Every month at the Dumbing of Age Patreon there’s two new exclusive bonus strips — one that patrons get to vote on, and another that’s my choice! This month, patrons voted overwhelmingly for Dina, and who am I to deny you what you want? You can read this month’s new bonus strip and the backlog of literally hundreds of previous bonus strips at the Dumbing of Age Patreon!
Also, if you pledge up to $5 or more per month, you can read tomorrow’s strip a full day-and-five-minutes early, every night like clockwork!
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I’m just guessing. Therefore this is not a spoiler. And it will continue to not be a spoiler as long as no one ever responds as to whether I am right or wrong. 😜
She didn’t mean anything that would be Slipshine material, because if she did, she would have said as much rather than use a euphemism. Therefore, she was actually just enjoying some other activity that was chaste in nature but gave her great pleasure.
Just saying but being Ace doesn’t mean Dina can’t desire orgasms by her own hand.
Probably very unpopular opinion: Dina feels really weird to read sometimes, like this picture of an idealized, cartoonist, savantified autism I don’t feel invited to relate to so much as celebrate as a symbol, an icon, a mascot. Sometimes she reminds me of Abed Nadir, or Entrapta: not a real person with autism, but an old archetype that codes itself as, among other things, autistic, more inspired by Commander Data than any real human being. This is one of those times, just reading that panel. “The autistic character is so amazing and shameless and blunt in exactly the way that allows us to make a Statement on how Why Can’t We All Be More Like Her… but maybe not in a way a real human being would generally talk, or would want to be perceived.”
If you relate to Dina, I’m happy for you. It’s just this weird trope that I often feel really uncomfortable around because it’s like I’m being gaslit, like I’m the only one who feels like it’s less how a real autistic person would behave and more about twisting the autistic tendency towards bluntness, which is often accidental and very embarrassing to us because we don’t realize how we’re coming across, into something charming and likeable and subtly objectifying.
I know Willis draws from his real experiences writing Dina, and I know this is a nuanced, messy topic. I just think this kind of character has a tendency to become… kind of fetishistic.
I relate way more to Joyce’s autism, or Robin’s, or Leslie’s, or Sal’s, because I can trust they’re being written as characters first. I’m not always so comfortable around Dina. Unfortunately, Dina is the one character I’m sure is *supposed* to be autistic.
This isn’t about Dina Bad or Willis Bad or even This Particular Comic Bad, to be clear. It’s just my attempt at talking about a trope I see a lot that is very difficult to explain without getting frustrated.
Look, autistic people are perfectly capable of getting flustered or embarrassed. We aren’t perfect robotic Speak Our Mind, Oh Aren’t We So Aspirational elementals of oblivious honesty. We don’t always show our emotions the same way as allistics, but “not embarrassed about talking about masturbation” isn’t an autism trait. Honestly, it really sucks when people just smile at our social mistakes and treat them like a fun charming quirk of ours without us realizing how we’re being seen by others.
It also tends to lead to these kinds of characters, Dina excluded, never really getting character arcs with any depth. Entrapta, from She-Ra, never gets to examine how that she did was wrong and grow from that, because her siding with murderous villains isn’t her fault–she’s basically a child, quirky and fun, and it’s not fair to hold her responsible when she is Beyond Such Earthly Matters.
Please try to read me in good faith on this, by the way. This is really hard to explain, and I’m sure I stumbled on a lot of imperfect phrasing. There are aspects to Dina’s character that are obviously very accurate, and experiences with autism vary. It’s not just about Dina here.