You aren’t wrong Kris, though it was total BS on why Amazagurl broke up with him in the first place, only to make nice with Sal later, Not to mention that Yet again, Walky goes out with the girl that broke up with him. I am hoping that new and cool Danny would still be OK with this, because he is way better than “garbage” (their words not mine)
That’s exactly why Danny shouldn’t care. Amber was kind of awful to him during that breakup. Her hypocrisy alone makes it not worth being upset over. Danny deserves and is getting better than that now.
New Danny was making petty remarks not even a week ago comic time.
I doubt he’s mature enough to take this in stride.
Though, how he finds out may be a factor.
Sal saying it in passing is better than Mike using it to make him jealous.
Ok THAT will come in do time, Unless you know I’m wrong again and Dorothy walks in through the bathroom door to borrow supplies from Amber and sees this within the next strip or so.
But really though I hope they don’t rush through this and break the news to everyone in what seems to be the spand of one day.
I mean, there are worse ways for a couple to get together. Like, sure, this is a rebound following a major relationship for Walky, and Amber really ought to do something about her friendly neighborhood skull sibling, but still, it makes them happy and they’re not murdering anyone (except maybe Danny’s pride)
Do you really think so? I read it as showing growth. Walky is learning to accept that things aren’t always what you expected, let alone hoped for, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy them anyway. However wonderful the past is, we learn more and move on from it.
Memories and old favorites aren’t going anywhere. At the same time, even if it’s not the same as those movies, the new idea of Velociraptor is wonderful in its own way. It seems like Walky is finally starting to mature enough to embrace both.
It’s honestly probably gonna be pretty good for Dorothy- not because Walky was that bad for her, but because she’s going to realize something, somewhere she wants is out of her reach sometime, and it’s going to be less mind-shattering if the first time around it’s some dude she’s dated for a few weeks than, say, her Yale plans…
She has kind of the same issues with failure being Unacceptable as he does, even if her coping mechanisms are more socially acceptable.
Huh. Never thought about that last part before.
They do both hate failure.
It’s just their reasons are different (he fears parental rejection while she fears not achieving her goals) and their reactions are different (he never had to struggle before so spirals further down the more he has to struggle while she sacrifices everything but the goal).
Yeah I’m not sure if I like this yet… Walky is rushing into a rebound with thicc Dorothy and Amber is making out with the twin brother of the girl she stabbed? Of course this is going to make for excellent drama.
Same. And look at those smiles!! Hard to stay true to that inner voice going, “Doom and despair await you, happy smoochers! Your author will subject you to nothing less than misery.”
For a while there I wasn’t sure if this ship was a good idea (and maybe it still isn’t), but now I’m definitely glad that the SS Garbage Skowl is still sailing.
“Terrorkey” is the chipotle-infused, bacon-laden megabird stuffed with cornbread and habanero and hot links and demon tears that hardcore (TM) parents feed their kids for thanksgiving dinner along with bone-marrow gravy cranberry sauce so wack it’s actually just a hammer with fruit on it
A chicken stuffed with chipotle peppers, bacon, cornbread, and habanero peppers, and then baked… sounds fucking amazing. Like, I want to make that now.
I learned from a paleontologist who came to my store one day, apparently T. rex eggs were about the size of an ostrich egg and they were sized accordingly as babies. My takeaway from this was “d’awwww” and that in a real Jurassic Park situation, there’d be teacup T. rexes bred almost immediately as pets.
Can’t speak for swans, but if you raise them right geese are pretty laid back provided they know you. I’d imagine T-rex hatchlings would be a bit more aggressive, as they’re carnivores not omnivores.
At first I was thinking that sounded incredibly dangerous, then I thought about how some people keep ostriches as pets and realized it couldn’t be any worse than that.
Also, the inherent dangerousness of ostriches I suspect is the real reason for the decline of the ostrich meat industry. Shame…ostrich is tasty.
We’d get flocks of abandoned feral T-rex running around rural areas and parklands hassling farmers and native wildlife. And serious community service announcements of the “A T-Rex is for life, not just fir Christmas” kind. 🙂
Well done Walky, you learned a thing and you got smooches in return. This is nothing like your relationship with Dorothy at all. I am only being 50% sarcastic, the other half of me is happy for you so… good for you? I am still unsure how this whole thing will play out.
The Australian cassowary is the true murder bird, in fact when the original Jurassic Park movie was being made, they based the velociraptor’s movements and behavior off of the cassowary.
I think that’s mainly because everyone either recognizes the need to take precautions with sickle claws… or learned a collective national lesson after the Emu War. Don’t fuck with birds. They will, as a rule, fuck you up. (Anyone else sad Wikipedia no longer lists the emus as victors in the outcome block?)
One seems to be pretty high for human deaths from a bird, though. Some searching finds one drowned by a swan, one given a heart attack by a flock of gulls, and one stabbed by rooster with a knife. Australian soldiers are said to have lost the Great Emu War, but still suffered no casualties.
… I had to Google those last two. (Sadly the rooster had a knife because cockfighting. Looking at reports, that likely wasn’t the only similar incident. The gulls had their nest on the other victim’s roof and he was disturbing it because he was tired of bird droppings. I reiterate: Do Not Fuck With Birds.)
They wanted to use Emus but due to the peace treaty Australia signed after they lost to the Emus back in the 1930s, they weren’t allowed to exploit them like that.
Stay far, FAR away from the males in springtime. They’re claiming territory and strutting around trying to woo the females, and even getting near them can be perceived as you contesting both of those things. There are a couple gangs of wild turkeys that are in a multi-generational turf war over the office park I work in.
It sems like they’ve become more agressive over the last couple years, too.
Back when I was much younger, a couple of houses down the street was a family that brought borderline wild turkeys into the neighborhood, ostensibly to raise them for something, but they were simply dumped outside and allowed to run free.
Fucking things nearly gored me once. My older brothers beat them away with a rake and then we got the police involved.
also how did I forget this is DOA’s 8th anniversary, for shame.
but seriously though, I’ve just finished what I can honestly say is the worst week of my entire life (lol tons of work + I found out I’ve been in an abusive relationship for the last year + homesickness), and DOA has been such a joy to come back to at the end of the day. keep on writing this fun and amazing webcomic!
I didn’t even notice Dina’s t-shirt until you called it out, that is awesome. I really want to see one of the AI in the background one day, just because it would amuse me to know they exist in this world. Also because I like to imagine Amber, Danny and/or Ethan trying to become friends with one from the QC cast.
If Pintsize and Faz meet meet, we will truly be living in the darkest timeline. Such an event must never come to pass, but what are the odds of that really?
Dina, isn’t him being coached a good thing? It means that someone who did not know about dinosaurs before knows about them now. That should be a good thing.
Dina [i]did[/i] call Tyrannosaurus rex a boring choice. Is there any reason to think that of a giant theropod that decapitates ceratopsians, save its popularity?
Just parroting what he knows she wants to hear, because Amber gave him notes isn’t learning about dinosaurs…he still knows in his heart that dinosaurs have scales and velociraptor is as big as he is.
Timing’s about right. Almost 3 months since Dina appeared in QC; given Willis’s usual 3 month buffer, he probably put her in the shirt about the time she showed up there.
Oh and text on her shirt is only marginally relevant. I could see that being the name of a particular blend or “it’d be funny on a shirt” as much as anything else.
Either [a href=http://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/faye/]Faye or her sister Amanda[/a] is a student at IU in Dumbing of Age, judging by their appearance during Freshman Family Weekend.
Don’t make me get the hose you two….Fun note though I still wonder if Amber kept the toy Walky threw at her, Some men give you jewelry, boxes of Candy, and flowers, but Walky ? No he just chucks figurines at you.
Listen, if you want to like the JP raptors (with feathers, because coelurasaurs) just say Deinonychus. That was what they were, Chrichton just liked the Velociraptor name better.
And yep. This is a relationship. God help us when the secrets are revealed. *Continues on fort parapets. We’re gonna be here a while, folks, and I will be DREADING EVERY MINUTE OF IT because all the cute’s gonna hurt more when Walky finds it all out.*
It’s been a while, but I seem to recall the BOOK raptors were actually appropriately sized? They still didn’t have feathers, because at that time that wasn’t a thing, but I seem to recall the size was correct.
There’s no excuse for the frilled dilophosaurus, though.
The excuse was that we don’t know everything, so at least one of the dinosaurs should turn out to be a surprise. It’s true that Dilophosaurus very probably didn’t have a frill; but it’s also true that 20 guesses with 95% confidence will have one mistake. 🙂
Really I think it’s that they added the frill and the spitting venom and scaled down its size while scaling the Velociraptors up. Three odd (If narratively and visually justifiable) changes on one dinosaur stands out more than just one.
And hey, they’re all a step up from the Telltale Game’s Hilariously Murdersaurus Troodons. (Smart? I mean, sure, that’s pretty likely. Nocturnal with glowing eyes? Not entirely implausible. Venom that causes aggression, hallucinations, seizures and convulsions, and finally paralysis and brain death? Um, you’re losing me here. Uses that venom’s final stage to make you the nest for its eggs?… Telltale, no. And unlike the Indominus family, these weren’t supposed to have been genetically tampered with, whatsoever.)
No, there was frog DNA, which let them change sexes! …And might explain the lack of feathers, but not anything else.
I’d assumed the Dilophosaurus was supposed to be a baby. They could also be undiscovered relatives of different sizes – it’s not like the amber was being taken from Arizona. But you’re right, it’s a lot of stretches at once.
The Troodons, specifically, created for the Telltale game specifically, apparently have both male and female specimens and were created with no fill-ins because the game-exclusive character who made them was doing so independently and really set on ‘real dinosaurs don’t have frog DNA’. All the more reason why they probably should have been destroyed the moment everyone realized they were ridiculous horror movie monsters and she should not have been responsible for doing so.
No, the implication here is that these Troodons are supposed to be ACTUALLY WHAT TROODONS WERE LIKE.
As a person who has had pet parrots, Walky’s completely right about Velociraptor. The fuckin’ parrot the the size of a pigeon was TERRIFYING when he ran at me, and he was the size of a damn pigeon!
Nah, Willis and Jeph Jacques are good friends and spend a lot of on-line time teasing each other. This particular shout-out is almost certainly a response to a recent QC strip where Dina is briefly seen hiding behind the counter of the coffee shop.
At least some of the characters do – either Faye or her sister is a student here at IU in this ‘verse (she made a brief appearance during Freshman Family Weekend, along with her mom, dad, and sister).
I mean, I think Dina has every right to veto someone in her bedroom. It’s also her living space, and if she doesn’t want Amber’s new boyfriend in her bedroom, I think that’s reasonable and should be respected.
I don’t know why she’d have a real problem with it, but people have barged into Dina’s bedroom unwelcomed, and it’s nice that she’s at least trying to stand up for her own personal space.
If it’d be “deciding for Amber” for Dina to have veto power over who is allowed in, how is it NOT deciding for Dina if Amber brings whoever she wants in regardless of what Dina wants?
Neither of them has sole ownership of the room. BOTH of them having a say at who is allowed inside is totally reasonable.
I suspect Dina acts on ambers behalf here. People who know about dinosaurs are trustworthy and people who got instructed by Amber are, too.
Re: Dina at Coffee of doom: https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3766
College dorm spaces are complicated. They’re not just bedrooms and you really can’t treat them as if they are. They’re not actually private spaces in anything like the same way we usually treat bedrooms.
Dina certainly has some say, but not as casually as you seem to imply.
Yes, she does. The fact that most people would allow their roommate to have people in the room without even asking does not mean it’s unreasonable for someone to want to vet people who are allowed in
Nonetheless. Controlling who your roommate can have in their only (semi)private space is rude. It’s one thing to push back against someone particularly offensive or who is otherwise a problem – or to establish general rules about overnight guests and the like, but demanding to control any guests is not a good sign.
Mind you I don’t think that’s what Dina’s doing here. I’m not actually sure what she’s doing, other serving as the excuse for some jokes.
Objecting to specific people is one thing – preferably with reasons. Assuming control over anyone who comes in is more extreme.
I’m pretty sure “no one in the room without approval from both roommates” isn’t in any of those contracts Ruth made them write up at the start of the year.
It’s not rude, it’s rude to have people inside Dina’s bedroom who she doesn’t approve of. If Dina had been assaulted at the party, it would be entirely reasonable for her to say, not want men in her bedroom. Or if Joyce offended her with her bible talk, it would be entirely reasonable to say “I don’t want this person who is unaccepting and nasty towards me in my living space.”
That’s what a shared living space is. You don’t bring people inside of it unless both people are comfortable, because both people involved deserve to have a space devoid of those who make them uncomfortable. Walky and Amber can go chill on the roof or something if Dina doesn’t want Walky there.
“No one in the room without approval from both roommates is definitely in at least some of those contracts. Because that’s an entirely reasonable thing to expect. “If you want to have friends over, let me know.” Just because it’s Amber’s room too doesn’t meant Amber gets to bring in a strange boy and fuck him right there while Dina studies.
Not that Walky is a stranger, or that Dina has an obvious dislike of him, but she also shouldn’t need to prepare a huge dissertation on why she doesn’t want someone in her room. “I don’t want company right now” is really reason enough.
People who wish for the LEAST interaction get priority. It almost certainly doesn’t apply in Walky’s case, but I’m betting we wouldn’t be having this discussion if Amber wanted, say, Faz there or if Dina wanted Blaine there.
I mean, Dina has been vetting people coming in on BEHALF of Amber, never for any other reason than for Amber’s well-being/express wishes, and so I think this is an extension of that. I doubt there’s been enough time for Amber to have told Dina “hey I have a new boyfriend”. Last time I remember Walky coming in, he charged right on in like a maniac, impersonating a dinosaur and junk. So I feel like this is merely Dina going “oh no it’s that rude dude who also likes the Indominus Rex, what’s he want? Oh he’s seen the light and actually knows dino stuff? Aaand they’re smooching.”
I’m surprised people seem to have forgotten that Amber’s had Dina watch her door and keep people out. This isn’t behavior that Dina has ever done for HERSELF. It has always been for Amber, Amber’s wishes to keep certain people out. Joyce, Ethan, Danny, everyone besides Ruth who is the RA so she kinda supersedes Dina. It’s not the healthiest thing, cause sometimes Amber has needed those people, but Dina’s just trying to respect her roommate’s wishes.
Though her vetting system is weird, especially if she’s doing on Amber’s behalf.
Proper dinosaur knowledge isn’t a criteria Amber would use to pick who could come in.
My only guess there (since it is definitely something she does on Amber’s behalf since she rejected Ethan when he wanted in to see Amber who didn’t wanna see anybody) is that someone with good dino knowledge must be someone who can be trusted. Even if, in Walky’s case, he was kinda fed the info.
Duck-bills are among the dinosaur groups we can confidently say aren’t feathery; there have been skin impressions covering most of the body for a number of types.
The CORRECT answer is the ankylosaurus: a heavily armored car who is perfectly happy spending its life ambling about and eating, but will absolutely fuck you up if you mess with it.
In particular a specific Ankylosaurid which goes by the name of Zuul Crurivastator, which is the absolute greatest scientific name ever. (“Crurivastator” means “Destroyer of Shins”. Really.)
My inner Dina begs me to point out that it would more correctly be Zuul crurivastator; scientific names are always italicized (unless handwritten, in which case they’re underlined instead), and the specific epithet – the “second word” in the name, which is the word that identifies the specific species (to use an example, Panthera is a genus of big cats, and you need to specify P. tigris, P. uncia, P. onca, P. leo, or P. pardus to determine if you’re referring to tigers, snow leopards, jaguars, lions, or leopards), is never capitalized.
As an aside, I’ve always had a bit of fondness for the dinosaur Dracorex hogwartsia, which means “dragon-king of Hogwarts”. 😛
The best name is Irritator challengeri, of course. Just because it was literally named due to the describers being pissed off at the fossil pirates they got it from adding fake bits.
[i]Irritator[/i] is lucky in that we still have the original skull. But the other specimens have probably been lost, along with so much else in the Royal Museum of Brazil. 🙁
Yep, gotta love that one. Somewhat relatedly, there’s also a species of fossil beetle preserved in amber which comes to mind because it was also named T. rex – spelling being everything, the T in this case stands for Tyrannasorus, not Tyrannosaurus.
(One of my favorite bits on that page so far is about this English guy who named a bunch of true bug genera so that they ended with -chisme – Ohchisme, Elachisme, Florichisme, Isachisme, Marichisme, Nanichisme, Peggichisme, Polychisme – and was posthumously “criticsized for frivolity” by the London Zoological Society.)
Well, disliking is a form of caring with this one I’m just like “Okay I’m bored now. I just don’t give a crap about Amber or Walky at this point so the fact that this is a drama bomb waiting to happen creates no tension because it’s just going to be funny when it blows up in their faces.
Ppl are all scared abt this relationship, I’m just gonna focus on the fact that this is the first relationship we see AMBER have. Not AmaziGirl. Amber. She never had Danny, even though she liked him. Even if it all goes up in flames later today, I’m still proud of her for going for it, on her own, even after knowing he’s Sal’s brother.
And it’s probably gonna be good for Walky too, his relationship with Dorothy got super unhealthy at some point and the boy needs a break.
Unrelated to this strip, but relevant to the fandom – my family’s puppy has started to be nicknamed ‘Fuckface’. I’m already feeling 12% more like Malaya.
I just still can’t believe that all of this has happened so far is just like… what? A few weeks into a semester? My first freshman semester was never this crazy. Then again, I remember being more like Amber and just not leaving my room… and my campus was the size of 2-3 city blocks….
Happy eighth birthday dumbing of age, I haven’t been here for the whole ride, but have been following active updates for about 3 years now, and loving every second of it
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“terrorkey” sounds like the exact opposite of a correct answer to me
Dina, you’re getting soft
(and gift shop merch)
[happy Dumbiversary!]
Happy Anniversary Baby!
Got you on my mi~i~i~ind!
And four years from now it’ll be time for Terrorkey Day.
You’re the size of a turkey, not a lion,
Can’t turn knobs, and don’t have friends to rely on….
Don’t judge yourself too hard, velociraptor,
You are good the way you are, velociraptor,
RAWR, VELOCIRAPTOR!
Terrorkey sounds like what the name of the turkey from Thankskilling should be. Definitely not a correct answer.
Terrorkey sounds to me like a terror-key rather than a terror-turkey.
You have a terrorkey, you turn it in the fearlock, and then you enter … The Scary Door.
The thought of Amber explaining dinosaur facts to Walky in between makeouts makes me happy. I mean, that’s essentially the perfect date, right there.
This is also how Dina and Becky’s dates go
Dinosaur facts are the cornerstone of a successful relationship
I got the impression that she fed him a cheat sheet via phone prior to him attempting the door.
A flaw in Dina’s security system? Perish the thought!
Walky’s only made it through the first task. Part 2 is much tougher.
… what the fuck did I just watch?
Wait, never mind, it is clearly labeled.
Instead, I’ll ask… why? Why?! WHY?!
Were you not amused?
Publicity stunt, clearly.
If you thought that that segment was weird, I can tell you that I have seen that T-Rex costume being used in a very…. different kind of entertainment.
It started off with the T-Rex on a Segway chasing a laughing naked woman through the house.
For obvious reasons, I am not linking this.
You’re a cruel tyrant and you need to be deposed.
Few security systems are safe against whitelisted users leaking credentials.
that was the best thing ever. It made my day and I thank you for that 😀
And now, back to studying for evil physics exam.
Awwww.
So, who’s ready for Dorothy to find out?
She has to come out of her room, first.
I bet Dorothy isn’t.
I am actually more interested in seeing Danny’s reaction, for reasons that should not be .
I’m still betting (hoping) on the Danny not really caring about this. Because he shouldn’t.
Surely New Danny would take this information calmly and rationally!
… I mean, I hope he does, but I give it roughly 50/50 odds, personally.
You aren’t wrong Kris, though it was total BS on why Amazagurl broke up with him in the first place, only to make nice with Sal later, Not to mention that Yet again, Walky goes out with the girl that broke up with him. I am hoping that new and cool Danny would still be OK with this, because he is way better than “garbage” (their words not mine)
That’s exactly why Danny shouldn’t care. Amber was kind of awful to him during that breakup. Her hypocrisy alone makes it not worth being upset over. Danny deserves and is getting better than that now.
New Danny was making petty remarks not even a week ago comic time.
I doubt he’s mature enough to take this in stride.
Though, how he finds out may be a factor.
Sal saying it in passing is better than Mike using it to make him jealous.
I think (well, hope) that Mike meant it when he promised Ethan he wouldn’t go after Danny.
He said, right after he made that promise, that he was going to seduce Ethan to make Danny jealous. He’s just not going to seduce Danny.
Exactly. And since that plan hasn’t exactly taken off, he may see this as an opportunity to get the same result with a different tactic.
That plan is still in progress – though there may be complications. We still don’t know how he intends to use the seduction against Danny.
The best reaction will be Joe’s
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/05-media-rumble/composited/
Ok THAT will come in do time, Unless you know I’m wrong again and Dorothy walks in through the bathroom door to borrow supplies from Amber and sees this within the next strip or so.
But really though I hope they don’t rush through this and break the news to everyone in what seems to be the spand of one day.
This is such a mistake for Walky.
Well we gotta persistently justify that title for the comic…
That’s what college is FOR.
“There is a time and a place for everything, children, and it is college.” –Chef, South Park
I mean, there are worse ways for a couple to get together. Like, sure, this is a rebound following a major relationship for Walky, and Amber really ought to do something about her friendly neighborhood skull sibling, but still, it makes them happy and they’re not murdering anyone (except maybe Danny’s pride)
YOU’RE a mistake for Walky D:<
Your FACE is a mistake for Walky!
Do you really think so? I read it as showing growth. Walky is learning to accept that things aren’t always what you expected, let alone hoped for, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy them anyway. However wonderful the past is, we learn more and move on from it.
Memories and old favorites aren’t going anywhere. At the same time, even if it’s not the same as those movies, the new idea of Velociraptor is wonderful in its own way. It seems like Walky is finally starting to mature enough to embrace both.
It’s honestly probably gonna be pretty good for Dorothy- not because Walky was that bad for her, but because she’s going to realize something, somewhere she wants is out of her reach sometime, and it’s going to be less mind-shattering if the first time around it’s some dude she’s dated for a few weeks than, say, her Yale plans…
She has kind of the same issues with failure being Unacceptable as he does, even if her coping mechanisms are more socially acceptable.
Huh. Never thought about that last part before.
They do both hate failure.
It’s just their reasons are different (he fears parental rejection while she fears not achieving her goals) and their reactions are different (he never had to struggle before so spirals further down the more he has to struggle while she sacrifices everything but the goal).
Yeah I’m not sure if I like this yet… Walky is rushing into a rebound with thicc Dorothy and Amber is making out with the twin brother of the girl she stabbed? Of course this is going to make for excellent drama.
I’m warming on this pairing more and more, not going to lie.
Same. And look at those smiles!! Hard to stay true to that inner voice going, “Doom and despair await you, happy smoochers! Your author will subject you to nothing less than misery.”
DAMN YOU WHEDON! … eh, wait no, I mean ‘WILLIS!’
Same. I used to prefer them as pals but after the stairwell thing, I ship Garbage Barge hard.
For a while there I wasn’t sure if this ship was a good idea (and maybe it still isn’t), but now I’m definitely glad that the SS Garbage Skowl is still sailing.
Some throw rotten vegetables and empty cans at it in protest, little do they realize they’re only making it stronger.
Not same. Screaming internally.
“Terrorkey” is the chipotle-infused, bacon-laden megabird stuffed with cornbread and habanero and hot links and demon tears that hardcore (TM) parents feed their kids for thanksgiving dinner along with bone-marrow gravy cranberry sauce so wack it’s actually just a hammer with fruit on it
A chicken stuffed with chipotle peppers, bacon, cornbread, and habanero peppers, and then baked… sounds fucking amazing. Like, I want to make that now.
my godawful heat tolerance means I wouldn’t survive but I’ll go down without regrets
You had me up until the gravy. Like I hate gravy of any kind.
Get out of my house.
…I mean I know that you’re not technically in my house but get out of it anyway.
I want this. I -NEED- this.
I learned from a paleontologist who came to my store one day, apparently T. rex eggs were about the size of an ostrich egg and they were sized accordingly as babies. My takeaway from this was “d’awwww” and that in a real Jurassic Park situation, there’d be teacup T. rexes bred almost immediately as pets.
Aw man, with a teacup T-rex I would be the terror of the dog park.
Question: Would a Teacup Rex be more or less bloodthirsty than your average goose or swan?
Can’t speak for swans, but if you raise them right geese are pretty laid back provided they know you. I’d imagine T-rex hatchlings would be a bit more aggressive, as they’re carnivores not omnivores.
At first I was thinking that sounded incredibly dangerous, then I thought about how some people keep ostriches as pets and realized it couldn’t be any worse than that.
Also, the inherent dangerousness of ostriches I suspect is the real reason for the decline of the ostrich meat industry. Shame…ostrich is tasty.
We’d get flocks of abandoned feral T-rex running around rural areas and parklands hassling farmers and native wildlife. And serious community service announcements of the “A T-Rex is for life, not just fir Christmas” kind. 🙂
We have to draw the line somewhere though, before somebody starts breeding T-cup Rexes.
Dina Disapproves (-20).
Happy 8th Birthday Comic!
And many more!
Here’s too nearly a decade of work….. damn it I thought I had a wine glass Emoji in here.
Well done Walky, you learned a thing and you got smooches in return. This is nothing like your relationship with Dorothy at all. I am only being 50% sarcastic, the other half of me is happy for you so… good for you? I am still unsure how this whole thing will play out.
“Terror Turkey” is a redundancy. Have you ever seen once of those birds? They’re 35% feather and 65% murder.
Which is why we annually celebrate a tradition of cooking and eating them.
Unless you’re in my family which uses chicken or ham a lot instead. 😛
And the President always pardons one of these Murder Birds every year.
They instinctively know how tasty they are, and how much that puts them at risk.
The Australian cassowary is the true murder bird, in fact when the original Jurassic Park movie was being made, they based the velociraptor’s movements and behavior off of the cassowary.
Come on, there’s only been one documented fatality from a cassowary attack. For Australia, that barely counts as dangerous.
For Australia, that counts as cuddling.
I think that’s mainly because everyone either recognizes the need to take precautions with sickle claws… or learned a collective national lesson after the Emu War. Don’t fuck with birds. They will, as a rule, fuck you up. (Anyone else sad Wikipedia no longer lists the emus as victors in the outcome block?)
One seems to be pretty high for human deaths from a bird, though. Some searching finds one drowned by a swan, one given a heart attack by a flock of gulls, and one stabbed by rooster with a knife. Australian soldiers are said to have lost the Great Emu War, but still suffered no casualties.
… I had to Google those last two. (Sadly the rooster had a knife because cockfighting. Looking at reports, that likely wasn’t the only similar incident. The gulls had their nest on the other victim’s roof and he was disturbing it because he was tired of bird droppings. I reiterate: Do Not Fuck With Birds.)
They wanted to use Emus but due to the peace treaty Australia signed after they lost to the Emus back in the 1930s, they weren’t allowed to exploit them like that.
They live up to being terror fowl.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VZr7uzw6gpg
Stay far, FAR away from the males in springtime. They’re claiming territory and strutting around trying to woo the females, and even getting near them can be perceived as you contesting both of those things. There are a couple gangs of wild turkeys that are in a multi-generational turf war over the office park I work in.
It sems like they’ve become more agressive over the last couple years, too.
Back when I was much younger, a couple of houses down the street was a family that brought borderline wild turkeys into the neighborhood, ostensibly to raise them for something, but they were simply dumped outside and allowed to run free.
Fucking things nearly gored me once. My older brothers beat them away with a rake and then we got the police involved.
Weird. I’ve got a flock that wanders through my neighborhood, especially in the spring, but never had any trouble with them.
Maybe the borderline wild ones were too acclimated to humans to run properly?
Especially when you’re in the woods at dusk and one of them startles out of a tree at you. Those things are huge.
I mean I’m still a little grossed out by it.
I feel ya. Glad they’re happy, but this is a dumpsterfire waiting to happen.
Same my dude. Can’t wait for the drama when it blows up tho
lol Dina clearly enjoyed her trip to QC
also how did I forget this is DOA’s 8th anniversary, for shame.
but seriously though, I’ve just finished what I can honestly say is the worst week of my entire life (lol tons of work + I found out I’ve been in an abusive relationship for the last year + homesickness), and DOA has been such a joy to come back to at the end of the day. keep on writing this fun and amazing webcomic!
I didn’t even notice Dina’s t-shirt until you called it out, that is awesome. I really want to see one of the AI in the background one day, just because it would amuse me to know they exist in this world. Also because I like to imagine Amber, Danny and/or Ethan trying to become friends with one from the QC cast.
Pintsize and Faz meeting might be a bad thing.
If Pintsize and Faz meet meet, we will truly be living in the darkest timeline. Such an event must never come to pass, but what are the odds of that really?
It’s no AI, but we do have a Faye and her family sighting in the comic: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/mister/
I didn’t notice this
how did I not notice this
*screaming*
(oh no faye’s dad, my feels)
Dina, isn’t him being coached a good thing? It means that someone who did not know about dinosaurs before knows about them now. That should be a good thing.
Unless…is Dina a hipster?
She’s been wearing a dinosaur beanie continuously since before they were cool.
Dina [i]did[/i] call Tyrannosaurus rex a boring choice. Is there any reason to think that of a giant theropod that decapitates ceratopsians, save its popularity?
Maybe she meant boring as in it lacked imagination to chose the popular choice?
She would want Walky to learn about dinosaurs for his own sake, not because he wants to make smoochies with Amber.
Just parroting what he knows she wants to hear, because Amber gave him notes isn’t learning about dinosaurs…he still knows in his heart that dinosaurs have scales and velociraptor is as big as he is.
Nice shirt, Dina! Must have been from when you visited.
Timing’s about right. Almost 3 months since Dina appeared in QC; given Willis’s usual 3 month buffer, he probably put her in the shirt about the time she showed up there.
Ah, I was just wondering if that was the case. Thanks for doing the sleuthing!
Wait Dina appeared in QC? Am I gonna have to start reading QC again now
I was wondering what coffee and dinosaurs had to do with each other. Now I know: nothing.
Ten bucks says she’s sketched a Mamenchisaurus in Sharpie inside the sleeve or something to keep it thematically consistent with her wardrobe.
Man, we’re nowhere near the roof now. The Garbage Ship’s really sailing, now.
(Oh my gosh! Eight years of DoA! Congrats!)
I did a search to see if anybody referenced Questionable Content, because somebody HAD TO!. Thank you, Mitukara. <3
Where would you even get that shirt, DINA
At Coffee of Doom, presumably: https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3766
But now I’m wondering if Dina even drinks coffee. Would she drink it with her cereal? Would she put her cereal IN the coffee?!
Sugary cereal and caffeine are a path to seeing beyond space and time… and not remembering it afterwords.
Wouldn’t it be Coffeeright Theft? Or was that Walkyverse…?
Oh and text on her shirt is only marginally relevant. I could see that being the name of a particular blend or “it’d be funny on a shirt” as much as anything else.
Either [a href=http://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/faye/]Faye or her sister Amanda[/a] is a student at IU in Dumbing of Age, judging by their appearance during Freshman Family Weekend.
dangit, forgot brackets: link to Faye’s tag here
HTML seems to hate me tonight: http://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/faye/
I like how their phones are also participating!
Also, 8 whole years is like… almost a third of my life. Congratulations!
Dina is wearing a great shirt, good reference 😀
That last panel with the nerds kissing while texting is the most hipster millennial thing possible.
Except for Dina’s shirt. Obviously.
Aww you got my hopes up, Walky. I thought maybe he had actually learned something about dinosaurs.
Hey well I guess Walky isn’t as torn up about cheating on a test now is he ? That’s good right?
Coached with tongue.
A huge part of me is screaming, “Walky, no!”
The rest of me is laughing at Dina’s shirt, and wondering how many of the QC crew she’s met.
Don’t make me get the hose you two….Fun note though I still wonder if Amber kept the toy Walky threw at her, Some men give you jewelry, boxes of Candy, and flowers, but Walky ? No he just chucks figurines at you.
He’s 2-for-2, his methods cannot be argued against.
Happy Birthday to the dumb little comic strip that stole my heart and will forever be one of my favorite things
I’m just waiting for the moment when Mike realizes his roommate is dating his childhood friend.
I can see him using this to mess with a lot of people. Almost like a Damino effect in a way.
CUTE!!!
Coffee of Doom? Crossover with Questionable Content possible? Maybe one of Ruthless’s Canadian relatives visits from Smif?
I mean, Coffee of Doom has appeared in DoA a couple times before.
Dina’s shirt! Yeah Questionable Content represent!
Yep yep!!
Listen, if you want to like the JP raptors (with feathers, because coelurasaurs) just say Deinonychus. That was what they were, Chrichton just liked the Velociraptor name better.
And yep. This is a relationship. God help us when the secrets are revealed. *Continues on fort parapets. We’re gonna be here a while, folks, and I will be DREADING EVERY MINUTE OF IT because all the cute’s gonna hurt more when Walky finds it all out.*
Weren’t they too large to be Deinonychus, either? As I recall, they were closer to Utahraptor in size.
It’s been a while, but I seem to recall the BOOK raptors were actually appropriately sized? They still didn’t have feathers, because at that time that wasn’t a thing, but I seem to recall the size was correct.
There’s no excuse for the frilled dilophosaurus, though.
The excuse was that we don’t know everything, so at least one of the dinosaurs should turn out to be a surprise. It’s true that Dilophosaurus very probably didn’t have a frill; but it’s also true that 20 guesses with 95% confidence will have one mistake. 🙂
Really I think it’s that they added the frill and the spitting venom and scaled down its size while scaling the Velociraptors up. Three odd (If narratively and visually justifiable) changes on one dinosaur stands out more than just one.
And hey, they’re all a step up from the Telltale Game’s Hilariously Murdersaurus Troodons. (Smart? I mean, sure, that’s pretty likely. Nocturnal with glowing eyes? Not entirely implausible. Venom that causes aggression, hallucinations, seizures and convulsions, and finally paralysis and brain death? Um, you’re losing me here. Uses that venom’s final stage to make you the nest for its eggs?… Telltale, no. And unlike the Indominus family, these weren’t supposed to have been genetically tampered with, whatsoever.)
Wu probably went with spider-killer wasp genome to fill the gaps on THOSE babies.
Allegedly, they were created entirely from original DNA, no fill-ins.
… Yeah.
No, there was frog DNA, which let them change sexes! …And might explain the lack of feathers, but not anything else.
I’d assumed the Dilophosaurus was supposed to be a baby. They could also be undiscovered relatives of different sizes – it’s not like the amber was being taken from Arizona. But you’re right, it’s a lot of stretches at once.
The Troodons, specifically, created for the Telltale game specifically, apparently have both male and female specimens and were created with no fill-ins because the game-exclusive character who made them was doing so independently and really set on ‘real dinosaurs don’t have frog DNA’. All the more reason why they probably should have been destroyed the moment everyone realized they were ridiculous horror movie monsters and she should not have been responsible for doing so.
No, the implication here is that these Troodons are supposed to be ACTUALLY WHAT TROODONS WERE LIKE.
Dina, your security system has been hacked from the inside.
To be fair that’s kind of Amber’s thing.
And did no one notice the Ghostbusters reference in the alt text?
I don’t know, I don’t fell these two.
Also Willis I think you did the mass hysteria joke before?
Aw, these guys are still at it. <3 <3
Nice nod to “Questionable Content” one of my favorite comics
As a person who has had pet parrots, Walky’s completely right about Velociraptor. The fuckin’ parrot the the size of a pigeon was TERRIFYING when he ran at me, and he was the size of a damn pigeon!
Looks like Dina picked up a souvenir after her chat with Emily.
So on the subject of Dina’s shirt: Does Questionable Content exist within Dumbing Of Age?
I mean, even if they do they’re halfway across the country soooooo
Nah, Willis and Jeph Jacques are good friends and spend a lot of on-line time teasing each other. This particular shout-out is almost certainly a response to a recent QC strip where Dina is briefly seen hiding behind the counter of the coffee shop.
What we can read as a response may not hold up to the months of buffer inventory already completed.
At least some of the characters do – either Faye or her sister is a student here at IU in this ‘verse (she made a brief appearance during Freshman Family Weekend, along with her mom, dad, and sister).
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/mister/
I was just about to ask if I was the only one who noticed the QC reference lol!
Okay, Dina, I’ve got precisely three questions for you
1) Is it so bad that Amber told her new boyfriend how to answer your questions?
2) What makes you think you have the right to vet someone who is there to see Amber anyway?
3) Just when did you go to Northampton, MA to get coffee. If you didn’t, who did?
I mean, I think Dina has every right to veto someone in her bedroom. It’s also her living space, and if she doesn’t want Amber’s new boyfriend in her bedroom, I think that’s reasonable and should be respected.
I don’t know why she’d have a real problem with it, but people have barged into Dina’s bedroom unwelcomed, and it’s nice that she’s at least trying to stand up for her own personal space.
Well no unfortunately, its a shared space so vetting Walky is quite rude.
Being shared doesn’t mean she doesn’t get a say any more than it means Amber doesn’t.
It wasn’t having a say though it was a test and if Walky had said the wrong dinosaur or something would Dina still have let him in?
*If she doesn’t then shes deciding for Amber who can and can’t have in her room
*I’m guessing Dina still would have let him in anyway
If it’d be “deciding for Amber” for Dina to have veto power over who is allowed in, how is it NOT deciding for Dina if Amber brings whoever she wants in regardless of what Dina wants?
Neither of them has sole ownership of the room. BOTH of them having a say at who is allowed inside is totally reasonable.
I suspect Dina acts on ambers behalf here. People who know about dinosaurs are trustworthy and people who got instructed by Amber are, too.
Re: Dina at Coffee of doom:
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3766
It’s her bedroom. It’s not rude to dictate who you allow into your bedroom even if it’s shared with someone else.
College dorm spaces are complicated. They’re not just bedrooms and you really can’t treat them as if they are. They’re not actually private spaces in anything like the same way we usually treat bedrooms.
Dina certainly has some say, but not as casually as you seem to imply.
Yes, she does. The fact that most people would allow their roommate to have people in the room without even asking does not mean it’s unreasonable for someone to want to vet people who are allowed in
Nonetheless. Controlling who your roommate can have in their only (semi)private space is rude. It’s one thing to push back against someone particularly offensive or who is otherwise a problem – or to establish general rules about overnight guests and the like, but demanding to control any guests is not a good sign.
Mind you I don’t think that’s what Dina’s doing here. I’m not actually sure what she’s doing, other serving as the excuse for some jokes.
I’m not sure how that’s more rude than forcing your roommate to have specific people in their only (semi)private space.
Objecting to specific people is one thing – preferably with reasons. Assuming control over anyone who comes in is more extreme.
I’m pretty sure “no one in the room without approval from both roommates” isn’t in any of those contracts Ruth made them write up at the start of the year.
It’s not rude, it’s rude to have people inside Dina’s bedroom who she doesn’t approve of. If Dina had been assaulted at the party, it would be entirely reasonable for her to say, not want men in her bedroom. Or if Joyce offended her with her bible talk, it would be entirely reasonable to say “I don’t want this person who is unaccepting and nasty towards me in my living space.”
That’s what a shared living space is. You don’t bring people inside of it unless both people are comfortable, because both people involved deserve to have a space devoid of those who make them uncomfortable. Walky and Amber can go chill on the roof or something if Dina doesn’t want Walky there.
“No one in the room without approval from both roommates is definitely in at least some of those contracts. Because that’s an entirely reasonable thing to expect. “If you want to have friends over, let me know.” Just because it’s Amber’s room too doesn’t meant Amber gets to bring in a strange boy and fuck him right there while Dina studies.
Not that Walky is a stranger, or that Dina has an obvious dislike of him, but she also shouldn’t need to prepare a huge dissertation on why she doesn’t want someone in her room. “I don’t want company right now” is really reason enough.
People who wish for the LEAST interaction get priority. It almost certainly doesn’t apply in Walky’s case, but I’m betting we wouldn’t be having this discussion if Amber wanted, say, Faz there or if Dina wanted Blaine there.
I mean, Dina has been vetting people coming in on BEHALF of Amber, never for any other reason than for Amber’s well-being/express wishes, and so I think this is an extension of that. I doubt there’s been enough time for Amber to have told Dina “hey I have a new boyfriend”. Last time I remember Walky coming in, he charged right on in like a maniac, impersonating a dinosaur and junk. So I feel like this is merely Dina going “oh no it’s that rude dude who also likes the Indominus Rex, what’s he want? Oh he’s seen the light and actually knows dino stuff? Aaand they’re smooching.”
I’m surprised people seem to have forgotten that Amber’s had Dina watch her door and keep people out. This isn’t behavior that Dina has ever done for HERSELF. It has always been for Amber, Amber’s wishes to keep certain people out. Joyce, Ethan, Danny, everyone besides Ruth who is the RA so she kinda supersedes Dina. It’s not the healthiest thing, cause sometimes Amber has needed those people, but Dina’s just trying to respect her roommate’s wishes.
Yes, this is something Amber asks her to do . http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/shielding/
Sheesh.
Though her vetting system is weird, especially if she’s doing on Amber’s behalf.
Proper dinosaur knowledge isn’t a criteria Amber would use to pick who could come in.
My only guess there (since it is definitely something she does on Amber’s behalf since she rejected Ethan when he wanted in to see Amber who didn’t wanna see anybody) is that someone with good dino knowledge must be someone who can be trusted. Even if, in Walky’s case, he was kinda fed the info.
2) Did you forget that Amber’s the one who got her screening people to begin with?
Thats fair enough and I’m probably assuming that Amber has a list or something and that shes added Walky to it
Still knowledge of dinosaurs as vetting system seems like it’d be fairly easy to circumnavigate but I guess that might be part of the humour
Sometimes I forget Dina appears in Questionable Content. She would love Marigold’s fanfic about velociraptors having sex.
When? Because I have to know where the heck she got a Coffee of Doom shirt.
She appeared behind the bar of the cafe a comic of this year.
She may suspect it, but she can’t prove anything :p
LOOK AT HOW CUTE THEY ARE TOGETHER
Every time I feel good about this I remember the shit Amber pulled with Walky’s grades… 🙁
Dina is judging you!
The correct answer here is “imagine a flock of duck-billed Parasaurolophus walkeri with the plumage and temperament of modern geese”.
Duck-bills are among the dinosaur groups we can confidently say aren’t feathery; there have been skin impressions covering most of the body for a number of types.
The CORRECT answer is the ankylosaurus: a heavily armored car who is perfectly happy spending its life ambling about and eating, but will absolutely fuck you up if you mess with it.
In particular a specific Ankylosaurid which goes by the name of Zuul Crurivastator, which is the absolute greatest scientific name ever. (“Crurivastator” means “Destroyer of Shins”. Really.)
There are no shins, there is only Zuul!
My inner Dina begs me to point out that it would more correctly be Zuul crurivastator; scientific names are always italicized (unless handwritten, in which case they’re underlined instead), and the specific epithet – the “second word” in the name, which is the word that identifies the specific species (to use an example, Panthera is a genus of big cats, and you need to specify P. tigris, P. uncia, P. onca, P. leo, or P. pardus to determine if you’re referring to tigers, snow leopards, jaguars, lions, or leopards), is never capitalized.
As an aside, I’ve always had a bit of fondness for the dinosaur Dracorex hogwartsia, which means “dragon-king of Hogwarts”. 😛
The best name is Irritator challengeri, of course. Just because it was literally named due to the describers being pissed off at the fossil pirates they got it from adding fake bits.
[i]Irritator[/i] is lucky in that we still have the original skull. But the other specimens have probably been lost, along with so much else in the Royal Museum of Brazil. 🙁
Yeah. 🙁 Fucking fires…
Yep, gotta love that one. Somewhat relatedly, there’s also a species of fossil beetle preserved in amber which comes to mind because it was also named T. rex – spelling being everything, the T in this case stands for Tyrannasorus, not Tyrannosaurus.
This is a great page for punny scientific names: https://www.curioustaxonomy.net/puns/puns.html
(One of my favorite bits on that page so far is about this English guy who named a bunch of true bug genera so that they ended with -chisme – Ohchisme, Elachisme, Florichisme, Isachisme, Marichisme, Nanichisme, Peggichisme, Polychisme – and was posthumously “criticsized for frivolity” by the London Zoological Society.)
Wonder if the guy who named Carmenelectra shechisme was inspired by him.
This smooch looks nicer than usual. What’s different?
Amber’s hands, and Walky’s full hug of her waist.
That might be it. I don’t recall most in-comic smooches being this… not sure what the word would be. Close? Casual? Real?
Dina is in the same panel. Her presence improves everything.
Garbaaaage
I don’t think I’ve ever cared less about a pairing.
Joe and Malaya?
Sarah and Jacob?
Oh wait, JOYCE and Jacob.
Joyce and Jacob would be great together.
But not until Raidah and Jacob have run their course, and if their ship never sinks than Joyce is out of luck.
Whoops, forgot to check the parent comment.
Well, disliking is a form of caring with this one I’m just like “Okay I’m bored now. I just don’t give a crap about Amber or Walky at this point so the fact that this is a drama bomb waiting to happen creates no tension because it’s just going to be funny when it blows up in their faces.
Guys
GUYS
Joyce stealing Jacob makes a…. _pirate ship_
[Black Sails Intro Theme]
Congrats, Willis! I can’t believe I’ve been thinking about your work obsessively every night for eight years!! Here’s to eight more!
Thinking about it, Dotty live just next door, too. This is gonna be interesting.
I still wonder how she’d react if someone said their favorite dinosaurs were penguins.
“Terror turkey” is also a nice callback to friggin’ giant chickens.
Ppl are all scared abt this relationship, I’m just gonna focus on the fact that this is the first relationship we see AMBER have. Not AmaziGirl. Amber. She never had Danny, even though she liked him. Even if it all goes up in flames later today, I’m still proud of her for going for it, on her own, even after knowing he’s Sal’s brother.
And it’s probably gonna be good for Walky too, his relationship with Dorothy got super unhealthy at some point and the boy needs a break.
Good point.
She dated Ethan before. It was never gonna end how she wanted it to but she did date him.
Reads alt-text starts playing How far we’ve come” by Matchbox 20 on the hacked Muzak
Damn. Eight years old, and so. much. drama. HERE’S TO ANOTHER EIGHT OF DRAMA! [noisemakers galore]
Also, nice shirt, Dina.
Congratulations on eight great years! (Explosions, fires, Leslie Nielsen saying ‘nothing to see here’) Looking forward to eight more.
Unrelated to this strip, but relevant to the fandom – my family’s puppy has started to be nicknamed ‘Fuckface’. I’m already feeling 12% more like Malaya.
We might need to throw you into the Imperial Dungeons until all feelings of Malaya-ness is exorcised from your body.
But I like Malaya.
I mean, I still like other characters more, but I like Malaya.
Emperor, do you hear the people sing?
Congratulations on eight years, DW, and may your buffers be full and your patreons be many.
in The name of the Willis, the Walky, and the Cheese, amen.
Nice detail by having the phones mirror each other.
“What is the velocity of an unladen Velociraptor?”
“Feathered or nonfeathered?”
8 years and its still the first semester? happy b day …..
OMG, Coffee of Doom shirt! 😮
Go with Utahraptor next time, it still looks mostly the same but actually IS the size of the raptors from Jurassic Park.
I just still can’t believe that all of this has happened so far is just like… what? A few weeks into a semester? My first freshman semester was never this crazy. Then again, I remember being more like Amber and just not leaving my room… and my campus was the size of 2-3 city blocks….
We’re currently at or past one and a half months into the semester, as I recall.
It’s currently roughly October 14th.
Happy birthday, DoA <3
Damn! Amber has hooked up with more people in her first semester then I did in 8 years of college!
…one?
“What’s your favorite dinosaur?” “Oil.”
*Slams door*
So can Danny/Ethan hook up guilt free now?
They probably could have anyway, they never bothered to even ask.
Happy eighth birthday dumbing of age, I haven’t been here for the whole ride, but have been following active updates for about 3 years now, and loving every second of it
To get past Dina all one needs to do is pull out the G1 Dinobots and the sheer amount of improper characteristics will distract hee easily.
Sludge alone would be a logical conundrum-he was a dinosaur, then he wasn’t, now he is again!
COFFEE OF DOOM SHIRT!!! QC/dumbiverse confirmed!
oh fun same birthday, only I’m older obv
I know I’m late for this, but I can’t help it and the statute of limitations has not yet expired:
Coffee of Doom tee?!?