“Mewtwo came before Mew. I don’t know how that works. And even though there’s supposedly only one Mewtwo and Mew is a myth, the Pokémon that come afterward are numbered as though Mewtwo and Mew exist, even in regions where they’ve never heard of them.”
I was once getting a drink in the bar of the restaurant I work at when one of the owners walked through and said “You’re not old enough to drink!” “…Jane, I’m 23.”
My sister was still being asked for ID to buy herself booze into her early 30s. She took it as a matter of pride. Until one day the checkout staff stopped asking her…that made her sad.
When I was a kid, I used to get asked for ID…to prove I was entitled to the child fare on buses. xD I always looked way too old (never a thing I was happy with).
It just got worse over time though…I was 19 the first time I was mistaken for my dad’s younger brother. He was 49 at the time. 😛
In my experience, if you’re late 20s/early 30s you can get a pretty goid read on the quality of an establishment by whether they card you or not. Quality places generally won’t, even if they’re large national chains. I’ve never been carded in a Fleming’s, for example, but a place like Buffalo Wild Wings or Chili’s will not only card me every time, they sometimes demand 2 forms of I’D. I once was refused service in a Buffalo Wild Wings because the first name on the two forms of ID didn’t exactly match. (I had my nickname on one)
28 years old, and I walked into a bottle shop to buy a bottle of Glenfiddich, and the guy behind the counter asked for proof of age. I’d had a bad day at work, and was tired of people underestimating my age because I looked young, so I vented. “Yes I know I look young, and if I WAS underage I’d be showing you 6 forms of false ID, but I’m not, you know why? Because I’m over 18 and don’t need to show you any! Also I’m not buying a bottle of some cheap flavoured ethanol to mix with brand name cola, I’m buying a bottle of single malt to be savoured over ice, with maybe a splash of water. So do you want my money, or should I go somewhere else where they employ people with basic logic skills?”
His response? “(brief pause) That’ll be x dollars sir, would you like a bag?” Made that my port of call after that. We understood each other.
True, but (a) My drinking budget wouldn’t have stretched that far, and (b) the place in question wouldn’t have stocked anything that top shelf. But now you have made me price a bottle of 16 year old Lagavulin from nearby retailers. Well played sir, but I will have my revenge!
Depends where you are, but many states have laws requiring requiring them to ask for id anyway – some from everyone, others anyone appearing below a certain age. Your employee without “basic logic skills” may simply have been following the law or at least their employers policies. To avoid getting caught out selling to underage kids who look older.
I’m also pretty sure there isn’t an exemption for top shelf booze – rich kids don’t get to buy underage.
Thank-you for being the reasonable adult in this conversation. The person checking ID has no way to know who looks 23 but is actually 28, and who looks 25 but is actually 17.
I always find it fascinating with the various states age restrictions.
You can vote at this age, have carnal relations and get married at these ages depending on partners age, throw your life away for your country at this young age, drive a mechanical death machine at that other age BUT you are not mature enough to imbibe alcohol till this much much latter age.
No kidding. And the price for being wrong can range from being fined to jailed to losing the right to sell alcohol. I’m 40 and still get carded most places around where I live (near IU, ha!), it’s just a matter of course.
I was the 17 year old who looked 25 (in Canada so you only have to be 19). I actually don’t drink but I only ever got carded once before I was legal age.
I got IDed the other day and I am 3X the legal age. Store policy is store policy and I don’t give clerks grief for following the rules, when not doing so can get them fired. It’s tough out there – Be kind.
I get carded absolutely everywhere with an age restriction – casinos, booze, etc. The legal age here is 19 and I’m 21. I hand over my driver’s license and health card (and my passport if I have it) and then complain about my damn baby face to my friends later. Because, again, this is their job and possibly the law.
After a certain period of time working on the Pokedex for one region they just add the legendary Pokémon at the end whether there is a confirmed sighting or not. They added Mew because they knew if Mewtwo existed so did Mew and that started a tradition. You’re actually sort of on the tail end of the process for your region.
I thought Pokemon would be more Amber’s thing… Of course, only as a little side quest, so to speak; because the only one whose heart she truly belongs to is Donatello.
It occurs to me that she now would have been around 11-12 when the modern TMNT show aired. So I guess she likes Rob Paulsen Donny instead of Barry Gordon Donny.
Must have been confusing to go back to see what the original was like and hear Donny’s voice come out of Raph.
s’almost like social ability and visible markers of “adult behavior” are a bad indicator of overall maturity, or that “maturity” and self-sufficiency ability don’t increase uniformly with age, or both, or something.
This strip is a direct result of DYW thinking to himself “Hmmm, I recall Amber enjoying not thinking of Dina as a sexual being. It’s definitely time to stop that enjoyment. Awkwardness country, here we come!”
If that was an option it would probably be about a week before I was banned for asking seemingly innocent questions, and then changing my question to make the respondent seem nuts.
It is more a mild ableism thing where because Dina is autistic and struggles with social cues and due to her physical stature, it is difficult for people to picture her as well, an adult, that could be older than them, possibly sexual or worldly in aspects they aren’t.
Amber has noted that the idea Dina is older shouldn’t cause a knee-jerk reaction like it has, and probably wouldn’t say anything to Dina’s face like that, but even despite genuinely caring about Dina and helping her, she still has some internal knee-jerk reactions she needs to examine.
“Earlier generations of Pokemon modeled extremely inaccurate conceptions of evolution, to the point of absurdity. For this reason, I did not play the games, and spent extensive time educating my peers on their inaccuracies.”
there’s also hattu but usually hattu is used to refer to like, a cowboy hat while lakki is used to refer to the style of hat Dina wears. but it doesnt matter that much
Look, Finns do things a bit differently, mmkay. And hey, that song is basically about a woman sneaking out without her mother’s permission to “dance polka” with a man she’s got the hots for; so don’t underestimate the seductive powers of polka.
Also, don’t mess with the Finns; or they’ll send some of their snipers on you.
I remember there was a strip a few weeks back where Billie and Ruth were going over upcoming birthdays…and as you pointed out, Dorothy was herself stated to be nineteen relatively early on.
Do 18 year olds generally care that much about a few months?? I was one of the younger ones in my academic year, I was used to most people being older than me and never felt that it mattered after the point people stopped playing families and saying “you’re the youngest so you need to be the baby” (somebody I was friendly with had am August birthday; I remember her getting upset once because she wanted to be the mummy instead and was always the youngest and expected to be the baby)…
Idk but I remember when I was 20 and some guys in my class (who were 18) found that out and they were like “oooh you’re so old!! how come you’re that old?? You’re ancient! I thought you were one of us!”… it lasted weeks, too, it was annoying.
I don’t act my age, and I’ve been one of the oldest in my class ever since I decided to start a new undergrad at 23, so ppl tend to think I’m younger than I am, and the reaction is always the same. I think I relate to Dina a lot in this aspect.
Care a lot, no, but there was a girl in college for whom it was weird and amusing to think that she was a few months older than I was. Partly her playful demeanor and being much shorter, though also her being the class below me (since I came to college a year early). So I get Amber’s thing.
El Goonish Shive had the reverse: a bunch of high school seniors, later in their year so most had turned 18 already, being bemused that Susan — tall and mature-seeming — was actually the youngest in the group. Again, it doesn’t *really* matter, but it’s still a ‘huh’.
Care a lot? Not really. Still surprising when they don’t look or act like you expect of their age? Yes. Dina looks like she would be the youngest of the cast due to her small stature. Add in her austistic traits which hinder her social skills, and it makes it seem even more obvious that she is younger.
It also shows a mild degree of internal ableism that Amber’s knee-jerk reaction as she stated was to almost reject that as true, because it is common to infantise people with developmental disorders and see them as younger, non-sexual and more like they are children than adults with their own knowledge, experience and abilities.
Is Dina explicitly autistic or just coded that way? I can’t recall. Anyways, Amber infantilizing her like this, over and over, is super frustrating. I like Amber a lot but jeez. I’m not complaining about the writing though. It’s a true to life representation of how people treat autistic people. *scowls*
Yeah, see, my problem with that is that this defense doesn’t take into account that a straight white neurodivergent guy’s experiences and perspectives are going to differ vastly from a queer Asian neurodivergent woman’s experiences and perspectives, the same way a straight white neurotypical guy’s experiences and perspectives are gonna differ vastly from a queer Asian neurotypical woman’s experiences and perspectives.
And that shows in his writing and is probably why Dina comes across to me as an inauthentic bag of cutesy, likable tropes with a dash of Very General Autistic Experiences, rather than, like…a person.
A lot of the characters in this comic are written really well, Dina is just not one of them. And the fact that Willis has based her on himself (straightwhiteguy), which be brings up whenever anyone criticizes his portrayal of her, kinda…makes sense to me.
And I say this as a fan of the comic who’s a queer Japanese girl on the spectrum myself, so it’s disappointing when I know he’s capable of doing better. I like to think he will. I know Willis can’t change her characterization at this point, but I’m hopeful he’ll be a little more mindful when he takes on future projects about how he uses representation of minorities.
And this reaction seems strange to me, because to me, Dina seems startlingly similar in a lot of ways to a real person I know (a neurodivergent queer white woman). ::shrugs::
I mean, Joyce is ALSO based on Willis’s personal experiences? He’s capable of sprinkling in a dash of personal experiences while fleshing out the character in other ways that make sense to them personally in-universe? Saying that a white guy cannot write a queer neurodivergent Asian woman well sounds really weird to me.
My reading from Wendy’s comment was that she thinks Willis -can- write a queer neurodivergent Asian woman; and that it’s therefore extra disappointing that he, in her opinion, failed to do so this time. And she only said that Willis can’t change the characterization much -at this point-; meaning she knows that said character is so established by now any major change would end up looking like a ret-con.
I don’t believe it’s been made explicit in the comic. It seems likely she’s undiagnosed.
But at least Amber realizes that viewing Dina that way is bad and is thinking about how what she said could be hurtful. Not saying it at all would be even better, and not seeing Dina that way in the first place would be ideal, but that first lesson that “this thing I’m doing is hurtful in a way I didn’t intend and I should stop” is the critical one that leads to those other steps. It took MONTHS and a lot of effort by other people to drive that lesson through Joe’s thick skull. Amber only needed to see how it affected Dina and is trying to change on her own accord
You are going to hate finding out how Raidah treated Dina.
As far as I can recall, no one in DoA is canon diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum. That doesn’t stop commenters from doing their own diagnosis, and Dina certainly pings on many readers autdars (not the only character to do so).
There was also that time when Joyce swore for the first time, about how if Adam and Eve did not start Sin then God did and that was a terrifying thought to Joyce, and then Dina noted (while giving examples) that Joyce’s cuss vocabulary is still limited and everyone just stared at her, weirded out by Dina swearing.
Explicitly not diagnosed but given her family background (a lot of diagnostic folks assume that “no eye contact” is because Asian and not because autistic, that any language delays are because English isn’t spoken at home, and sometimes think girls can’t be autistic… it’s shitty) I would totally expect her not to be diagnosed anyways. The median age of diagnosis for girls is something teen, too.
Basically I think she super is and also that her lack of diagnosis makes sense if DoA universe psych folks are like ours.
But as an older reader seeing a reaction “oh wow, 19 is old!” or something similar, I find my reaction is best encapsulated by humorist/critic Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, when he said:
When I was a kid and my family had finally gotten a black and white TV, one of the things we did was watch a western called Gunsmoke. In one episode there was this dilapidated old codger that looked like he would blow away in the wind if you sneezed on him hard. At one point he gets shot or something as as he’s laying there he says something like, “Don’t morn for me. I’ve lived a good full life. I’m almost 40.”
Because people think anyone who doesn’t understand the random-ass social customs of their generation must be stupid or immature, and as Dina clearly isn’t stupid she must be immature.
We shouldn’t be disrespectful to little kids, but there are valid reasons to treat them differently from adults. For example, holding hands when you cross the street, because a lot of kids might get hit by a car due to being too slow/fast or too small for the drivers to see them, etc. Making an adult hold your hand to cross the street would be different.
But it does make me mad when people are just straight up rude to little kids. I work in a grocery store pharmacy, so I see a lot of parents losing patience with kids every day.
…anyway, what I’m saying is:
1. We should respect kids, even though we also need to treat them different from adults in many situations
2. Treating an adult like a child you respect is still disrespectful to the adult
Not just the physical differences – too slow/fast or too small to see, but mental ones as well. Little kids generally have poor judgement – they’re still learning and their brains are developing.
We shouldn’t disrespect them, but we also can’t really respect their decisions or opinions in very many cases.
Kids aren’t mature. That’s why they need to be treated differently.
None of which excuses treating Dina without respect, of course.
If it will make you feel any better, Amber, I’ve got the feeling that Dina is going to be one of those unfortunate women who will probably still be mistaken for being a freshman until she’s way into her 30s.
“Legends tell of a generation that predated ruby, a generation of 250 Pokemon, a generation called gen 2”
“Wasn’t there a gen 1 then?”
“Haha what lunacy”
Anyway the hover text is not working for me. I’m on iOS 11.2. I press the thingy and nothing happens. Also the hiveworks comics banner is not showing up. Something wrong with the script on this website.
Between the time when the oceans drank Pokélantis, and the rise of the team of Rocket, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Dina , destined to wear the fanged crown of Kanto upon a troubled brow. It is I, her chronicler, who alone can tell thee of her saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!
I like the fact that Dina may be autistic or maybe not. It highlights the fact that people all around you may have been diagnosed as having one condition or another, but they shouldn’t need a note from their doctor to be respected.
I don’t understand this strip. Dina’s a freshman in college; of COURSE if she has a birthday she’s turning 19. The only way for her to be a 17-year-old in college is if she skipped a grade. Kids normally turn 18 in their senior year of high school.
Put a different way- if Dina was turning 18 now, she would have started her senior year at 16 years old. Meaning that she would have started first grade at 5. 5 years old is Kindergarten; six-year-olds start first grade.
… Amber’s comment in Panel 4 implies that most of the characters in Willis’ sexy-fun-times Web series on Slipshine are under 18, i.e. minors.
Kinda hope that’s a typo or mistake. It doesn’t really make sense to me otherwise.
More like, because you can’t be portraying minors in that way, even if they’re fictional, hand-drawn characters. It falls under the same guidelines as other adult entertainment. I’m sure that somewhere on the site, SS probably has a disclaimer stating that all characters portrayed are at or over 18 years of age.
Dina’s a freshman in college; of COURSE if she has a birthday she’s turning 19. The only way for her to be a 17-year-old in college is if she skipped a grade
Quite aside from your post presenting a way for her to be 17, that’s not actually the only way. Different school systems have different entrance ages, some allowing 4 year olds. I know this firsthand – my parents were given the option, since my birthday is early in the year, therefor I would have turned five during the school year (one of the requirements for early entrance being allowed). (They decided to hold off until I would be 5 at the start of the year.) Don’t know if the district where Dina went had that option, but it does exist.
… Amber’s comment in Panel 4 implies that most of the characters in Willis’ sexy-fun-times Web series on Slipshine are under 18
No, it doesn’t – it suggests they’re younger than Dina – who is, again, about to turn 19, leaving approximately 11 months worth of other 18 year olds.
I suppose that makes sense – I forget sometimes that we’re still really early in the school year, and so Dina can still be older than everyone else, who are going to be turning 19 in the next few months.
I get it now – thank you! I thought that Amber’s assumption was that “She’s turning 18 like all other freshmen this year,” but it really was “She must be turning 18 because there’s no way that tiny girl could be a legal adult yet.” Thanks for setting me right.
I’m pretty sure we’re still early in fall semester, so yes, her birthday is relatively late in the year (we haven’t had Thanksgiving break yet, so it’s october or november sometime?). So Amber isn’t crazy for thinking she’s turning 18, that’s actually probably the most common assumption. I’ve lived in several states and I think most have a cut-off for kindergarten start that’s either December 1 or January 1. But lots of schools have a parental choice period for any child who turns 5 between the start of the school year and the cutoff date. Lots of parents choose to wait, especially if their child appears to be developmentally “slow” (something that wouldn’t be too shocking for a pediatrician to recommend to Dina’s parents if her neurodivergencies were already apparent). So Dina probably isn’t the only Freshman turning 19 already either.
Maybe things have changed, but back when I was in school the assumption would have been that most college freshmen were 18 or at this point in the semester about to turn 18.
I was 18 for my entire freshman year, since my birthday was in the summer. I knew people who started at 17 and had birthdays in the fall and I think others who turned 19 in the spring.
I think there’s been a trend since my childhood of starting kindergarten later, which would push more of those with fall birthdays into the next year.
It basically depends on what the age cutoff was at their first school. My school had September 1 as the cutoff, so with my late-September birthday, I was one of the oldest kids in my class up through high school and turned 19 about a month into my first year of college. Someone else on my hall turned 18 that November – his school system had used the end of the year as the cutoff.
Sarah doesn’t count because she actually is a year older. Joe’s more immature, Danny’s finding himself in a way that shows youth, Walky Dorothy and Joyce watch cartoons together and two of them are as childish as Dina if not more so, And Amber dresses up in pajamas and a cape. I don’t know if Mike’s psychotic or if I’m just judging him based on the old Walkyverse. I miss Beef. Mary’s got the judgmental arrogance that could be youthful down. And Ethan’s naievete seems young (though so does Dina’s, as does her obsession with hat.)
Really the only ones that seem to possibly be more mature or aged would be Sal, Jacob, and Marcie, and I don’t think any of them are specifically mature, just quieter.
OTOH, Dina met Riley and ate cereal with her and thought they’d established a rapport until Amber told her Riley really was 12.
And Riley thought Dina was about her age too.
I think it’s been pretty clearly established that not only does Dina visually pass for a kid, but that her interests and behavior are easily mistaken as well. Or at least were at the start – I think she’s been working on that for awhile.
I don’t think everyone who reacts to her that way is awful – the trick is overcoming that initial reaction.
Basically everybody in universe, save Becky, reads her as a little kid, and Amber is having a hard time shaking that. (Joyce seems to have adjusted her reading fairly quick, and nobody else has really had reason to demonstrate whether they still think of her as a kid.)
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“Mewtwo came before Mew. I don’t know how that works. And even though there’s supposedly only one Mewtwo and Mew is a myth, the Pokémon that come afterward are numbered as though Mewtwo and Mew exist, even in regions where they’ve never heard of them.”
“How do you know so much, Dina?”
*looks up* “My phone has Wi-Fi.”
also I totes got the “you’re not legal to drink!” “…I’m THIRTY”
I was once getting a drink in the bar of the restaurant I work at when one of the owners walked through and said “You’re not old enough to drink!” “…Jane, I’m 23.”
The curse of having a young face, constantly having to remind people I’m probably older than them.
Yuuuuuuuup.
My sister was still being asked for ID to buy herself booze into her early 30s. She took it as a matter of pride. Until one day the checkout staff stopped asking her…that made her sad.
I used to be sad when they stopped asking me for ID… until they started asking if I was eligible for the seniors’ discount. 😮
Welp, time to get a cane, so I can shake it at people who call me old.
And eyeglasses, so I can hit when I throw things at people who call me old.
And a hearing aid, so I can hear when THOSE YOUNG PUNKS call me old.
And a fence so I know when those kids are ON MY LAWN and I can yell at them to GET OFF IT.
Eh, the grocery store has actually given me the senior discount AND carded me for booze at the same time.
(I’m not actually quite old enough for the discount, but I’m not going to turn down 10% off on my groceries.)
then Amazi-Girl will throw your cane into a tree
When I was a kid, I used to get asked for ID…to prove I was entitled to the child fare on buses. xD I always looked way too old (never a thing I was happy with).
It just got worse over time though…I was 19 the first time I was mistaken for my dad’s younger brother. He was 49 at the time. 😛
In my experience, if you’re late 20s/early 30s you can get a pretty goid read on the quality of an establishment by whether they card you or not. Quality places generally won’t, even if they’re large national chains. I’ve never been carded in a Fleming’s, for example, but a place like Buffalo Wild Wings or Chili’s will not only card me every time, they sometimes demand 2 forms of I’D. I once was refused service in a Buffalo Wild Wings because the first name on the two forms of ID didn’t exactly match. (I had my nickname on one)
28 years old, and I walked into a bottle shop to buy a bottle of Glenfiddich, and the guy behind the counter asked for proof of age. I’d had a bad day at work, and was tired of people underestimating my age because I looked young, so I vented. “Yes I know I look young, and if I WAS underage I’d be showing you 6 forms of false ID, but I’m not, you know why? Because I’m over 18 and don’t need to show you any! Also I’m not buying a bottle of some cheap flavoured ethanol to mix with brand name cola, I’m buying a bottle of single malt to be savoured over ice, with maybe a splash of water. So do you want my money, or should I go somewhere else where they employ people with basic logic skills?”
His response? “(brief pause) That’ll be x dollars sir, would you like a bag?” Made that my port of call after that. We understood each other.
This story would be so much better with a bottle of Lagavulin 16 y.o. 🙂
True, but (a) My drinking budget wouldn’t have stretched that far, and (b) the place in question wouldn’t have stocked anything that top shelf. But now you have made me price a bottle of 16 year old Lagavulin from nearby retailers. Well played sir, but I will have my revenge!
At first read, I thought you said a bottle and a 19 y.o.
Depends where you are, but many states have laws requiring requiring them to ask for id anyway – some from everyone, others anyone appearing below a certain age. Your employee without “basic logic skills” may simply have been following the law or at least their employers policies. To avoid getting caught out selling to underage kids who look older.
I’m also pretty sure there isn’t an exemption for top shelf booze – rich kids don’t get to buy underage.
Thank-you for being the reasonable adult in this conversation. The person checking ID has no way to know who looks 23 but is actually 28, and who looks 25 but is actually 17.
I always find it fascinating with the various states age restrictions.
You can vote at this age, have carnal relations and get married at these ages depending on partners age, throw your life away for your country at this young age, drive a mechanical death machine at that other age BUT you are not mature enough to imbibe alcohol till this much much latter age.
No kidding. And the price for being wrong can range from being fined to jailed to losing the right to sell alcohol. I’m 40 and still get carded most places around where I live (near IU, ha!), it’s just a matter of course.
I was the 17 year old who looked 25 (in Canada so you only have to be 19). I actually don’t drink but I only ever got carded once before I was legal age.
Psst, ChuckG, legal age is 18 in several provinces.
IDs that have a nickname on them trigger the “McLovin Rule.”
Cops take you out to have an awesome time?
I got IDed the other day and I am 3X the legal age. Store policy is store policy and I don’t give clerks grief for following the rules, when not doing so can get them fired. It’s tough out there – Be kind.
I get carded absolutely everywhere with an age restriction – casinos, booze, etc. The legal age here is 19 and I’m 21. I hand over my driver’s license and health card (and my passport if I have it) and then complain about my damn baby face to my friends later. Because, again, this is their job and possibly the law.
Yeah, I’m 32 and was recently asked if my daughter was my baby sister because I did not look old enough to have a child.
Also once when I was in college I went to the bank to deposit a check and someone asked if I was lost and looking for my mom…
Thinking of birthdays, yesterday was Mewtwo’s: https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Mansion_journals
After a certain period of time working on the Pokedex for one region they just add the legendary Pokémon at the end whether there is a confirmed sighting or not. They added Mew because they knew if Mewtwo existed so did Mew and that started a tradition. You’re actually sort of on the tail end of the process for your region.
Dina probably really appreciates the designs of Pokemon like Muk, Voltorb and Seel. Especially Seel.
I prefer Dewgong. Totally didn’t steal the name from actual dugongs.
“back in my day there were only 151 of the fuckers, and they didn’t fuck!”
i’d like to think they still dont fuck
When a Nidoran and a Nidorina love each other very much…
But Nidorina can’t breed…
Who said anything about breeding?
When a Skitty and a Wailord love each other very much…
…you get hot Skitty-on-Wailord action.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HotSkittyOnWailordAction
I wrote that page! Borrowed the name though.
I mean, the Daycare people say they don’t know how the eggs get there. Maybe they’re telling the truth!
I think this is how the eggs get there?
(Link is…. not really safe for work. I mean, it’s supposed to be innocent puppet show, but…. Yeah.)
Don’t worry, a special event in Gold and Silver explained EXACTLY how Pokémon eggs are made!
…It’s kinda weird. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mhsDkOiod4
Sorry, HEARTGold and SOULSilver, just to avoid the pedantry.
Aren’t you supposed to be off competing for the Heart of Infinity or some such ;D
Thats only for three pokemon that we already knew were made by Arceus though so doesn’t help us with the rest.
Yeah, let’s be honest, no one understands it.
Take two.
I think they just don’t want to have to give The Talk to a stream of ten-year-old trainers.
They are professional Daycare people, they should be used to that shit.
I mean, I guess I can understand it in the sense that ten-year-olds should KNOW THIS SHIT already and therefore don’t have to ask them…
But surely they have first-grade school classes visiting every now and then, no?
Oh sure, it is ok to let 10 year olds wander unsupervised in the forest, but heaven forbid you teach them anything about reproduction.
I thought Pokemon would be more Amber’s thing… Of course, only as a little side quest, so to speak; because the only one whose heart she truly belongs to is Donatello.
No one escapes Pokemon Go…
I think Pokemon is IS Amber’s thing. Becky is just good at homing in on the thing that will gently explode the head of the people she is talking to.
It occurs to me that she now would have been around 11-12 when the modern TMNT show aired. So I guess she likes Rob Paulsen Donny instead of Barry Gordon Donny.
Must have been confusing to go back to see what the original was like and hear Donny’s voice come out of Raph.
I imagine it’s a bit like hearing Lorenzo Music’s voice from any character other than Garfield.
You mean Carlton Your Doorman?
there is no escape, amber. 😛
Unless she’s Freakazoid.
Yes there is – Amber can escape by putting the laptop over her face!
Her Face!
FAAAAAAAACE!
“Tell me about Fat Pikachu.”
s’almost like social ability and visible markers of “adult behavior” are a bad indicator of overall maturity, or that “maturity” and self-sufficiency ability don’t increase uniformly with age, or both, or something.
This strip is a direct result of DYW thinking to himself “Hmmm, I recall Amber enjoying not thinking of Dina as a sexual being. It’s definitely time to stop that enjoyment. Awkwardness country, here we come!”
I heard that the summers are nice in Awkwardness country 🙂
Awkwardness. Not just for summer anymore.
They are, except someone’s shorts always get caught up in a branch when going to the beach.
What is that thing Amber is holding over her face?
Hovertext says it’s her computer.
Pretty sure it’s a book. Could also be a very large DS or something. But prolly a book
And King Daniel has conveniently proven me wrong after I commented
By which I mean, I commented, then it refreshed, then I saw his comment. I’ll be quiet now. On a side note, we really need edit and delete options
If that was an option it would probably be about a week before I was banned for asking seemingly innocent questions, and then changing my question to make the respondent seem nuts.
For example
Some1: Hey, what’s the name of Becky’s dad
Some poster: Ross
Edit comment to “Who should Dina make out with?”
Some kind of edited tag would help that. Oh god I’m at 4 comments on this thread now I need to stop
That is why he is king and you are not.
See now, your emperorship, I was thinking it was a Chromebook and they’re both right.
Looks like a small laptop (Asus 8″, etc) Mine was about that size.
I thought it was a shallow trash can at first ….
Hey Nineteen
No, we can’t dance together
No, we can’t talk at all
Please take me along when you slide on down…Steely Dan
The Fine Colombian…
Suddenly I have a question: who is the current “Dandy of Gamma Chi”?
Amber seems more OK with yaoi than yuri.
That, and, Dina is her roommate.
Given what we’ve seen Amber and others say about Dina before, I think it’s an infantilisation thing.
But yeah I think it’s more this.
Even just sticking to what she says in this strip, that’s the most likely interpretation.
It is more a mild ableism thing where because Dina is autistic and struggles with social cues and due to her physical stature, it is difficult for people to picture her as well, an adult, that could be older than them, possibly sexual or worldly in aspects they aren’t.
Amber has noted that the idea Dina is older shouldn’t cause a knee-jerk reaction like it has, and probably wouldn’t say anything to Dina’s face like that, but even despite genuinely caring about Dina and helping her, she still has some internal knee-jerk reactions she needs to examine.
Bonus points for Becky for finding a way to brag about her rad-ass girlfriend
Not just brag, but sexy-brag.
I mean, it doesn’t seem that hard. Dina did most of the work by being so rad
Yeah, but Becky has a talent.
Pretty sure Amber probably knows more about Pokemon than Dina.
It’s like Willis has a personal link into my brain and knows exactly how to make me love Becky like my own daughter.
Given the sliding timeline, Dina’s first game would probably have been one of the Advance games.
Probably FireRed/LeafGreen, so still Gen1.
“Earlier generations of Pokemon modeled extremely inaccurate conceptions of evolution, to the point of absurdity. For this reason, I did not play the games, and spent extensive time educating my peers on their inaccuracies.”
“So when did they get better?”
“…. better?”
here is kitty’s finnish word of the day!
lakki (headwear)
there’s also hattu but usually hattu is used to refer to like, a cowboy hat while lakki is used to refer to the style of hat Dina wears. but it doesnt matter that much
have a nice day!
And now it’s time to combine Finnish lessons with sexytimes, by doing the most sexy music genres of them all: The polka!
I still think this is one of the most amazing live acapella performances ever captured on a recording.
My mouse apparently couldn’t handle all the sexiness. I clicked the link to open it in a new tab and after that it just stopped working.
The Polka more sexy than the Tango? What kind of weird demented universe are you living in?
Look, Finns do things a bit differently, mmkay. And hey, that song is basically about a woman sneaking out without her mother’s permission to “dance polka” with a man she’s got the hots for; so don’t underestimate the seductive powers of polka.
Also, don’t mess with the Finns; or they’ll send some of their snipers on you.
true
<3333333
Let’s see this would make Dina older than Amber, Joyce, Becky, walky, Dorothy, freaking Joe, Danny, Eathen, Sal, Roz…anyone else I’m missing ?
Dorothy has been shown to be nineteen.
I remember there was a strip a few weeks back where Billie and Ruth were going over upcoming birthdays…and as you pointed out, Dorothy was herself stated to be nineteen relatively early on.
Do 18 year olds generally care that much about a few months?? I was one of the younger ones in my academic year, I was used to most people being older than me and never felt that it mattered after the point people stopped playing families and saying “you’re the youngest so you need to be the baby” (somebody I was friendly with had am August birthday; I remember her getting upset once because she wanted to be the mummy instead and was always the youngest and expected to be the baby)…
Speaking as a 19 year old? No. Nobody cares.
You care?
Idk but I remember when I was 20 and some guys in my class (who were 18) found that out and they were like “oooh you’re so old!! how come you’re that old?? You’re ancient! I thought you were one of us!”… it lasted weeks, too, it was annoying.
I don’t act my age, and I’ve been one of the oldest in my class ever since I decided to start a new undergrad at 23, so ppl tend to think I’m younger than I am, and the reaction is always the same. I think I relate to Dina a lot in this aspect.
Care a lot, no, but there was a girl in college for whom it was weird and amusing to think that she was a few months older than I was. Partly her playful demeanor and being much shorter, though also her being the class below me (since I came to college a year early). So I get Amber’s thing.
El Goonish Shive had the reverse: a bunch of high school seniors, later in their year so most had turned 18 already, being bemused that Susan — tall and mature-seeming — was actually the youngest in the group. Again, it doesn’t *really* matter, but it’s still a ‘huh’.
Care a lot? Not really. Still surprising when they don’t look or act like you expect of their age? Yes. Dina looks like she would be the youngest of the cast due to her small stature. Add in her austistic traits which hinder her social skills, and it makes it seem even more obvious that she is younger.
It also shows a mild degree of internal ableism that Amber’s knee-jerk reaction as she stated was to almost reject that as true, because it is common to infantise people with developmental disorders and see them as younger, non-sexual and more like they are children than adults with their own knowledge, experience and abilities.
Is it bad that sometimes I’ll look back at my old comments and be like “Even I don’t know what this means!”?
That has happened to me with *code* comments. 🙂
But it’s not that bad until it happens before you can hit the send key. Then you should worry.
Yeah, generally it happens coming back to work on code I wrote months ago and I’m like “past me, what were you thinking?”
Is Dina explicitly autistic or just coded that way? I can’t recall. Anyways, Amber infantilizing her like this, over and over, is super frustrating. I like Amber a lot but jeez. I’m not complaining about the writing though. It’s a true to life representation of how people treat autistic people. *scowls*
Willis I believe has stated something along the lines of “she’s just based on me, and I was never diagnosed, so -audible shrug-“
Yeah, see, my problem with that is that this defense doesn’t take into account that a straight white neurodivergent guy’s experiences and perspectives are going to differ vastly from a queer Asian neurodivergent woman’s experiences and perspectives, the same way a straight white neurotypical guy’s experiences and perspectives are gonna differ vastly from a queer Asian neurotypical woman’s experiences and perspectives.
And that shows in his writing and is probably why Dina comes across to me as an inauthentic bag of cutesy, likable tropes with a dash of Very General Autistic Experiences, rather than, like…a person.
A lot of the characters in this comic are written really well, Dina is just not one of them. And the fact that Willis has based her on himself (straightwhiteguy), which be brings up whenever anyone criticizes his portrayal of her, kinda…makes sense to me.
And I say this as a fan of the comic who’s a queer Japanese girl on the spectrum myself, so it’s disappointing when I know he’s capable of doing better. I like to think he will. I know Willis can’t change her characterization at this point, but I’m hopeful he’ll be a little more mindful when he takes on future projects about how he uses representation of minorities.
And this reaction seems strange to me, because to me, Dina seems startlingly similar in a lot of ways to a real person I know (a neurodivergent queer white woman). ::shrugs::
I mean, Joyce is ALSO based on Willis’s personal experiences? He’s capable of sprinkling in a dash of personal experiences while fleshing out the character in other ways that make sense to them personally in-universe? Saying that a white guy cannot write a queer neurodivergent Asian woman well sounds really weird to me.
My reading from Wendy’s comment was that she thinks Willis -can- write a queer neurodivergent Asian woman; and that it’s therefore extra disappointing that he, in her opinion, failed to do so this time. And she only said that Willis can’t change the characterization much -at this point-; meaning she knows that said character is so established by now any major change would end up looking like a ret-con.
I don’t believe it’s been made explicit in the comic. It seems likely she’s undiagnosed.
But at least Amber realizes that viewing Dina that way is bad and is thinking about how what she said could be hurtful. Not saying it at all would be even better, and not seeing Dina that way in the first place would be ideal, but that first lesson that “this thing I’m doing is hurtful in a way I didn’t intend and I should stop” is the critical one that leads to those other steps. It took MONTHS and a lot of effort by other people to drive that lesson through Joe’s thick skull. Amber only needed to see how it affected Dina and is trying to change on her own accord
And that’s why there’s this strip (and the one after it): http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/safe-2/
You are going to hate finding out how Raidah treated Dina.
As far as I can recall, no one in DoA is canon diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum. That doesn’t stop commenters from doing their own diagnosis, and Dina certainly pings on many readers autdars (not the only character to do so).
I’ve read every strip, although I’ve forgotten some details of course (I did hate it, but I don’t understand the relevance)
There was also that time when Joyce swore for the first time, about how if Adam and Eve did not start Sin then God did and that was a terrifying thought to Joyce, and then Dina noted (while giving examples) that Joyce’s cuss vocabulary is still limited and everyone just stared at her, weirded out by Dina swearing.
Explicitly not diagnosed but given her family background (a lot of diagnostic folks assume that “no eye contact” is because Asian and not because autistic, that any language delays are because English isn’t spoken at home, and sometimes think girls can’t be autistic… it’s shitty) I would totally expect her not to be diagnosed anyways. The median age of diagnosis for girls is something teen, too.
Basically I think she super is and also that her lack of diagnosis makes sense if DoA universe psych folks are like ours.
Shortpacked Dina has specifically mentioned being neurodivergent, just not in what way
Becky using Dina’s age as a cudgel is THE BEST THING
I liked that part too. ^__^
First off, I really enjoy this comic.
But as an older reader seeing a reaction “oh wow, 19 is old!” or something similar, I find my reaction is best encapsulated by humorist/critic Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, when he said:
“THERE IS NO MIDDLE FINGER BIG ENOUGH!”
But also, happy birthday, Dina.
19 isn’t old.
19 is older than most of the other first years. Who perceive her as 12.
When I was a kid and my family had finally gotten a black and white TV, one of the things we did was watch a western called Gunsmoke. In one episode there was this dilapidated old codger that looked like he would blow away in the wind if you sneezed on him hard. At one point he gets shot or something as as he’s laying there he says something like, “Don’t morn for me. I’ve lived a good full life. I’m almost 40.”
My father thought this was hilarious.
I had no clue why.
Henry II: I’m 50 now. Good God, boy, I’m the oldest man I know! I’ve got a decade on the pope!
Jesus, why’s everyone so disrespectful towards Dina? I would hate it if people treated me like a little kid the way they treat her.
Because people think anyone who doesn’t understand the random-ass social customs of their generation must be stupid or immature, and as Dina clearly isn’t stupid she must be immature.
Or old. And, that appears to be what they are going to have to face up to.
I don’t know. The real question is why do we disrespect little kids.
We shouldn’t be disrespectful to little kids, but there are valid reasons to treat them differently from adults. For example, holding hands when you cross the street, because a lot of kids might get hit by a car due to being too slow/fast or too small for the drivers to see them, etc. Making an adult hold your hand to cross the street would be different.
But it does make me mad when people are just straight up rude to little kids. I work in a grocery store pharmacy, so I see a lot of parents losing patience with kids every day.
…anyway, what I’m saying is:
1. We should respect kids, even though we also need to treat them different from adults in many situations
2. Treating an adult like a child you respect is still disrespectful to the adult
Not just the physical differences – too slow/fast or too small to see, but mental ones as well. Little kids generally have poor judgement – they’re still learning and their brains are developing.
We shouldn’t disrespect them, but we also can’t really respect their decisions or opinions in very many cases.
Kids aren’t mature. That’s why they need to be treated differently.
None of which excuses treating Dina without respect, of course.
If it will make you feel any better, Amber, I’ve got the feeling that Dina is going to be one of those unfortunate women who will probably still be mistaken for being a freshman until she’s way into her 30s.
The big twist is Dina is actually a Digimon fan!
That’s because Dina is the best.
But also I could see her being irritated by digivolution, since it’s reversible.
“Legends tell of a generation that predated ruby, a generation of 250 Pokemon, a generation called gen 2”
“Wasn’t there a gen 1 then?”
“Haha what lunacy”
Stop making me feel like an Ancient Dinosaur… I played Gen 1! I watched the first season of Pokemon when it came out!
I have only one thing to say to you: “Missingno bug”.
I’m so glad everytime Amber has problems of the non-stabby/non-daddy/non-Amazi-girl kind.
ME TOO
oh Becky.
As the old saying goes, age is nothing but an arbitrary means of keeping score in living.
Sounds legit. At what age do you win?
When you’ve outlived all your enemies.
I think it’s more of a countdown… or maybe difficulty rating? The older you get the harder everything gets. 70+ is basically the Brutal setting.
At least you really get to sex it up at that age.
Dina and I have so many similar traits.
Anyway the hover text is not working for me. I’m on iOS 11.2. I press the thingy and nothing happens. Also the hiveworks comics banner is not showing up. Something wrong with the script on this website.
I love Becky and how she respects Dina as a peer unlike like every loser in this school.
Between the time when the oceans drank Pokélantis, and the rise of the team of Rocket, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Dina , destined to wear the fanged crown of Kanto upon a troubled brow. It is I, her chronicler, who alone can tell thee of her saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!
*pokémon theme starts playing*
I know of pokemon only by cultural osmosis, but I would watch that.
I would watch the hell out of that series.
I like the fact that Dina may be autistic or maybe not. It highlights the fact that people all around you may have been diagnosed as having one condition or another, but they shouldn’t need a note from their doctor to be respected.
YES
Re.: Hovertext – How long has Amber been looking for the ‘Code: LYOKO’ command line that would digitise her and let her live her life in cyberspace?
My theory is that long ago the machines locked us into this crude simulation of reality for our own good.
I don’t understand this strip. Dina’s a freshman in college; of COURSE if she has a birthday she’s turning 19. The only way for her to be a 17-year-old in college is if she skipped a grade. Kids normally turn 18 in their senior year of high school.
Put a different way- if Dina was turning 18 now, she would have started her senior year at 16 years old. Meaning that she would have started first grade at 5. 5 years old is Kindergarten; six-year-olds start first grade.
… Amber’s comment in Panel 4 implies that most of the characters in Willis’ sexy-fun-times Web series on Slipshine are under 18, i.e. minors.
Kinda hope that’s a typo or mistake. It doesn’t really make sense to me otherwise.
… Because under-18 frosh, never, ever have sexy times in the dorms?
More like, because you can’t be portraying minors in that way, even if they’re fictional, hand-drawn characters. It falls under the same guidelines as other adult entertainment. I’m sure that somewhere on the site, SS probably has a disclaimer stating that all characters portrayed are at or over 18 years of age.
Quite aside from your post presenting a way for her to be 17, that’s not actually the only way. Different school systems have different entrance ages, some allowing 4 year olds. I know this firsthand – my parents were given the option, since my birthday is early in the year, therefor I would have turned five during the school year (one of the requirements for early entrance being allowed). (They decided to hold off until I would be 5 at the start of the year.) Don’t know if the district where Dina went had that option, but it does exist.
No, it doesn’t – it suggests they’re younger than Dina – who is, again, about to turn 19, leaving approximately 11 months worth of other 18 year olds.
I suppose that makes sense – I forget sometimes that we’re still really early in the school year, and so Dina can still be older than everyone else, who are going to be turning 19 in the next few months.
The “joke” is that because Dina is a Small Asian Neurodivergent Girl, Dina is so childish that everyone thinks she MUST be younger than everyone else.
I get it now – thank you! I thought that Amber’s assumption was that “She’s turning 18 like all other freshmen this year,” but it really was “She must be turning 18 because there’s no way that tiny girl could be a legal adult yet.” Thanks for setting me right.
Or, here’s an idea, maybe her birthday is late in the year.
Sincerely, someone who started college at 17.
I’m pretty sure we’re still early in fall semester, so yes, her birthday is relatively late in the year (we haven’t had Thanksgiving break yet, so it’s october or november sometime?). So Amber isn’t crazy for thinking she’s turning 18, that’s actually probably the most common assumption. I’ve lived in several states and I think most have a cut-off for kindergarten start that’s either December 1 or January 1. But lots of schools have a parental choice period for any child who turns 5 between the start of the school year and the cutoff date. Lots of parents choose to wait, especially if their child appears to be developmentally “slow” (something that wouldn’t be too shocking for a pediatrician to recommend to Dina’s parents if her neurodivergencies were already apparent). So Dina probably isn’t the only Freshman turning 19 already either.
Mid-October if I’m tracking the passage of time correctly.
Maybe things have changed, but back when I was in school the assumption would have been that most college freshmen were 18 or at this point in the semester about to turn 18.
I was 18 for my entire freshman year, since my birthday was in the summer. I knew people who started at 17 and had birthdays in the fall and I think others who turned 19 in the spring.
I think there’s been a trend since my childhood of starting kindergarten later, which would push more of those with fall birthdays into the next year.
What? No. Lots of people start college before 18. At least that was the case at my school.
It basically depends on what the age cutoff was at their first school. My school had September 1 as the cutoff, so with my late-September birthday, I was one of the oldest kids in my class up through high school and turned 19 about a month into my first year of college. Someone else on my hall turned 18 that November – his school system had used the end of the year as the cutoff.
I was 15, and turned 16 a few days later.
But then I skipped a few grades, too.
–Dave, including kindergarten. no really.
Why is Dina being the eldest that shocking?
Sarah doesn’t count because she actually is a year older. Joe’s more immature, Danny’s finding himself in a way that shows youth, Walky Dorothy and Joyce watch cartoons together and two of them are as childish as Dina if not more so, And Amber dresses up in pajamas and a cape. I don’t know if Mike’s psychotic or if I’m just judging him based on the old Walkyverse. I miss Beef. Mary’s got the judgmental arrogance that could be youthful down. And Ethan’s naievete seems young (though so does Dina’s, as does her obsession with hat.)
Really the only ones that seem to possibly be more mature or aged would be Sal, Jacob, and Marcie, and I don’t think any of them are specifically mature, just quieter.
OTOH, Dina met Riley and ate cereal with her and thought they’d established a rapport until Amber told her Riley really was 12.
And Riley thought Dina was about her age too.
I think it’s been pretty clearly established that not only does Dina visually pass for a kid, but that her interests and behavior are easily mistaken as well. Or at least were at the start – I think she’s been working on that for awhile.
I don’t think everyone who reacts to her that way is awful – the trick is overcoming that initial reaction.
I thought Jacob was a year older too.
Basically everybody in universe, save Becky, reads her as a little kid, and Amber is having a hard time shaking that. (Joyce seems to have adjusted her reading fairly quick, and nobody else has really had reason to demonstrate whether they still think of her as a kid.)
Plot twist: Dina was behind the door the whole time!
OHMYGODIMDINAWHENDIDTHATHAPPEN
A few months back, Willis updated the random avatar list, which meant that people who didn’t have a specific one set got a huge shuffle.
I was pretty pleased with getting Sierra. And Cerberus got Carla, which was the Most Fitting And Best Thing Ever.
That Pokemon comment wounds my soul. I feel so old ._.
I was 18 1/2 when I started college. I just kind of always assumed that college freshmen had had their 18th birthdays already.
Yeah, I’m autistic. Can confirm we’re often mistaken for younger or come across as childlike in appearance and behavior.