…I feel like there are a lot of things I’ve regretted doing, and only a handful things I’ve regretted NOT doing, idk, there are so many times where doing X isn’t reversible but NOT doing X still can be reversed
“Well son, a funny thing about regret is that it’s better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven’t done. And by the way, if you see your mom this weekend, would you be sure and tell her…Satan! Satan! Satan!”
I’m 63, Ana, and I feel just the opposite. I’ve never learned to pilot a planes or helicopter, never seen Florence, never sailed on the Mediterranean, never scuba dived off Wolf and Darwin, and many more. All of these were big on my imaginary bucket list, but careers, education, marriage, kids, injuries have gotten in the way. Regardless of the why, the regrets are real.
I think the ratio of “things you regret doing” and “things you regret not doing” are just two ways to say the same thing. “If you could do it over, would you choose differently?”
You will always regret the choices that had negative consequences. You *may* regret choices that had neutral consequences, if something great seemed achievable. My thoughts? Make the best choice you feel you can, and if you later feel it was wrong, think of that as a needed lesson in decision making.
I regret making it out of the womb… so, there’s that. Since I had a distressed delivery, I’m given to ponder my existence in the context of the movie the Butterfly Effect, and… I can’t say I disagree with the choice Kutcher’s character makes.
You know, I feel like this is somehow invoking the old lesbian stereotype about lesbian couples moving very quickly through the early relationship stages….
And yet, as an example of that stereotype (but with bi women) in real life, I can’t really fault it either.
Now, I’m just wondering how much that old stereotype was influenced by exactly this sort of situation.
The stereotype isn’t that they get married fast – partly due to not having the option longterm- but that they get super serious and move in together *fast*.
I don’t know what the stereotype on marriage is nowadays, considering there’s the general idea of women being really specific about wedding planning and stuff.
Yes, Z, I’m aware. Hence the phrase ‘somehow invoking’ rather than outright an example of.
And I, on the other hand, do fit the stereotype (sort of) since my wife and I moved in together fairly quickly after we started dating.
Of course, the flipside to me is that we’d been best friends for going in three years prior, so when we became romantic, we went from 0 to 60 VERY fast because all of that ‘getting to know you’ stuff had already happened.
Because they are like 18 and students, it’s one thing to know you love someone and feel like you want to spend your lives together. It’s another to actually make such a commitment
Hmm. Tough question, especially since I’m most definitely not a lawyer. 😛 AFAIK though, under Indiana state law technically any death which takes place during the commission of a felony counts under the Felony Murder rule, which means you’re potentially on the hook for murdering that person even if you didn’t physically assault them (under the legal grounds that that person wouldn’t have been in a position to die in the first place if it weren’t for the felony being actively committed). I believe some people have even been prosecuted for felony murder as a result of heart attacks taking place in such situations.
Maybe the hardest part is figuring out what crimes Blaine was doing exactly when attacking those teens with a hammer, body armor and a school shooter accomplice he’d just bailed out of jail. Well, we know he was conspiring to if not attempting extortion, kidnapping and murder, but I wonder what a court would think.
Probably they’d think “felony assault”. And they’d definitely think Mike only tried to defend himself and Amber. I doubt any court in the world would let Blaine off with less than murder.
He was going to get at least one murder charge anyway because he killed Toedead. The only witnesses to the Mike encounter were Blaine, Ross, and Amaziber. (I genuinely don’t know how the split would work in court, unless Amber got all the memories of that incident. If she only got glimpses, it could be explained as shock or trauma.)
[Puts on Doylist hat] That’s probably why he killed Ross, and then the dirty cop offed him in the hospital. Otherwise, “the pending trial of HammerToe” would hang over the comic for the rest of its run. Wrapping that arc up in the season finale let the comic start fresh for the season 2 premiere.
Bah! You people and your logic! What if they want to buy a property? Or maybe Becky and/or Dina comes into a sudden inheritance of millions and then one of them dies?! Maybe they decide to start a small business and their combined credit scores help secure a loan!
Do specific teenagers usually have longevity as political props? Feels like everyone pretty quickly forgot about that Uma Thurman kid from a few years ago.
Also Becky won’t be marketable as a Teen Genius:tm: next cycle, as she’ll be 20 years old—not to mention that Dumbing of Age probably won’t pass Becky’s 20th birthday until the 2100s barring an end-of-comic epilogue.
Ah, but as a low income wage earner, Becky may qualify for EITC. (Earned Income Tax Credit, as close as the US gets to negative income tax.) I’m not sure if marrying Dina would help or hurt… may depend on how Dina’s parents handle her finances.
Dina is almost certainly a dependent for tax purposes. Her parents paying for her college could be really tricky to navigate if she’s no longer a dependent in terms of taxes. We went to university after getting married so had to file our own taxes and we had to report financial aid as income – it’s possible that “parents paying my college costs” would be regarded as income as well. (Even if they literally pay directly to the college -the government may see it as “they give you the money which you then give to the college”. I mean, I sure as hell didn’t see that financial aid money pass through *my* hands and it was still considered my income. Again not an issue with dependents)
It’ll also be an issue for Dina receiving health insurance, she’ll no longer qualify for her parents’.
Ok I see that taxes are an important subject (and apparently mostly in how to avoid them, what never cease to wonder me for redistribution purposes as I said to an accounting teacher from a public school when we covered the subject of tax optimisation), but what really bugs me is that: how is marriage, which is a binding form of contract between inequals in het marriage but also still binding and bureaucratic and hard to put an end to between gay “equals” (if that exist), wishable at all when there is, due to age but non only, a chance, be it slight, that oneother would want to become free again. Disclaimer: not married, have kids, and still suffer from bureaucratic dependency to marriage bindings and inequality.
I don’t see the tension. If anything, Dina just reaffirmed the certainty of their relationship and not just with the sex. This feels less like a rejection and more like a postponement.
yeah, I feel the same, Dina basically just said she would marry Becky, just at a later date, but the line “it’s not like it wasn’t gonna happen anyway” “I know” means that Dina is on board. ~<3
I think they are speaking of different “it’s” here.
Becky is referring to the act of “losing it,” which is what she’s been focused on. Dina takes it to mean marriage. She’s accepting the proposal, but refusing the date.
I dunno, I’m kinda reading it as a strip with two meanings.
One is that Becky has not truly faced up to her fundie sex guilt feelings and still feels the need to loophole her way around them, and the other is that these two are so deadass in love that they can’t think of life without the other.
Oof, seeing Becky lean into the marriage thing as a coping mechanism is rough but I’m glad Dina is taking it in stride. I hope it doesn’t lead to drama because they make such a cute non-dramatic couple.
… I should have seen this coming. It’s the first part of bargaining – “it’s less of a sin if we get married, right?”
This is more or less why I married a young woman I’d known less than three months. Now in my case, it worked out, as we’ve been happily married for sixteen years with two great daughters, but still.
Guilt-based shotgun marriages can be painful, especially in the quiet moments.
In the spirit of the success of Dina and Becky’s scientific expedition, I feel like using the power of science to give back to all of you in the comments section!
But to do that, I first need to gather some data!!!
As an avid Minecraft player I kind of feel like a significant genre-category was left out. 😛 Still filled it out best I could with the other answers, though.
Sports games are certainly vapid and exploitative (increasingly so in recent years), but I hold that they’re more valid than watching sports. The difference of course being that the grown men screeching at the TV might actually affect the outcome of the match.
I said jrpgs but really i only care about the weird lil indie horror/psychological ones. Omori, mad father, bright dream and blight dream, etc.
I don’t really care about say, final fantasy for example
Joyce would have still wanted to be apart of the wedding traditional or not and Dorothy would have loved to helped planned the whole thing. Lucy would be the type who just love attending weddings in general and Leslie & Robin would have been honored to see Becky take that step in her life.
Though most of those would have been strongly against doing anything this quickly. Definitely Dorothy and Leslie. Robin might go into Wacky mode to support whatever Becky wanted, especially if Leslie was counseling caution. Joyce’s romcom instincts might kick in an support it, along with what’s left of her Christian sexual repression. Hard to say about Lucy honestly.
Not really. They’ve been together since September and it’s now January. That’s three months-ish. That’s not terribly long before fucking for many a college relationship.
They’ve been together for like 6 months now! It’s a little fast, especially for college students, but “oh yeah this definitely is gonna be long-term” is hardly unreasonable
Though obvs Dina is wise to hold off on actually getting engaged yet
I mean, they know they actually love each other, with very little lust being involved in their choice to be together. they have great chemistry, and trust in one another. Yes it would be fast if they got married now, that being Dina’s point, it isnt to soon to know that this is the person they want to spend the rest of their lives with. The human brain is a very weird thing, as is the emotions it creates. It doesn’t take very long for love to form, even more so with them being near each other almost constantly and giving each other affection.
Yeah not sure on that one. Have known plenty of people who think they want to spend their life with someone after a few months but found out otherwise in the following months.
Have also known people who thought that, but found out otherwise a decade or more in. There’s really no safe time. Making legal lifetime commitments after a couple months is too soon, but thinking so is definitely common.
Okay, so, heresy time. I’m really bored by Dina. I *love* her character in theory, I loved her for the longest time, but then her flaws just… not materializing. Every other character gets to screw up and be anxious insecure disasters. Why does the most prominently autistic character get relegated to magical flawless alien girl?
I remember when Sal pointed out that Dina was “the rebound”, and Dina admitted that this was her fear at all. THAT version of Dina would have been tempted by this proposal–she desperately loves Becky, and wants Becky to love her the same way, and feels sure Becky is going to leave her.
Instead, Dina is perfectly level-headed, and isn’t even visibly disturbed by the proposal. I hope there’s more to her reaction than that! Becky made a BIG ask here!
Maybe Dina said no because she still thinks she’s the rebound and doesn’t want to weigh Becky down. If she did, hey, at least that’s consistent. It’s still far too mature a response for this webcomic’s premise. 😛
I think Dina and Dorothy are ultimately kind of similar in terms of being people who know what they want and have their shit together. They both have subtler flaws that are more normal of well-adjusted people and there’s a subset of people who find that very frustrating or boring as well as a subset of people who find their subtler problems relatable and fun. They’re both still learning stuff, but it’s a softer kind of thing. Their mistakes aren’t as high stakes usually. I get how that’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
They do kind of serve an important narrative purpose in terms of being more grounded sounding boards for the traumas, tics, and immaturities of the rest of the cast. And there are definitely people who have that kind of maturity as young adults, so it’s not like they’re unrealistic. They’re just not center of drama type people.
Yes, it would be a huge commitment and totally derail her life. It would be a horrible mistake, in fact. What I’m saying is I think this webcomic is, like, *long* overdue for letting Dina make some mistakes. She’s not really written as a fully-formed character, and she often kind of feels a little… well, she represents a big pet peeve I have with autistic representation that skews too far away from Sheldon and into its own less-bad-but-still-not-great problems.
The webcomic is all about making stupid mistakes, and Dina initially agreeing would actually be an interesting and understandable mistake that might force her to confront why she’s so sure Becky will abandon her in time.
This kind of thinking is why a neurodivergent like myself really really despises the “autism” label.
What neurotypicals call “””autism””” is actually a REALLY broad and diverse collection of differing and unique neurodivergent stripes and conditions all haphazardly lumped together into one overly generic category.
What’s true of one “autistic”, isn’t necessarily true of all. If some of them have savant syndrome and an insanely strict dietary routine, that doesn’t mean that they all do.
But of course that doesn’t prevent peoples’ brains from automatically extrapolating from that one label, making it very difficult for them to tell the difference between our disabilities and our personalities, and make really hurtful assumptions about us all the while. 😔
Well for one point I think this is mostly because Dina and Becky’s relationship is presented as the one that works. We have tons of couples and possible couples throughout the lifespan of this comic and least one has to be a functioning example of it. That’s Becky and Dina, they regularly communicate about their relationship and are honest about their feelings. Dina isn’t a perfect girlfriend, but they communicate about the pitfalls. Like working their way through Dina’s sexual urges just now instead of quietly stewing in misery over it. They had a conversation and made it fun and it even lead to want they both wanted. Functioning relationship goals. Dina specifically is often the first to try and clarify a miscommunication which is probably why she seems so even tempered when presented with potential conflict or ridiculousness.
Agreed. Now that you’re bringing it up, I really miss Dina having doubts about their relationship.
Some of this wish-fulfillment and power fantasy for Dina is enjoyable…. but it also feels like she’s written extra smooth to make the sex as ideal and 100 % consensual as possible for Becky. SO consensual that Dina never accidentally goes to far, even though Becky wantws to be “forced” in a kink sense.
This SEX and relationship thing involves lots of non-verbal pitfalls, lots of unsaid expectations and social etiquette. Instead Dina just knows what to say, knows how to check in abd when, and never flubs her lines either.
Becky can be pretty direct, which was how they gelled in the first place. But she can also be LOUDLY passive aggressive, and once these two get into their first fight, I wonder how Dina would/could deal with that, or if smooth!Dina will just suddenly know how to read her behaviour.
Yeah, which is funny, because Dina has said she struggles to read people! It would be so much more interesting if she actually struggled to read Becky more often!
I think she’s struggling right now, she just doesn’t realize it, and it’s not a situation where that will cause problems, since Becky will keep talking, and the words will get Dina up to speed eventually.
I say this because my (probably projecting myself on Dina) take on this is that this is obviously a Big Deal to Becky, and Dina’s picked up on that a little bit, noticing that Becky is worried, but doesn’t seem to have realized the scope of it. Dina’s answering the words behind Becky’s questions – no, I don’t want to get married now; well, I can’t say that anyone else isn’t disappointed but I’m not disappointed; no, I don’t know that story, are you using it to explain your emotions? (didn’t get an answer and didn’t probe deeper) – but doesn’t seem to have yet seen more than the surface of the shame or guilt or similar that are fueling those questions.
Yeah, I also think it’s ironic that people are saying “why is Dina such a perfect little aspie who never makes and clear and obvious mistakes” and in one post you point out like 3 to 5 points of social subtext which Dina is, in fact, processing at a very slow speed right now, relative to how other partners might.
I like it when someone goes a little too far with something in the heat in the moment (which is subjective and therefore not morally a hard line, especially when a couple has sex for the fist time), and consent is withdrawn and re-negotiated. No, the t-shirt stays on, no, don’t touch my balls, etc. It could be anything.
And Becky has said again and again that she wants to be desired/ravished/””forced”” to have sex. She happened to be into everything Dina threw at her (for now), and that is just a little too easy, imo.
Or do you believe that good people only have good sex, and Dina should be able to read Becky’s thoughts and feelings (past, present AND future)?
bro they are literally in the same women’s studies class, where Leslie has had multiple very clear discussions on how to have these conversations with your sexual partners
it is not unrealistic for Dina to be dodging these common mistakes, if she was instructed, at a collegiate level of understanding, specifically how to avoid him. Someone made the comparison to Dorothy, and, well, Dorothy wouldn’t make those mistakes, either. Both women are very focused on their studies, if they were taught something in school, they know it, and if they think it’s useful, they’re going to deploy it as a strategy.
The fundamental implication that Dina “should” get rapey with Becky, because she is autistic, and therefore should fail at complex social things like that, is not what I think you intend to make; but, even if unknowingly, you’re going along with a serious misconception about neurodivergent people, that they are hyper-sexual and prone to violate peoples’ physical boundaries, as a matter of fact. There is some truth to the premise that some ND people struggle with physical and sexual boundaries, and need more deliberate strategies for navigating that social situation, but the rote assumption that the autistic are too intellectually immature to engage in coitus properly, is exceedingly ableist and unfair. Once again, I don’t think that was your intended point, nor do I necessarily think this was an issue you would naturally have been aware of, but the underlying logic you’re using to reach your conclusion is the same logic which underpins the toxic rhetoric you’re invoking.
I think Dina is gonna really struggle with Becky once she finds out how’s she’s treating Joyce’s atheism, it’s there that you’ll see other sides to Dina
At her place on the autism spectrum she simply isn’t capable of making the same kinds of mistakes as neurotypical people. It would be completely unrealistic to portray her otherwise. She makes different mistakes that you might have trouble even imagining – and she hasn’t had opportunities to make them on-panel so far.
See, I can imagine a whole bunch of mistakes I would have made in this situation, which is why I’ve avoid getting into it, and Dina hasn’t made any of those either. Granted, I’m not on exactly the same point as the spectrum as her, but still.
They’ve been pretty obnoxiously perfect since “Dina is a rebound” was quietly scuffled, though I say ‘obnoxiously perfect’ with love since I do genuinely enjoy them every time they’re on panel.
Relationship drama is the most immediately exciting way to provoke a story in a series largely about relationship drama, and so that Dina and Becky remain fun pretty much every time they’re on panel, let alone that it took until the Faith-Off for me to start caring about Becky in the slightest and I still deeply enjoyed their moments, I think is a solid testament that you can write a good romance without immediate drama.
They’ve got The Struggle, the thing that causes them a problem, it’s just that The Struggle is Becky’s sinful loins and Dina, as a person, is someone who’s meticulously forward and thorough about solving problems and viciously devoted to her interests, one of whom is Becky. And so I think now that It Happened, now shit’s gonna start going wrong in ways that are beyond Dina’s immediate ability to skillfully resolve Becky’s hangups. Becky’s longest running problem in the series has been resolved, the two of them have a relationship they enjoy so deeply that they can casually discuss marriage because it’s not like they’ll ever break up, which is to say that they’re gonna need something else to struggle over.
I only like characters in this series if I viscerally hate their guts and Dina has skated past that a long time, she’s a character pretty much entirely made of positive traits, but I do think it’s been to her detriment that so much of her panel time has been “happily resolve Becky’s problems for her.” I think the issue of sex has been easy enough for Dina to handle since she doesn’t process sexual guilt, let alone to the degree Becky has it, but with Becky’s own problems elsewhere and, bluntly, that she is attempting to control the thoughts of another person, I don’t think Dina’s gonna be okay with that. I think it’s gonna lead to their first major blowout, which feels like a thing you can make worse by just how loving and affectionate they are towards each other: They’re so invested in the other, but I don’t think Dina is gonna easily process Becky doing something viscerally wrong, and Becky’s absolutionist thinking regarding unconditional love could mean that she’d get real fucked up if she and Dina went far enough to have sex (something Becky’s clearly not entirely okay with afterward), but then Dina “betrays” her by siding with Joyce.
Like six months-ish ago Robin told Becky that it’s okay if she makes a mistake, so I’m gonna guess that’s gonna be relevant. Playing Guess the Authorial Intent for a sec, I think this was supposed to be the last big “and then everything was fine” moment for these two, and as Becky’s conflict gets worse with Joyce her own negative qualities are gonna bubble over in a way Dina can’t immediately handle.
If Dina finds out about Becky’s plan to turn Joyce back to God, and make her a believer again, I would say it’s well within Dina’s right to have the fear, that if Becky’s friend isn’t good enough for her as an atheist, Dina may well not remain good enough for her, eventually, either. I can see that causing Dina some angst; Becky has never presented it as a problem that Dina is an atheist, so she has not bothered to worry about that, but with that new knowledge that Becky is still trying to “cure” Joyce’s atheism, that fundamentally affects the core of who it is whom Dina thought she was dating. That’s a serious breach of personal values, if Becky presents to all her secular friends that she’s A-OK with their lack of faith, but truly desires to make them all change for her own comfort.
Dina finding out about this by accident, without Becky meaning for her to, also has perfect verisimilitude with how Becky originally learned of Joyce’s burgeoning atheism: Becky had no right to the information, got it in the most mortifying way possible, and hyper-reacted, because deep down in her head, Joyce choosing not being a Christian means that Joyce can also choose to leave Becky’s in-group in the more literal sense, and Becky absolutely cannot cope with the premise Joyce could abandon her. So, Dina blows up on Becky, because she has just been first presented with the unprecedented internal fear that her own lack of faith could cause Becky to eventually abandon her, which may leave her reacting in a very similar fashion, to how Becky reacted to Joyce’s atheism; because, they are fundamentally the same type of fear, that fear of being abandoned by those you love and need.
And who is Becky forced to rely on, for an atheist’s perspective of how to fix the relationship she just blew up? Well, she might try Joyce first, but Joyce has no reason to have patience with Becky on this issue, any more than Becky would have been required to show that patience to Joyce while she was playing Atheist Fundie for a week or so. So she has to ask Dorothy, who may very well say “uh, isn’t the fight you are currently having with Dina, the exact same fight Joyce just had with you, but in reverse?” And that will only cause Becky more angst. Or, she just goes and gets legitimately good advice from Leslie…who…is actually very much on Becky-levels of fear of abandonment, so now that I think about it, maybe her advice won’t even be good?
Holy fuck. Robin’s going to be the one with the solution. Or, at least, her awful version of the solution, will help guide Becky to a more sensible one.
On the other hand, I’m bored with ND characters having to be constant sources of misunderstanding-related strife. Dina’s not this tiny uwu perfect peach, she’s just also not a massive fuckup. Strained relationships are boring and we’ve had plenty of that.
Honestly? We think of “misunderstand-related strife” as being, like, whacky hijinks, but I would LOVE to see an autistic character suffer RSD and get anxious that people are mad at them. Autistic people are rarely allowed to be really debilitatively insecure–either they’re Sheldon narcissists or Dina social savants.
i kinda get what you mean.
she has flaws, but those flaws are never “FLAWS”, they are at worst “quirky” and cute.
like a character being written as a klutz, but the worst they ever do is drop a book or lightly bump into someone; never something as troublesome as dropping an expensive vase, or a baby, or bumping someone down a flight of stairs.
only inconsequential stuff that makes the reader think “she’s so cute, i wanna protect her.
IMO, she’s riding a baaaad combination of afterglow exhilaration and trying to “fix” her last heat-of-the-moment decision with another one, making it retroactively/”close enough” okay. (The invocation of the “five-second-rule” reference is a dead giveaway in this regard, again IMO.) If you get married as soon as you possibly can, then the hanky-panky will have been only a little pre-marital, and then that lingering bit of anxiety will totally go away, right? right?
I think this is Becky searching for something to say and always falling on jokes, the joke being that this is obvs not like the five-second rule. I mean if Dina said yes she’d probably go through. But I think Becky’s just nervous.
I want to learn how to say “no” as confidentially as Dina. I still say it, but with so many qualifiers. “if it’s okay I think I won’t…” “please don’t get mad at me but…” bad habit >_<
I’m surprised no one has pointed this out, but they’re in Indiana. CAN they get married at the local courthouse? Seems like it might require a trip to a less… Indiana-y state.
Never mind, did some research. Same-sex couples have been able to marry in Indiana since 2014! And it even happened under Mike Pence’s administration. Guess the guy’s done two things right.
Also as of 2015 SCOTUS, same-sex marriage is legal through the USA.
‘Following the June 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which found a constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry under the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide. Indiana statutes have yet to be modified to reflect the ruling, with various unenforceable and void provisions still referring to marriage as being a heterosexual union.’
A relevant reminder here that a fair number of US states similarly still have (unenforceable) laws criminalizing homosexuality which are also still technically on the books, despite the Supreme Court having decriminalized it in 2003 with Lawrence v. Texas.
Yeah, but the abortion laws are new and implemented by curent administrations, so it’s going to be pretty much impossible to strike those down before SCOTUS likely goes “actually, RvW was wrongfully decided, states’ rights”.
When’s the political merry-go-round for state legislatures? Are they all at the same time? Is it this year at the same time as the… 1/3, was it? of congress? Or was it senate?
I mean, not that it matters much, because it’s not like, say, Texas is getting de-republicanised in any case.
Nah, there are still abortion bans on the books in some states dating back to before Roe v. Wade.
Granted, they’re still mostly red states, but there may well be some that have changed drastically in the last 50 years but never updated the laws that couldn’t be enforced.
I learned that, too! Somehow I was under the impression that the ruling just meant same-sex marriages had to be *recognized* in all states. I guess I thought that particular battle was still ongoing.
Hey, question for other readers who have hopefully been reading more closely and carefully than me:
Do we know if, canonically, this is Dina’s first time having sex? (for some definition of sex that probably includes stuff that involves genitals and excludes only kissing someone)?
I’m glad the two of them having sex hasn’t destroyed their relationship yet, though the fact that Becky immediately jumped to “let’s get married” as a solution to premarital hanky-panky has me worried.
I’m reminded of a friend who knew a number of couples in the 50s who got married very young so they could have sex within the confines of marriage. That had bad results often and I hope it’s not the case with Becky and Dina.
Why are they consistently so good at communication? This is the setup for like five different romantic comedies, and they just waltz through it through mutual trust, communication and understanding.
They both work hard to communicate their wants and needs clearly and directly, even though they struggle with understanding (in Dina’s case) or acknowledging (in Becky’s) what those are. And they’re both scientists: intellectually courageous, curious, creative problem solvers, eager to learn things.
Basically they’re so perfect for each other I could die from cuteness.
tbh i’m impressed by the ppl that are 18 and get married and still be together at like, 35 lol (tho on the flip side some ppl stay together longer than they should outta obligation). wonder if their brains are wired differently to actually tolerate more. I know it is a bit of a rush, but i can totally imagine a lot of young ppl in their 20s marrying right away just to ‘get it over with’/their parents off their back, or just to set some kinda record like “yeah i have 15+ ex husbands/wives” just for the hell of it lol
(i mean not that i wanna condone that kinda behavior but that does seem like something a tiktoker/’influencer’ would do for shennanigans/views)
Yesterday I tried, *twice*, to post a comment here that simply read “mawwage?” It never showed up. I’m indignant. What kind of shitty algorithm treats Princess Bride references as spam???
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…I feel like there are a lot of things I’ve regretted doing, and only a handful things I’ve regretted NOT doing, idk, there are so many times where doing X isn’t reversible but NOT doing X still can be reversed
just sayin
“Well son, a funny thing about regret is that it’s better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven’t done. And by the way, if you see your mom this weekend, would you be sure and tell her…Satan! Satan! Satan!”
(Way too obscure, I bet)
I agree with the first sentence.
The second… less so.
gonna guess Ned Flanders before his wife died, but i assume i’m wrong
More likely Grandpa Simpson, why would Ned want one of his kids to yell “Satan! Satan! Satan!” at their not-yet-dead mother.
The Butthole Surfers can’t be that obscure surely?
A local(ish) record store used that for a TV ad back in the 80s, it was great.
Hey, Orbital! Well, that’s where I know that line from, anyway.
I’m 63, Ana, and I feel just the opposite. I’ve never learned to pilot a planes or helicopter, never seen Florence, never sailed on the Mediterranean, never scuba dived off Wolf and Darwin, and many more. All of these were big on my imaginary bucket list, but careers, education, marriage, kids, injuries have gotten in the way. Regardless of the why, the regrets are real.
I think the ratio of “things you regret doing” and “things you regret not doing” are just two ways to say the same thing. “If you could do it over, would you choose differently?”
You will always regret the choices that had negative consequences. You *may* regret choices that had neutral consequences, if something great seemed achievable. My thoughts? Make the best choice you feel you can, and if you later feel it was wrong, think of that as a needed lesson in decision making.
Eh, sometimes you don’t know it’s the wrong choice until after you’ve gotten information that wasn’t available until it was too late.
This even has a name too — Hindsight Bias.
Golly, when will humans ever learn?
I regret making it out of the womb… so, there’s that. Since I had a distressed delivery, I’m given to ponder my existence in the context of the movie the Butterfly Effect, and… I can’t say I disagree with the choice Kutcher’s character makes.
Huh, looks like my first try at commenting today got eaten. I’m guessing by accident? Anyway,
An Immodest Proposal™
let’s eat children in a dinosaurchestra
If it be done, let it be done Swiftly.
Children are so gullible; it’ll be easy to get their livers.
…too subtle? too tangential? ah, well. c’est la vie. one who travails over the slightest of puns rarely sees the fruit of their labor.
I salute you.
While Becky’s line of thinking is a bit weird, I’m glad Dina said ” not right now.” Seems like Becky’s handling the sitiation at the moment.
So what is about to go wrong? Please leave your ideas, no matter how strange.
The Head Alien bursts into the room with a gun and tells them to come with him if they want to live.
The Head Alien does love crashing weddings…
If he’s there, then I’m there with a million parasite spores aimed at his forehead.
Nonsense. Becky is about to be run over by a truck to punish her for spending money on a hair cut.
But only if she acts with integrity.
Those 20 U.S. dollars were supposed to be spent setting herself up for life!
With just $20? JK LOL
That’s a Homo sapien thing, right?
I think we’re good for these two for the rest of the book, at least.
It’s an ensemble cast after all, some cast members can have good things happen while others pick up the dramatic slack
On the other hand, we still have roughly a dozen Dina strips left in the chapter from memory.
Dotothy sitting in the half bath, gumbling: Mammals are strange.
Becky goes to brag to Joyce that she had sex first.
And then Joyce goes “didn’t think I’d beat you to the punch on that.”
And then we find out it was with Arnold.
That’s sweet
You know, I feel like this is somehow invoking the old lesbian stereotype about lesbian couples moving very quickly through the early relationship stages….
And yet, as an example of that stereotype (but with bi women) in real life, I can’t really fault it either.
Now, I’m just wondering how much that old stereotype was influenced by exactly this sort of situation.
The stereotype isn’t that they get married fast – partly due to not having the option longterm- but that they get super serious and move in together *fast*.
I don’t know what the stereotype on marriage is nowadays, considering there’s the general idea of women being really specific about wedding planning and stuff.
Yes, Z, I’m aware. Hence the phrase ‘somehow invoking’ rather than outright an example of.
And I, on the other hand, do fit the stereotype (sort of) since my wife and I moved in together fairly quickly after we started dating.
Of course, the flipside to me is that we’d been best friends for going in three years prior, so when we became romantic, we went from 0 to 60 VERY fast because all of that ‘getting to know you’ stuff had already happened.
Okay but living in sin is kind of the opposite of “assuaging feelings about sex before marriage”.
Living in “sin” is humanity’s default state and Gosh will get over it.
And this isn’t really quite that either, since they’ve been dating for months.
In this instance it might be panic and doubt setting in, so Becky’s lunging for the first loophole she can think of.
I hope not, but maybe.
I mean is you both know it’s gonna happen eventually why not take advantage of the tax benefits early?
Like I said once and I’ll say it again,
We CANNOT get UBI soon enough!!!!
Amen to that.
The tax benefits, if any, will still be there on Tuesday.
Because they are like 18 and students, it’s one thing to know you love someone and feel like you want to spend your lives together. It’s another to actually make such a commitment
Dina had a 19th birthday party in-comic right before Mike got murdered.
Was it a murder, or ‘self-inflicted death’? Because Mike did basically throw himself (and Blaine) off the building.
Hmm. Tough question, especially since I’m most definitely not a lawyer. 😛 AFAIK though, under Indiana state law technically any death which takes place during the commission of a felony counts under the Felony Murder rule, which means you’re potentially on the hook for murdering that person even if you didn’t physically assault them (under the legal grounds that that person wouldn’t have been in a position to die in the first place if it weren’t for the felony being actively committed). I believe some people have even been prosecuted for felony murder as a result of heart attacks taking place in such situations.
Maybe the hardest part is figuring out what crimes Blaine was doing exactly when attacking those teens with a hammer, body armor and a school shooter accomplice he’d just bailed out of jail. Well, we know he was conspiring to if not attempting extortion, kidnapping and murder, but I wonder what a court would think.
Probably they’d think “felony assault”. And they’d definitely think Mike only tried to defend himself and Amber. I doubt any court in the world would let Blaine off with less than murder.
He was going to get at least one murder charge anyway because he killed Toedead. The only witnesses to the Mike encounter were Blaine, Ross, and Amaziber. (I genuinely don’t know how the split would work in court, unless Amber got all the memories of that incident. If she only got glimpses, it could be explained as shock or trauma.)
[Puts on Doylist hat] That’s probably why he killed Ross, and then the dirty cop offed him in the hospital. Otherwise, “the pending trial of HammerToe” would hang over the comic for the rest of its run. Wrapping that arc up in the season finale let the comic start fresh for the season 2 premiere.
What tax benefits? One of them undoubtedly isn’t getting paid enough to owe federal taxes and the other doesn’t appear to have a job at this point.
And that was what I was going to say.
To require tax benefits, you need a job to pay taxes on. And then you need a job that pays well enough to get you over the poverty line.
Bah! You people and your logic! What if they want to buy a property? Or maybe Becky and/or Dina comes into a sudden inheritance of millions and then one of them dies?! Maybe they decide to start a small business and their combined credit scores help secure a loan!
Are we ignoring the fact that Becky is going to be in huge demand next election cycle?
Do specific teenagers usually have longevity as political props? Feels like everyone pretty quickly forgot about that Uma Thurman kid from a few years ago.
Also Becky won’t be marketable as a Teen Genius:tm: next cycle, as she’ll be 20 years old—not to mention that Dumbing of Age probably won’t pass Becky’s 20th birthday until the 2100s barring an end-of-comic epilogue.
Ah, but as a low income wage earner, Becky may qualify for EITC. (Earned Income Tax Credit, as close as the US gets to negative income tax.) I’m not sure if marrying Dina would help or hurt… may depend on how Dina’s parents handle her finances.
Dina is almost certainly a dependent for tax purposes. Her parents paying for her college could be really tricky to navigate if she’s no longer a dependent in terms of taxes. We went to university after getting married so had to file our own taxes and we had to report financial aid as income – it’s possible that “parents paying my college costs” would be regarded as income as well. (Even if they literally pay directly to the college -the government may see it as “they give you the money which you then give to the college”. I mean, I sure as hell didn’t see that financial aid money pass through *my* hands and it was still considered my income. Again not an issue with dependents)
It’ll also be an issue for Dina receiving health insurance, she’ll no longer qualify for her parents’.
Ok I see that taxes are an important subject (and apparently mostly in how to avoid them, what never cease to wonder me for redistribution purposes as I said to an accounting teacher from a public school when we covered the subject of tax optimisation), but what really bugs me is that: how is marriage, which is a binding form of contract between inequals in het marriage but also still binding and bureaucratic and hard to put an end to between gay “equals” (if that exist), wishable at all when there is, due to age but non only, a chance, be it slight, that oneother would want to become free again. Disclaimer: not married, have kids, and still suffer from bureaucratic dependency to marriage bindings and inequality.
uh oh i sense this is gonna create some tension between them.
I don’t see the tension. If anything, Dina just reaffirmed the certainty of their relationship and not just with the sex. This feels less like a rejection and more like a postponement.
yeah, I feel the same, Dina basically just said she would marry Becky, just at a later date, but the line “it’s not like it wasn’t gonna happen anyway” “I know” means that Dina is on board. ~<3
I mean eventually Dina is gonna catch wind of her conflict with Joyce and she’d likely not approve of Becky wanting to push Joyce back into religion
Maybe not tension between Becky and Dina, very possibly tension between Christian Becky and Sexual Becky.
This.
Seconded.
All I got this time is that the unbridled confidence these two have that it’s gonna happen eventually is just plain heckin’ cute
I think they are speaking of different “it’s” here.
Becky is referring to the act of “losing it,” which is what she’s been focused on. Dina takes it to mean marriage. She’s accepting the proposal, but refusing the date.
I dunno, I’m kinda reading it as a strip with two meanings.
One is that Becky has not truly faced up to her fundie sex guilt feelings and still feels the need to loophole her way around them, and the other is that these two are so deadass in love that they can’t think of life without the other.
Does that count as a shotgun wedding?
I think it’d be more of a got-shun wedding
’cause Becky got shunned by her former church, see
Got shagged wedding
Fortunately the typical father with the actual shotgun wouldn’t be attending since he’s rolling in his grave right now.
Becky, no.
Thank you. Was going to say it myself.
Yeah. Becky is a fucking time bomb.
Your current Grav is Dina, so in a way you sorta said it.
Oh to be young lol
Oof, seeing Becky lean into the marriage thing as a coping mechanism is rough but I’m glad Dina is taking it in stride. I hope it doesn’t lead to drama because they make such a cute non-dramatic couple.
… I should have seen this coming. It’s the first part of bargaining – “it’s less of a sin if we get married, right?”
This is more or less why I married a young woman I’d known less than three months. Now in my case, it worked out, as we’ve been happily married for sixteen years with two great daughters, but still.
Guilt-based shotgun marriages can be painful, especially in the quiet moments.
*plays Janet Jackson’s “Let’s Wait A While” on the hacked Muzak*
Hey everyone!
In the spirit of the success of Dina and Becky’s scientific expedition, I feel like using the power of science to give back to all of you in the comments section!
But to do that, I first need to gather some data!!!
Wanna take your mind of things for a bit?
Tell us what kinds of games you like to play!!!
https://strawpoll.com/polls/bVg86k8QByY
As an avid Minecraft player I kind of feel like a significant genre-category was left out. 😛 Still filled it out best I could with the other answers, though.
Oops! Sorry pal! 😅
Unfortunately, I don’t think my programming powers would allow me to produce something as complex as Minecraft!
Where would Kerbal Space Program, Factorio, Dwarf Fortress, and everything Zachtronics has ever made go in that categorization scheme?
I think those go under strategy?
Hopefully Part 2 of this poll won’t be so hasty! 😅
Kerbal Space Program’d be a flight simulator (subcategory spaceflight simulator), according to Wikipedia.
I glad you didn’t put Sport on the list. It’s just the worst game genre, specially Soccer.
Sports games are certainly vapid and exploitative (increasingly so in recent years), but I hold that they’re more valid than watching sports. The difference of course being that the grown men screeching at the TV might actually affect the outcome of the match.
This is missing “immersive sim,” or I’d pick that.
I said jrpgs but really i only care about the weird lil indie horror/psychological ones. Omori, mad father, bright dream and blight dream, etc.
I don’t really care about say, final fantasy for example
smh not caring about CHAOS
If i want FF I’ll go to Kingdom Hearts for it :p
I can think of like 5 friends who would atleast be furious at them for not having a proper wedding they would have been proud to attend.
Name them? I can’t think of a single one myself, now that Joyce is probably not too keen on “proper” weddings.
Also, IMMENSE objection to your usage of “proper wedding”.
Joyce would have still wanted to be apart of the wedding traditional or not and Dorothy would have loved to helped planned the whole thing. Lucy would be the type who just love attending weddings in general and Leslie & Robin would have been honored to see Becky take that step in her life.
Though most of those would have been strongly against doing anything this quickly. Definitely Dorothy and Leslie. Robin might go into Wacky mode to support whatever Becky wanted, especially if Leslie was counseling caution. Joyce’s romcom instincts might kick in an support it, along with what’s left of her Christian sexual repression. Hard to say about Lucy honestly.
which I guess isn’t really most.
I mean, maybe Lucy? Does she count as a friend already?
I am glad Dina’s being level-headed, that the two do love each other, it’s just obviously A. hasty, and B. would be being done for the wrong reasons.
Makes me think very much of a bit from Steven Universe Future, come to think of it.
Oof.
This relationship is moving awfully fast.
Not really. They’ve been together since September and it’s now January. That’s three months-ish. That’s not terribly long before fucking for many a college relationship.
I didn’t mean the fucking. I meant the “we’re definitely gonna get married sooner or later” talk. 😛
They’ve been together for like 6 months now! It’s a little fast, especially for college students, but “oh yeah this definitely is gonna be long-term” is hardly unreasonable
Though obvs Dina is wise to hold off on actually getting engaged yet
^ Closer to three or four months, but yes.
I read that as her basically saying yes to the proposal but no to the date proposed.
My wife and I were married ten months after we met, though we were in our early 30s when that happened.
I mean, they know they actually love each other, with very little lust being involved in their choice to be together. they have great chemistry, and trust in one another. Yes it would be fast if they got married now, that being Dina’s point, it isnt to soon to know that this is the person they want to spend the rest of their lives with. The human brain is a very weird thing, as is the emotions it creates. It doesn’t take very long for love to form, even more so with them being near each other almost constantly and giving each other affection.
Yeah not sure on that one. Have known plenty of people who think they want to spend their life with someone after a few months but found out otherwise in the following months.
Have also known people who thought that, but found out otherwise a decade or more in. There’s really no safe time. Making legal lifetime commitments after a couple months is too soon, but thinking so is definitely common.
Luckily they live in America, where divorces are a dime a dozen and people just split from those legal commitments at the drop of a hat.
Much better in the good old days when you were trapped in those commitments, no matter how miserable or abusive they were.
Ohhhhh, Becky that would have been such a bad idea. Fortunately, Dina put the kibosh on that.
I do think they might make it there one day though. They are VERY cute.
What the heck is Becky looking at in Panel 3? Shit can she see, us?! We’ve been made!
Okay, so, heresy time. I’m really bored by Dina. I *love* her character in theory, I loved her for the longest time, but then her flaws just… not materializing. Every other character gets to screw up and be anxious insecure disasters. Why does the most prominently autistic character get relegated to magical flawless alien girl?
I remember when Sal pointed out that Dina was “the rebound”, and Dina admitted that this was her fear at all. THAT version of Dina would have been tempted by this proposal–she desperately loves Becky, and wants Becky to love her the same way, and feels sure Becky is going to leave her.
Instead, Dina is perfectly level-headed, and isn’t even visibly disturbed by the proposal. I hope there’s more to her reaction than that! Becky made a BIG ask here!
Maybe Dina said no because she still thinks she’s the rebound and doesn’t want to weigh Becky down. If she did, hey, at least that’s consistent. It’s still far too mature a response for this webcomic’s premise. 😛
Wow, a lot of typoes here.
*just kept not materializing
**All the other characters get to screw up
*that this was her fear as well
Dina has always done the best she could do.
I think Dina and Dorothy are ultimately kind of similar in terms of being people who know what they want and have their shit together. They both have subtler flaws that are more normal of well-adjusted people and there’s a subset of people who find that very frustrating or boring as well as a subset of people who find their subtler problems relatable and fun. They’re both still learning stuff, but it’s a softer kind of thing. Their mistakes aren’t as high stakes usually. I get how that’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
They do kind of serve an important narrative purpose in terms of being more grounded sounding boards for the traumas, tics, and immaturities of the rest of the cast. And there are definitely people who have that kind of maturity as young adults, so it’s not like they’re unrealistic. They’re just not center of drama type people.
You really think so?
Dina knows what she likes, and the knowledge and adventures she wants to pursue as a scientist.
Marriage would be a HUGE commitment, when she still has so much she wants to to as an individual and with her friends and girlfriend!
Yes, it would be a huge commitment and totally derail her life. It would be a horrible mistake, in fact. What I’m saying is I think this webcomic is, like, *long* overdue for letting Dina make some mistakes. She’s not really written as a fully-formed character, and she often kind of feels a little… well, she represents a big pet peeve I have with autistic representation that skews too far away from Sheldon and into its own less-bad-but-still-not-great problems.
The webcomic is all about making stupid mistakes, and Dina initially agreeing would actually be an interesting and understandable mistake that might force her to confront why she’s so sure Becky will abandon her in time.
This kind of thinking is why a neurodivergent like myself really really despises the “autism” label.
What neurotypicals call “””autism””” is actually a REALLY broad and diverse collection of differing and unique neurodivergent stripes and conditions all haphazardly lumped together into one overly generic category.
What’s true of one “autistic”, isn’t necessarily true of all. If some of them have savant syndrome and an insanely strict dietary routine, that doesn’t mean that they all do.
But of course that doesn’t prevent peoples’ brains from automatically extrapolating from that one label, making it very difficult for them to tell the difference between our disabilities and our personalities, and make really hurtful assumptions about us all the while. 😔
Yeah, I think you may think I disagree with you when that’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m not allistic. 🙂
Oh! Sorry if that sounded a little harsh! 😓
I’ve been low on spoons for so long and feel a little worn, and I’m SO sorry if I caused you any stress! 🙏
Anyway, Dina’s made her fair share of mistakes throughout the comic.
And gleaming from the April preview panel, something tells me Dina’s gonna face something really heavy really soon 😟
As an aside, it was Sarah who pointed out that Dina was probably a rebound, not Sal.
Ack, I always get those two names mixed around. Same with Dorothy and Joyce, though I can’t explain that one. My bad!
Well for one point I think this is mostly because Dina and Becky’s relationship is presented as the one that works. We have tons of couples and possible couples throughout the lifespan of this comic and least one has to be a functioning example of it. That’s Becky and Dina, they regularly communicate about their relationship and are honest about their feelings. Dina isn’t a perfect girlfriend, but they communicate about the pitfalls. Like working their way through Dina’s sexual urges just now instead of quietly stewing in misery over it. They had a conversation and made it fun and it even lead to want they both wanted. Functioning relationship goals. Dina specifically is often the first to try and clarify a miscommunication which is probably why she seems so even tempered when presented with potential conflict or ridiculousness.
Agreed. Now that you’re bringing it up, I really miss Dina having doubts about their relationship.
Some of this wish-fulfillment and power fantasy for Dina is enjoyable…. but it also feels like she’s written extra smooth to make the sex as ideal and 100 % consensual as possible for Becky. SO consensual that Dina never accidentally goes to far, even though Becky wantws to be “forced” in a kink sense.
This SEX and relationship thing involves lots of non-verbal pitfalls, lots of unsaid expectations and social etiquette. Instead Dina just knows what to say, knows how to check in abd when, and never flubs her lines either.
Becky can be pretty direct, which was how they gelled in the first place. But she can also be LOUDLY passive aggressive, and once these two get into their first fight, I wonder how Dina would/could deal with that, or if smooth!Dina will just suddenly know how to read her behaviour.
Yeah, which is funny, because Dina has said she struggles to read people! It would be so much more interesting if she actually struggled to read Becky more often!
I think she’s struggling right now, she just doesn’t realize it, and it’s not a situation where that will cause problems, since Becky will keep talking, and the words will get Dina up to speed eventually.
I say this because my (probably projecting myself on Dina) take on this is that this is obviously a Big Deal to Becky, and Dina’s picked up on that a little bit, noticing that Becky is worried, but doesn’t seem to have realized the scope of it. Dina’s answering the words behind Becky’s questions – no, I don’t want to get married now; well, I can’t say that anyone else isn’t disappointed but I’m not disappointed; no, I don’t know that story, are you using it to explain your emotions? (didn’t get an answer and didn’t probe deeper) – but doesn’t seem to have yet seen more than the surface of the shame or guilt or similar that are fueling those questions.
Yeah, I also think it’s ironic that people are saying “why is Dina such a perfect little aspie who never makes and clear and obvious mistakes” and in one post you point out like 3 to 5 points of social subtext which Dina is, in fact, processing at a very slow speed right now, relative to how other partners might.
Yeah, it’s a real problem and so unbelievable that Dina didn’t go too far during sex. 🙄
I like it when someone goes a little too far with something in the heat in the moment (which is subjective and therefore not morally a hard line, especially when a couple has sex for the fist time), and consent is withdrawn and re-negotiated. No, the t-shirt stays on, no, don’t touch my balls, etc. It could be anything.
And Becky has said again and again that she wants to be desired/ravished/””forced”” to have sex. She happened to be into everything Dina threw at her (for now), and that is just a little too easy, imo.
Or do you believe that good people only have good sex, and Dina should be able to read Becky’s thoughts and feelings (past, present AND future)?
I refuse to participate in your bizarre dichotomy.
Also if you rearrange the letters in your name, it spells “beer”.
bro they are literally in the same women’s studies class, where Leslie has had multiple very clear discussions on how to have these conversations with your sexual partners
it is not unrealistic for Dina to be dodging these common mistakes, if she was instructed, at a collegiate level of understanding, specifically how to avoid him. Someone made the comparison to Dorothy, and, well, Dorothy wouldn’t make those mistakes, either. Both women are very focused on their studies, if they were taught something in school, they know it, and if they think it’s useful, they’re going to deploy it as a strategy.
The fundamental implication that Dina “should” get rapey with Becky, because she is autistic, and therefore should fail at complex social things like that, is not what I think you intend to make; but, even if unknowingly, you’re going along with a serious misconception about neurodivergent people, that they are hyper-sexual and prone to violate peoples’ physical boundaries, as a matter of fact. There is some truth to the premise that some ND people struggle with physical and sexual boundaries, and need more deliberate strategies for navigating that social situation, but the rote assumption that the autistic are too intellectually immature to engage in coitus properly, is exceedingly ableist and unfair. Once again, I don’t think that was your intended point, nor do I necessarily think this was an issue you would naturally have been aware of, but the underlying logic you’re using to reach your conclusion is the same logic which underpins the toxic rhetoric you’re invoking.
I think Dina is gonna really struggle with Becky once she finds out how’s she’s treating Joyce’s atheism, it’s there that you’ll see other sides to Dina
At her place on the autism spectrum she simply isn’t capable of making the same kinds of mistakes as neurotypical people. It would be completely unrealistic to portray her otherwise. She makes different mistakes that you might have trouble even imagining – and she hasn’t had opportunities to make them on-panel so far.
See, I can imagine a whole bunch of mistakes I would have made in this situation, which is why I’ve avoid getting into it, and Dina hasn’t made any of those either. Granted, I’m not on exactly the same point as the spectrum as her, but still.
They’ve been pretty obnoxiously perfect since “Dina is a rebound” was quietly scuffled, though I say ‘obnoxiously perfect’ with love since I do genuinely enjoy them every time they’re on panel.
Relationship drama is the most immediately exciting way to provoke a story in a series largely about relationship drama, and so that Dina and Becky remain fun pretty much every time they’re on panel, let alone that it took until the Faith-Off for me to start caring about Becky in the slightest and I still deeply enjoyed their moments, I think is a solid testament that you can write a good romance without immediate drama.
They’ve got The Struggle, the thing that causes them a problem, it’s just that The Struggle is Becky’s sinful loins and Dina, as a person, is someone who’s meticulously forward and thorough about solving problems and viciously devoted to her interests, one of whom is Becky. And so I think now that It Happened, now shit’s gonna start going wrong in ways that are beyond Dina’s immediate ability to skillfully resolve Becky’s hangups. Becky’s longest running problem in the series has been resolved, the two of them have a relationship they enjoy so deeply that they can casually discuss marriage because it’s not like they’ll ever break up, which is to say that they’re gonna need something else to struggle over.
I only like characters in this series if I viscerally hate their guts and Dina has skated past that a long time, she’s a character pretty much entirely made of positive traits, but I do think it’s been to her detriment that so much of her panel time has been “happily resolve Becky’s problems for her.” I think the issue of sex has been easy enough for Dina to handle since she doesn’t process sexual guilt, let alone to the degree Becky has it, but with Becky’s own problems elsewhere and, bluntly, that she is attempting to control the thoughts of another person, I don’t think Dina’s gonna be okay with that. I think it’s gonna lead to their first major blowout, which feels like a thing you can make worse by just how loving and affectionate they are towards each other: They’re so invested in the other, but I don’t think Dina is gonna easily process Becky doing something viscerally wrong, and Becky’s absolutionist thinking regarding unconditional love could mean that she’d get real fucked up if she and Dina went far enough to have sex (something Becky’s clearly not entirely okay with afterward), but then Dina “betrays” her by siding with Joyce.
Like six months-ish ago Robin told Becky that it’s okay if she makes a mistake, so I’m gonna guess that’s gonna be relevant. Playing Guess the Authorial Intent for a sec, I think this was supposed to be the last big “and then everything was fine” moment for these two, and as Becky’s conflict gets worse with Joyce her own negative qualities are gonna bubble over in a way Dina can’t immediately handle.
Oh fuck. You gave me an idea.
If Dina finds out about Becky’s plan to turn Joyce back to God, and make her a believer again, I would say it’s well within Dina’s right to have the fear, that if Becky’s friend isn’t good enough for her as an atheist, Dina may well not remain good enough for her, eventually, either. I can see that causing Dina some angst; Becky has never presented it as a problem that Dina is an atheist, so she has not bothered to worry about that, but with that new knowledge that Becky is still trying to “cure” Joyce’s atheism, that fundamentally affects the core of who it is whom Dina thought she was dating. That’s a serious breach of personal values, if Becky presents to all her secular friends that she’s A-OK with their lack of faith, but truly desires to make them all change for her own comfort.
Dina finding out about this by accident, without Becky meaning for her to, also has perfect verisimilitude with how Becky originally learned of Joyce’s burgeoning atheism: Becky had no right to the information, got it in the most mortifying way possible, and hyper-reacted, because deep down in her head, Joyce choosing not being a Christian means that Joyce can also choose to leave Becky’s in-group in the more literal sense, and Becky absolutely cannot cope with the premise Joyce could abandon her. So, Dina blows up on Becky, because she has just been first presented with the unprecedented internal fear that her own lack of faith could cause Becky to eventually abandon her, which may leave her reacting in a very similar fashion, to how Becky reacted to Joyce’s atheism; because, they are fundamentally the same type of fear, that fear of being abandoned by those you love and need.
And who is Becky forced to rely on, for an atheist’s perspective of how to fix the relationship she just blew up? Well, she might try Joyce first, but Joyce has no reason to have patience with Becky on this issue, any more than Becky would have been required to show that patience to Joyce while she was playing Atheist Fundie for a week or so. So she has to ask Dorothy, who may very well say “uh, isn’t the fight you are currently having with Dina, the exact same fight Joyce just had with you, but in reverse?” And that will only cause Becky more angst. Or, she just goes and gets legitimately good advice from Leslie…who…is actually very much on Becky-levels of fear of abandonment, so now that I think about it, maybe her advice won’t even be good?
Holy fuck. Robin’s going to be the one with the solution. Or, at least, her awful version of the solution, will help guide Becky to a more sensible one.
On the other hand, I’m bored with ND characters having to be constant sources of misunderstanding-related strife. Dina’s not this tiny uwu perfect peach, she’s just also not a massive fuckup. Strained relationships are boring and we’ve had plenty of that.
Honestly? We think of “misunderstand-related strife” as being, like, whacky hijinks, but I would LOVE to see an autistic character suffer RSD and get anxious that people are mad at them. Autistic people are rarely allowed to be really debilitatively insecure–either they’re Sheldon narcissists or Dina social savants.
i kinda get what you mean.
she has flaws, but those flaws are never “FLAWS”, they are at worst “quirky” and cute.
like a character being written as a klutz, but the worst they ever do is drop a book or lightly bump into someone; never something as troublesome as dropping an expensive vase, or a baby, or bumping someone down a flight of stairs.
only inconsequential stuff that makes the reader think “she’s so cute, i wanna protect her.
Shame on you, Becky, for even thinking of denying Dina the dinosaur-themed wedding every little girl dreams about!
You know you can actually get wedding rings that have fossilized dinosaur bone.
Yes, I DID know that… cuz I’m cool… Fo’ shizzle. Off the chain. On fleek…
IMO, she’s riding a baaaad combination of afterglow exhilaration and trying to “fix” her last heat-of-the-moment decision with another one, making it retroactively/”close enough” okay. (The invocation of the “five-second-rule” reference is a dead giveaway in this regard, again IMO.) If you get married as soon as you possibly can, then the hanky-panky will have been only a little pre-marital, and then that lingering bit of anxiety will totally go away, right? right?
Marry in haste, repent at leisure. Anybody ever told you that, Becky?
She shouldn’t be used to soap opera
Heh I imagine Becky would appreciate a saying from my country which goes “When you are acting hastily the devil is overjoyed.”
I think this is Becky searching for something to say and always falling on jokes, the joke being that this is obvs not like the five-second rule. I mean if Dina said yes she’d probably go through. But I think Becky’s just nervous.
Yeah. Becky. Everyone knows the five second rule only works for birth control.
“The Morning After Chapel” – it’s not a sin if you get hitched right after!
Glad they think the marriage is inevitable, but are waiting anyway just in case it isn’t.
I want to learn how to say “no” as confidentially as Dina. I still say it, but with so many qualifiers. “if it’s okay I think I won’t…” “please don’t get mad at me but…” bad habit >_<
I’m surprised no one has pointed this out, but they’re in Indiana. CAN they get married at the local courthouse? Seems like it might require a trip to a less… Indiana-y state.
Never mind, did some research. Same-sex couples have been able to marry in Indiana since 2014! And it even happened under Mike Pence’s administration. Guess the guy’s done two things right.
I’m pretty sure it happened despite Pence, due to court cases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Indiana
Also as of 2015 SCOTUS, same-sex marriage is legal through the USA.
‘Following the June 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which found a constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry under the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide. Indiana statutes have yet to be modified to reflect the ruling, with various unenforceable and void provisions still referring to marriage as being a heterosexual union.’
A relevant reminder here that a fair number of US states similarly still have (unenforceable) laws criminalizing homosexuality which are also still technically on the books, despite the Supreme Court having decriminalized it in 2003 with Lawrence v. Texas.
I’d get on getting those laws off the books if I were you guys, because right now “overturning previous SCOTUS rulings” is DEFINITELY a possibility.
Same with abortion laws and those may be a higher priority at the moment, since that could change within a couple months.
Yeah, but the abortion laws are new and implemented by curent administrations, so it’s going to be pretty much impossible to strike those down before SCOTUS likely goes “actually, RvW was wrongfully decided, states’ rights”.
When’s the political merry-go-round for state legislatures? Are they all at the same time? Is it this year at the same time as the… 1/3, was it? of congress? Or was it senate?
I mean, not that it matters much, because it’s not like, say, Texas is getting de-republicanised in any case.
Nah, there are still abortion bans on the books in some states dating back to before Roe v. Wade.
Granted, they’re still mostly red states, but there may well be some that have changed drastically in the last 50 years but never updated the laws that couldn’t be enforced.
Ah, I thought you meant the recent “it’s not a violation of RvW if we have the CITIZENS sue” diarrhea.
I learned that, too! Somehow I was under the impression that the ruling just meant same-sex marriages had to be *recognized* in all states. I guess I thought that particular battle was still ongoing.
I guessed Becky could proposes Dina! hahaha
(as I suggest it could happening right on Slipshine)
That’s right, Dina. You both are young, there’s as lot of girls, before taking this decision.
Becky scares me sometimes
Her indoctrination runs very deep… good thing Dina has a shovel
Coulda been a lot worse, ladies. One of you might have bellowed out some Klingon mating whoop instead of a marriage proposal.
Thankfully Dina was too sane for that. Becky needs to confront her illogical beliefs.
DoA Book 12: It Will Just Not Be Tomorrow.
Hey, question for other readers who have hopefully been reading more closely and carefully than me:
Do we know if, canonically, this is Dina’s first time having sex? (for some definition of sex that probably includes stuff that involves genitals and excludes only kissing someone)?
We were told early on that it was something she was interested in experimenting with, despite not having felt the urges.
That doesn’t strictly rule it out, but it at least heavily implies it.
It is, yeah. Becky is Dina’s first lotta things.
I’m glad the two of them having sex hasn’t destroyed their relationship yet, though the fact that Becky immediately jumped to “let’s get married” as a solution to premarital hanky-panky has me worried.
I’m reminded of a friend who knew a number of couples in the 50s who got married very young so they could have sex within the confines of marriage. That had bad results often and I hope it’s not the case with Becky and Dina.
What could possibly go wrong with making a lifelong commitment to your very first sexual partner?
So we’ll just pencil that in for this Saturday then?
Why are they consistently so good at communication? This is the setup for like five different romantic comedies, and they just waltz through it through mutual trust, communication and understanding.
Could be that both of them Very Much Want This To Work and are doing their best for the other.
Dina seems to be quite good at communication, perhaps because she doesn’t quite understand people on an instinctual level.
They both work hard to communicate their wants and needs clearly and directly, even though they struggle with understanding (in Dina’s case) or acknowledging (in Becky’s) what those are. And they’re both scientists: intellectually courageous, curious, creative problem solvers, eager to learn things.
Basically they’re so perfect for each other I could die from cuteness.
Come on Bex at least have your wedding be on a Friday if it has to be any kind of weekday.
Proposal after hanky panky red flag
Tuesday might have been good for Becky, but for Dina it was Tuesd- *vaudeville hook*
is that one still banned or
It hasn’t been banned since Faz used the line in-comic in Faz Is Great.
That’s what I thought with my first GF, too.
These two are cute and I love them. Everything else is irrelevant.
I don’t know what is more remarkable and desirable in a partner: Dina’s brutal honesty or Becky’s ability to take it in stride.
tbh i’m impressed by the ppl that are 18 and get married and still be together at like, 35 lol (tho on the flip side some ppl stay together longer than they should outta obligation). wonder if their brains are wired differently to actually tolerate more. I know it is a bit of a rush, but i can totally imagine a lot of young ppl in their 20s marrying right away just to ‘get it over with’/their parents off their back, or just to set some kinda record like “yeah i have 15+ ex husbands/wives” just for the hell of it lol
(i mean not that i wanna condone that kinda behavior but that does seem like something a tiktoker/’influencer’ would do for shennanigans/views)
The question for the masses: Now that she has popped her cherry is it harder to stay out of bed together?
FYI the organ you are referring to most often pops before sex due to masturbation or even just natural stretching!
As for the frequency of their intimacy, there’s at least a significant chance it will increase, yes.
and Dinah provides the Common Sense.
There’s something I really, really love about a marriage proposal being met with “Not yet”. Pratchett did it in Going Postal, too.
Yesterday I tried, *twice*, to post a comment here that simply read “mawwage?” It never showed up. I’m indignant. What kind of shitty algorithm treats Princess Bride references as spam???