmful beliefs like ‘alcohol is good for lowering inhibitions around sex'” is so common among college students, male and female, that it seems unlikely that someone like Joe would learn better in his freshman year. I’d like to see it nonetheless.
For Becky, however, this is a completely realistic and lovely moment. She’s coming out of a world of nonconsent, of spoken and unspoken rules, of obedience being valued over the barest minimum of personal comfort. She knows exactly what she doesn’t want to be. She’s learning how to be the person she does want to be. And at the same time, she’s learning how to love the person who is perfect for her during this time of change: direct and adorable Dina.
I don’t want to split this comment, so I’ll also use this space to thank you for pointing out in your comment below this that Dina had to learn about a culture that despises her in order to make the joke she did. That’s so critical, and shows how much she cares about Becky. Dina may not have had to do extra research to learn the “wait until marriage” thing, since evangelical culture is just about everywhere in this country, but she did have to choose to store that tidbit of information in her “Becky” file. That suggests that she’s seeing all the evangelical stuff in a new light, and keeping it in mind because of Becky. It’s such a caring thing to do.
I love these two characters so, so much.
That’s a good comparison between Becky and Joe, and what they really do when the chips are down. Becky has been not so stellar with consent once or twice, and she makes darn sure that this will not be one of those times.
Racing Turtle – that’s a good description of Becky’s journey. She goes the extra mile to be a person worthy of Dina’s love.
Panel 5: “Pick for them an appropriate lie”. Cause, yes, it is an appropriate lie for Becky, because yeah, that whole waiting til’ marriage is a major part of Becky’s upbringing and culture. That is a common boundary that would have existed among her peers, so yeah, she is very used to that being used to forestall sexy times. Hell, Joyce even harangued her about it at one point to say that premarital hanky-panky is still “morally wrong” even if it’s between two women, that Becky should still wait til marriage.
But Dina is not a part of Becky’s culture and in fact has mostly been surprised and shocked by most aspects of Becky and Joyce’s culture. It’s all that alien to her. So this “wait til’ marriage” thing is unlikely to be one that Dina thinks about much or has thought to assume to be universal.
What that means is that in addition to practicing on Sarah the act of “appropriate lies”, she has also been researching good potential “appropriate lies” for Becky, looking into a worldview she is openly horrified and traumatized by just to be able to use the techniques Becky taught her on Becky herself. And to do a good enough job to succeed. And that’s damn adorable.
And speaking of adorable, I love that she has freely chosen this intimacy and her little tuft of hat hair, but I also love Becky’s face as it slowly dawns on her what Dina’s words mean and her eyes grow wide and glistening as she starts to get openly excited about what has occurred behind her.
It is an intimacy freely given and now, in an environment where all the sitcom and religious rot has been excised as Becky is trying to do and Dina was finally placed in a space where her consent was asked for without pressure and her joking attempt at boundary was accepted wholesale and respected.
Cause yes, fuck yes, that is the sexiest thing, that is the beautiful thing. Intimacy not stolen or cajoled or snuck into, but freely given in a space absence pressure or weight. Something relaxing, but powerful. Something that has meaning.
That’s what intimate moments are all about and it’s why something as small as doffing a hat or a well-thought out gift can be as powerful as a sex act in really connecting hard to that emotional romantic intimacy.
And I suspect Becky may also find that this act is far less sexually satisfying as it is romantically satisfying.
And it’s just gosh darn gorgeous to boot.
Dina nailed it! And Becky’s star-eyed eyes are just wonderful. “Wait, what is happening? Wait, IS THIS HAPPENING?”
1: I wouldn’t say predictable per se, but there are certain things inevitable about this whole situation, and nobody knows how to find those things like you do. What has happened is that you have basically taught me to look for those things. I like to think I’m a half-decent student in that regards.
2: It’s not just Becky’s eyes that is glistening right now…
3: THEY ARE SUCH DOOOOOOOFUSES!
this is a very odd metaphor but i’m totally okay with it
Give me your hat, and do as the loving heathens do.
I’d give up my halo for a horn, and the horn for the hat I once had.
I take back my comment about Dina uncovering her head being an anticlimax.
Gonna be a climax for Becky.
hope she hasn’t been having someone else do her laundry. Could be awkward
this is completely inappropriate! This isn’t slipshine, Willis! LEWD! LEWD!
Where’s the bomb WHERE’S THE BOMB?! *throws self on hypothetical object that might or might not resemble a bomb*
Forgive her for her bad joke, Becky.
…it was the best she could do.*
*(the bomb this time around was the joke)
I hope Becky doesn’t splooge all over the place. It could get messy.
Yunno
Even though I knew it was gonna be an anti-reveal, how under her hat was going to be completely nothing out of the ordinary and how we all literally knew it too…
I still feel slightly dissapointed for some reason
Does this make Becky a scalpasaurus?
In the Striiip Two Thouuuuusaaaand…(sorry, had to) (actually not sorry at all)
These two are SUCH CUTIES
SO CUTE. I needed that tonight!
This is very strange to me, as I was always under the impression that the best outfit for this kind of thing was a nice hat… and nothing else. They seem to have reversed it. :3
Honestly, a girlfriend desiring to do naughty things to my scalp would be one of the few things that could ever convince me to willingly take off my favorite newsboy cap with my pin collection on it.
Dina: I take my hat off for one thing, and one thing only.
Becky: …Take your hat off.
(na na na Southbound and down, Becky’s tongue is goin’
She;s gonna show Dina how it’s done)
I think I like this timeline’s hat removal better. :’)
IT FINALLY HAPPENED *squee* dina is the best