beckys plans to get that hat off – another one bites the dust, another one bites the dust, and another one down, another one down, and another one down. Another one bites the dust!
Deerstalker hats were never fashionable. Like the name suggests, they were usually worn by hunters or outdoorsmen. The deerstalker was the camo-pattern baseball cap of its time.
While I agree with you in spirit, in practice there is NO WAY to ask “could you take off your hat for me ‘cuz the thought of what you got under there is making me horny” normally.
True, but it’s basically no normal (or maybe “casual” is a better word?) way to ask the same thing about shirts or bras or pants for the first time either.
On the other hand, there -are- classier ways than saying it makes you horny.
“Dina, you’re a great person, and you make my life better every day, and I hesitate to ask… But I would like it very much if you could take your hat off for me…”
(Sorry for the pedantry. Fart Captor has been too agreeable lately, so now I must disagree with everyone else instead. So blame FC!)
And the way Becky is trying to trick Dina into doing something she might not be okay with is really not cool. It also hits hard for me, seeing as I had something like that happen to me on Friday.
But it’s Dina. She has no sense of what is “normal” and likes the aspects of Becky that are outside the norm. If Becky were to ask directly, Dina would likely respond positively, but she’s going to have to ask.
And it’s understandable why she is hesitant to do that. She’s been raised her whole life to believe that only the most slatternly and diseased women ask for sexual things. Hint, sure, in the fullness of marriage, but outright state that they have sexual desires they would like met? Nope.
And while she’s thrown away a lot of the baggage, that’s still a hell of a lot different than actually living what throwing away that baggage might mean. Especially when her previous experiences with attempted intimacy blew up painfully.
Yeah, Becky did call out to the rest of the room and catch some attention with her announcement of an impromptu anthem. Stands to reason that if people with an internet connection and a fondness for trivia and the spreading thereof note that, they’re going to pile into the conversation.
Are they mansplainers or just geeks? Not all “well, actually”s said by males to females count as mansplaining.
Because I’m pretty sure these guys would have responded exactly the same way if the conversation they overheard had been between two men instead of two women. It’s more the “Someone is wrong on the internet!” factor, except it’s “Someone is wrong while standing next to me!”
I’m not necessarily seeing the condescension that I would normally associate with “mansplaining,” but that could definitely just be my reading of it. I don’t know.
Which is why I said “sorta” mansplainers in my joke, because it lacks the central quality of a proper mansplainer, that of ignorantly explaining something inaccurately to a woman who is much more of an expert in that field or much more knowledgable.
But it definitely does have some qualities like that such as barging into a conversation to add knowledge the person does not actually have (both reference articles they just pulled up from their phones rather than actual bases of knowledge). As well as thinking their additions would be wanted in a private discussion between women whether asked for or not.
Oh, hell yeah. For example, gentlemen should never wear a hat indoors. The only exception I know of is when “under arms” (carrying a weapon). Of course, that’s behavior ingrained in from the military; I’ve noticed many civilians don’t give a damn about things that (at least at one time) were considered “proper etiquette” or tradition. Kind of like the “don’t wear white after Labor Day” thing, which I think was invented by New York City High Society types)
Huh, I wasn’t aware of the ‘under arms’ rule, but I just sorta internalized it. I got most of by hat etiquette by osmosis from my Dad – whenever people wear hats indoors, I get twitchy, because a part of me insists that it’s somehow Wrong.
OK, Becky, at first it was only slightly creepy and mostly cute.
Now it’s getting more creepy* and less cute.
At the same time, I will say this: If someone would tell you in clear words why you shouldn’t be doing this, I’m pretty sure you’d actually listen and realise what you did wrong, and then stop doing it.
I hope someone does that soon before you cross a line of trust that cannot easily be mended.
*Not helped by the fact that I have a certain aversion to national anthems and the people most likely to “spontaneously” sing them in public.
I get that it’s setting up a running gag, but I’m really hoping it will end with Becky getting exasperated, learning to use her words and just ask rather than continuing to try and manipulate Dina into something Becky views as sexual.
And that’s especially frustrating because she seemed to be doing really well on boundaries before after fucking up so spectacularly with Joyce and learning what happened to Joyce and so I’d really like to see her stop before she goes any further down this road of non-consent.
Becky comes from a culture that teaches people to believe a woman’s body belongs to whatever man owns her at the time (hence Toedad’s statement that she would be regrowing her hair now that he had her back). It’s going to take her a while to get to the point where hats and other accessories are seen as an extension of the self.
I don’t think she’ll be mad, though. Not full on mad. She’ll be irritated but also confused, and will ask Becky directly what the hell she’s doing. (Maybe not those exact words.)
Becky will confess what’s really going on, Dina will still be irritated and say that she prefers directness to that sort of round-about approach and again ask what the hell she’s doing.
Becky will confess that she was very very nervous and scared and that tap-dancing around it was a fear reaction. Dina will make some comment about that being basic animal behavior and say that Becky didn’t need to be afraid, and then take her hat off.
Becky will struggle to avoid swooning.
Dina will then ask if there’s any other clothing that Becky wants her to take off. Cue swoon and/or Slipshine. Hilariously sex-clueless Slipshine.
Reltzik, just because I like crushing people’s hopes for fun and profit: Word of god has stated that the level of intimacy is going to progress so slowly between Dina and Becky, that your Slipshine wish -might- come true….
IS the hat a boundary for Dina, though? The problem here is deception and lack of openness, not that she’s pushing Dina for something she’s unwilling to provide. (Or is she? We don’t know.)
Though I would argue that using deception to get something sexual out of someone without their knowledgable consent is super horrible and the sooner Becky breaks with this creepy behavior, the better.
You are probably right. The fact that it’s sexual purely in Becky’s head makes me want to put less weight on it, but the fact that it could be worse don’t actually make it less bad.
In a cave somewhere deep in the heart of flyover country, a red light shines on a colossal world map. A klaxon sounds. A fat guy in a stained a-shirt, camo-print sweatpants and a stars-and-stripes eagle baseball hat wakes from his nap and watches the light focus to a pinpoint on your coordinates.
“Looks like someone needs their daily dose… OF FREEDOM.”
Will Becky be able to get Dina to take off her hat?
Will Walky finally admit he has a problem at math and seek tutoring?
Will Amber reunite with Danny?
Tune in tomorrow…and the next one…and the next one!
Same Amazi-time!
Same Amazi-website!
Okay, I could go panel by panel, but I think the entire meat of it just rests in noting what a lot of other people are noting and that’s:
What Becky is doing is very not okay.
Sure, it’s somewhat amusing because a) she’s failing in her quest and b) it’s an odd fetish to be sure. But it’s worth noting to Becky this feels the equivalent of seeing someone’s bare chest or genitals.
She’s seeing this as a sex thing to see Dina’s head. It’s something she’s sexually craving and will bring her sexual pleasure to see. And to try and use deception to get something sexual for someone else, even if they do not see it as sexual as well, is NOT OKAY.
Not even a little bit and if Becky were to succeed in her goal it would be something majorly bad, an act of if not sexual assault, certainly sexual manipulation and nonconsensual behavior. Hell, even the act of trying is creepy as fuck and essentially equivalent to a creepy dude trying to trick a naive girl into taking off her top so he can perv at her.
And that’s disappointing because Becky was frickin’ amazing at consent for a time, respecting boundaries, never pushing for more even though she wanted, never using emotional manipulation. So to see her bombing at it now is severely disappointing.
And I get why she’s slipping. She’s been through hell this weekend and is in desperate need of closeness and intimacy with her girlfriend to feel connected to this world and out of that nightmare as well as the nightmare of Ruth and Billie’s suicidal ideation.
She’s had terrible experiences with intimate moments with girls in the past and so asking for that likely feels like risking something going really really wrong. She’s also been raised all her life to believe that asking for sex or sexual things is the literal worst thing any girl could do.
And most of all, her only secular experience with how “normal” people do sexy stuff are sitcoms. And sitcoms are very close to the worst things in the world for showing good consensual practices with regards to seeking intimacy. But it’s what Becky believes “secular” people do when they want to “move to a new phase of the relationship” as it were. And so, like many idiot romantics before her, she needs to be dissuaded of that notion and fast.
And finally, it makes sense because she’s scared. Dina is a wonderful thing that’s happened to her, but I doubt Becky really believes she fully deserves her and so is terrified of asking her for what she wants because she’s terrified she’ll say no or think it’s weird or gross or that Becky is weird or gross.
But despite all that, she needs to use her words, because trying to manipulate a partner into something so you don’t have to ask is never okay and Becky needs to stop it.
On top of all this, which is absolutely spot on, let’s remember the immense value Dina places on honesty, guilting Sarah into being forthright with the “you’re Becky’s rebound” thing and scolding her–calling it a betrayal–when Sarah lies about being lonely. (This is, I think, also where a good chunk of her outrage over fundamentalist pseudoscience comes from, that same need for everything to be clear and straightforward.) and the reason Dina holds lying in such disdain is because it makes it harder for her to parse the world, which is already a demonstratively difficult task for her and one that can overwhelm her at times.
So on top of being a violation of sexual consent, trying to manipulate Dina period is one of the worst things you can do to her.
Dina places immense value, also, on people being forthright and direct with her. When Sarah wants her to go away, she tells Dina to go away, and Dina can respect that boundary because it’s been stated in a way that Dina can receive it.
Speaking as an adult-diagnosed autistic who was undiagnosed for my undergrad degree, finding someone who comes out and says what they want from you is amazingly helpful. Because with everyone else, it’s like you’re playing charades, but everyone else gets to see the charade and you can only hear them if they make noises but you still have to figure out what they are. People seeing the charade will still screw it up occasionally – but usually not as badly as you, and definitely not as often as you.
Becky has been around Dina long enough to know Dina likes directness. And long enough to know that it’s not really fair to expect Dina to pick up on hints.
And that’s without even going into the creep-factor of trying to trick your partner into satisfying your kink.
Yeah. The worse part is she really has nothing to worry about. Dina isn’t going to judge her for it or say it’s weird. It’s also a shame she isn’t close with Dorothy as well. If she’d been there for that conversation with Joyce this morning, I imagine she would’ve said “Becky, just talk to her about it”
I really hope she’ll see how this is another consent screwup and be horrified by it before she actually succeeds and damages their relationship.
I think in Becky’s case it’s the problem of “the skills that let me survive then won’t let me thrive now.” We’ve seen this also with Joyce and her inability to make peace with her sexuality.
Joyce and Becky were both brought up in extremely sexually repressed environments – Becky with an emotionally and, likely, physically abusive father and Joyce with an emotionally abusive mother and an enabler father. Both of them very likely received hard and fast chastisement if they displayed anything even remotely sexual. I was brought up in a secular but similarly-repressed household, and I can say from experience that everything is policed, from what underwear you wear (plain white briefs only – daring to buy patterned underpants got the nth degree about who I wanted to show them to, when nah I just wanted to be able to separate out mine from everyone else’s – and God help you if you mistakenly bought a package with a black pair!) to whether you wear shorts and if so how long they are (during the short-shorts fad of the late 90s/early00s, I started buying shorts from the mens’ section because I didn’t want to be called a slut by my mother – and when I bought boys’ shorts she then started harassing me about wearing mens’ clothing and how inappropriate it was etc and calling me “he” in a derogatory sense if I was wearing mens’ shorts) to how you sit (if you’re a “lady,” you don’t sit cross-legged or with your knees apart because it’s “too much of an invitation”) to who you touch when and how and for how long (I once got shit for holding a male classmate’s hand in a class photo – boys “only want one thing” and you “don’t want them to think you’ll just throw it at them”) to how long you’re allowed to look at a man, even if he’s talking directly to you (looking too long was apparently giving him “bedroom eyes”).
To survive in that environment, Becky learned to be oblique about her sexuality and never approach the topic directly. Unfortunately, it’s left her with a reflexive anxiety about sexuality and sexual thoughts which is making it really difficult for her to approach this situation directly (something I know from experience and am still working on in my late 20s). This in turn makes her approach the subject indirectly, in a way Dina can’t receive the signals and is not comfortable with.
I see Dina and Becky having their first real fight over this if it continues.
So, if you go back two strips and do a word-search on “motherfucking goddess”, you’ll then see ety inflating my ego to such proportions that I might end up floating away…
…But really, though, ety’s comments gave me a silly little thought. I was thinking that maybe one day you and I could try and set up for doing some sort of podcast thing where we use a decent voice chat program to discuss random aspects of this comic (and possibly other things). Maybe even have some other people join in too.
Now, I reckon that you probably have more than enough on your plate in life to do this. Or you are simply not that interested in the idea. And I’ll be up front, I’m not sure it’ll last for long either. I am not that good at keeping up a project over a long period of time… Though that might be a bit different if I have a partner.
It is true that Cerberus was also a recipient of your praise, and rightfully so. I was simply too absorbed with making an ego joke to make this clear. Now, since Cerberus has faaaaaaaar less of an ego than I do, it wouldn’t feel right to make her part of that joke.
But I still should have mentioned her getting praise in some form. I did not. My fault.
I think you’re dead on. The only relationship experience she has is through a few G rated sitcoms (I’m not even sure she would be allowed to watch PG ones), a few fairy tales, and interacting with people who were super fundamental and thus less likely to engage in PDA. She had it drilled in her since childhood that a wife submits to her husband, that she was meant for only a degree in education so she could better school all the babies she would pop out one day, and that sexual interaction outside of marriage is wrong much less the kind she is interested in. She is having to either learn or relearn everything short of how to use a toilet. Her talk with Dina earlier trying to figure out what is true and false shows that. This is another one of those things she has to learn: How to be in a relationship. And maybe how to adult, but most of the cast currently is learning that one.
I wonder if Becky is starting to see this as more than just getting Dina to talk off her hat? She’s lost so much recently that she has to be aching for something she accomplished on her own. Like “Hey I did something even if it was just getting my girlfriend to take of her hat!”. It might have started out as a sexual thing, but now it’s spiraling into her frantically grasping at straws trying anything – no matter how stupid – to not have to say she failed again like she feels she has at everything else and can’t even accomplish a simple goal.
I’m also not crazy about her continued attempts this publicly… Like… This is an intimacy, Becky. You don’t want her pulling off the hat where a dozen other random people will also see. Go back to her room later, just the two of you, tell her what it would mean to you for her to take her hat off for you, and ask her to do so.
If you’re lucky, perhaps she will do it timed to the Jurassic Park theme in the background.
Actually, I’m calling it. That is how this arc will end. Becky FINALLY asking Dina straight up, Dina smiling, we see a closed door with a sock on the handle and Amber being all “the Jurassic Park theme?”
I feel like part of Becky’s insistence has to do with not seeing it as an intimate thing*, even though it’s sexual to her, and that’s part of the problem.
* part because lack of relationship experience but also because even very well adjusted people can have trouble with that- it’s not like hiding her head is religious, practically everyone walks around without a hat, etc. foot fetishism is a good example to counter that sort of logic
Yup. A few failed attempts were cute, but it’s getting more and more creepy. Again, to me this looks a lot like a teenager being nagged into showing her boobs.
ASKING Dina to show her head, and her deciding to do it, WOULD be the “next physical step”. This is NOT it. This is just Becky looking for a glimpse of forbidden fruit.
At least she continues to fail hilariously, so that’s something at least.
I just wanted to add I’m loving everyone’s additions and I agree with all of it, it being an intimacy not for public, her getting a bit creepy with it, the desire to not feel like a failure and connect with her loved one, the value Dina places on honesty, and how okay Dina would be if Becky just used her words instead of trying to be all sneaky.
I think calling it sexual assault is a bit much, especially if it’s not sexual to Dina. It’s like someone with a foot fetish trying to get someone else to wear sandals so they can see their toes. Sure, it’s not entirely honest and borderline creepy, but still rather meh
someone with a foot fetish trying to get someone to wear sandals so they could see their toes? that’d be pretty creepy, dude. if i discovered that the reason my friend kept suggesting a beach trip to me is so he could store up some masturbatory fodder of my bare feet without me realizing it, i’d be pretty fucking pissed off at that friend.
least he could’ve done was ASKED me if he could spank it to my feet. >:(
as a person with a foot fetish, you’re going to be unconsciously presented with things that you enjoy seeing fairly frequently, and there’s no real harm in just quietly, unobtrusively observing and remembering.
the second you start subtly manipulating the situation so that it happens more often or in specific ways, now you’re being gross. before, you were just innocently watching and remembering, now you’re playing puppet master to try and get off. DON’T DO IT, KIDS.
As always, this was a great read and I think you really captured a lot of what’s motivating Becky into pursuing this through wacky shenanigans.
One of the more negative interpretations of this, I think, is that Becky might just assume Dina wouldn’t understand her reasoning, the way other cast members have demeaned her for being short and not using contractions and being overwhelmed in social situations.
What makes this “okay” for me is that the situation is silly enough that it’s hard not to laugh (as Bagge pointed out, this would be so much worse if Becky was lusting after Dina’s boobs), and that every time Becky tries something the universe itself conspires against her, to the point of having two internet comments materialize in real life to start arguing over her. I think this will end up someplace bad, though, and with Becky needing to confront a lot of the baggage about romance she’s accrued from her upbringing.
I mean, on the one hand, it’s just a fucking hat. A hat!
But on the other, it represents much more for Becky…
Interestingly enough, the further this goes the less I get the sexual vibes. By now I get the feeling that Becky is just trying to get Dina to remove her hat just to say she managed to do it. I think that when she gets to see it, if she does, she’ll wonder just why was she trying so hard.
Hopefully she does learn how it’s wrong to manipulate someone you care about, specially the one girl that has told her straight to her face she likes when things are crystal clear. Becky’s probably just gonna explode and confess at some point, I hope.
Because not only is she trying to manipulate Dina into something that is, if not sexual, then clearly at least an intimacy issue for Dina. She even sleeps with her head covered. She will clearly not take off the hat for just anyone.
So Becky isn’t just crossing Dina’s personal boundaries, she’s crossing them in the absolute worst place to cross them.
I interpreted it as neither intimate nor sexual for Dina, but rather more of a security blanket type thing. A matter of comfort in uncomfortable situations, which as we have seen includes most social/public action/interaction for her.
I mean as a result, inherently, being comfortable with a person without it would, in fact, be an act of intimacy, but I guess I just see that as a little bit different in theme than what seems to be implied by most commenters.
I’m just now realizing that anytime we’ve seen her “without” the hat on (in particular the time with Ethan and the hoodie) the hat she wasn’t wearing could totally just have been her spare and she could have continued to wear her hat under the hoodie.
Okay, that semi-humorous thought aside, I’d like to add that I don’t think it’s even specifically the “Hat” that provides her comfort (though the hat does appear to have some additional significance), but it’s the hat’s dinosaur nature, hence the hoodie/hat need negation.
I could definitely be forgetting or missing additional context to this that would change everything. Just my thoughts at the moment.
Am I going to be the first person to wonder about random unenrolled people repeatedly taking up space in a biology laboratory class? I don’t know about Indiana, but that sort of thing didn’t fly at Illinois when I went there. (Now in giant lecture halls, sure, you could get away with that, but in a lab? Not likely.)
She might be kicked out in the next strip, but I’m still surprised they’d even try it….Then again, this is Becky….
It’s less unlikely now that the whole thing with Ross is out in the open. Becky’s unorthodox presence may currently be being tolerated in lieu of ‘something being arranged’.
Incidentally, “nitpicker” is not really a good choice of term for stating that someone is being waaay too overzealous about getting trivial details right, considering how picking nits properly is important if you want to get rid of lice.
Becky, why not just be upfront with Dina about your strange fetish? Take it from me. It’s always best to let your partner in early on these things. If not, you’ll either end up very frustrated (and this is where cheating usually happens), or it ends in a messy break-up because the other partner can’t handle it and it’ll be so much more painful when you’ve got long amounts of shared memories and feelings invested.
I think fear of a break-up might be underlying her indirectness. In Becky’s situation she might not see much difference between breaking up with Dina and the end of the world.
I do admire how the universe aligns with Becky’s wishes. She decided that the proper way to address this situation was with SHENANIGANS!!!!
Enter Dina’s spare hat, head-spiders, a greek chorus of nitpickers and Reginald, Fudging Duke of Fudging Thingley and there are ALL THE SHENANIGANS!!!!
When I think about it, this might be a comforting situation for Dina. Social interactions are HARD and by now maybe even she has picked up that Becky wants something that she is not saying. It would be so much easier if there were clearly stated rules…
THE “WELL ACTUALLY DUDES” TO THE RESQUE!!!! HERE ARE THE RULES, all we have to figure out is which one applies.
I guess I’m just totally lost on the definition of mansplaining. Isn’t it supposed to be, like, capitalizing on a woman’s mistake/assuming it’s wrong because obviously she is a dumb female? Was Chik-Fil-A guy mansplaining at Becky when he told her that he could work there despite being gay?
Also Becky is trying to manipulate Dina into taking her hat off soooo I’m okay with randos um actuallying her plan to ruin.
Actually, I never called it mansplaining or said it was bad, so technically I’m not wrong 🙂
Honestly, I think they are hilarious, but their behavior is on a scale can just as easily tip over to annoying, or even problematic. Compare the Bros from Questionable Content.
Yup. A good rule of thumb is to ask how much space the original participant of the conversation have after the “Well actually guys” enter. Note how none of them care about what Becky is saying once they start to talk to each other, and how neither Becky nor Dina are important for their conversation.
Granted, what Becky tried to say was stupid, but they still took her conversation with Dina and turned it into their conversation.
(Sideshow Bob looks in, rolls his eyes, and says, “No, that should read: ‘hātters gonna hāt’; you see, the macron over the ‘a’ indicates that the vowel is long, and — GAH! WHY DO YOU MUTANT FREAKS HAVE FIVE FINGERS?!?!”)
Well there were tetrapods from about 360 million years ago having six, seven and eight digits but five digits got linked with a set of mutations involved in the evolution of sophisticated wrist and ankle joints about 340 million years ago before the amphibians got separated out and well before birds, mammals, and reptiles split out. Which is why most species of jawed vertebrates have five digits on their hands and feet. So yeah, descendants of mutant freaks.
Most species of jawed vertebrates? Leaving out the fish, most are birds, which don’t have five digits on their wings or feet. Neither do amphibian hands or ungulate feet. By now, our 5-on-each is definitely unusually high.
Birds have five digits, two just disappear leaving three. It was the dinosaurs that started it by disappearing one of their digits. Amphibians lose their thumbs but reptiles don’t. Ungulates are weird anyway cause once you have hooves it doesn’t matter so much how many digits you have. But we didn’t say most jawed vertebrates, we said most species of jawed vertebrates, where each distinct species counts once. So yeah, most.
If you’re having fun being pedantic with me, I’m afraid I don’t understand the last bit. From what I can find the jawed vertebrates include over 35000 species of fish, 10000 birds, 10000 non-avian reptiles, 7000 amphibians, and 5000 mammals.
All the birds and amphibians have lost digits, and a good 3000 of the reptiles are snakes so don’t count. So am I missing something if I think fewer have the full 20 fingers and toes than not?
Well, we all like different things. Not liking something is nothing to be ashamed of. I’m sure you’re a very nice person with a well developed sense of humor anyway.
It would make my year if Dina turns out to be the one to initiate physical intimacy. Especially if she does it in that straightforward way the alt-text implies.
I feel like Becky makes it not private, though–she addresses the whole room twice in panel three, not to mention the singing. Admittedly she did not ask people to confirm her views on hat rules, but she did ask them to pay attention to her, and they did.
Look. Look at that private conversation between two women, one of whom has addressed you all – TWICE – and then began full on singing in the classroom.
I want it to be like Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football. Try as she might, Becky is never going to see what’s under the hat. Running gag through the entire strip, and then when they graduate, Dina finally takes off her hat…
…and we don’t get to see what it’s like under there, because she’s already wearing her graduation cap under her dinosaur one.
To be fair, it’s not like that’s normal for Becky. She was scared out of her wits and her entire life was crumbling, so she built a narrative where she’d run to Joyce and she’d be safe and in love forever. When Joyce revealed that she had been attacked at the party the first thing Becky did was compare that kiss to what happened to Joyce and furiously apologize.
Like, no, it wasn’t okay, but it wasn’t Ruth slamming Billie into a wall and jamming her tongue down her throat.
I get the feeling that you’re talking about their kiss. I’m not – I’m talking about the strips following that in which Becky joked about getting intimate with Joyce, because she found it so much fun when Joyce got all uncomfortable and flustered.
Well, yeah, I kinda agree with that. I still maintain that Becky just really didn’t understand the severity of those comments towards Joyce until finding out what had happened, but it’s fair to hold that against her, I think.
This is the strip I remember with that, and…not so much with the apologizing. (No, Joyce’s behavior in that strip is also not okay.) That said, I don’t remember Becky saying anything like that afterward, and she checks to make sure Joyce is okay with hugging even before knowing about Ryan. I tend to chalk it up to post-trauma emotional tailspin.
That (the first link) isn’t her flirting with Joyce or even pretend flirting. Joyce was still working on accepting Becky as a lesbian, and that was Joyce’s problem. Becky doesn’t need to apologize to Joyce just because she still thought girls kissing was ooky and gross.
Not to mention that “scandalizing” Joyce the way she is in that comic has been part of their friendship dynamic for years. If it was an actual problem for Joyce, they would not be friends. Becky knows Joyce well enough that she doesn’t nudge Joyce so far from her comfort zone that it actually stresses her out.
Becky doesn’t need to apologize to Joyce for openly being a lesbian. She should apologize for saying “shocking you is totally a turn-on for me” and then following it up with describing Joyce in sexualizing language. (And in fact I tend to include it under her “sorry for everything” here, but that’s pure personal interpretation.) Becky being sexual is fine; Becky talking about her sexual reaction to Joyce when Joyce has made it clear that she’s not interested is not. And the fact that Becky pushing Joyce’s buttons is a part of their dynamic doesn’t mean that she’s incapable of ever crossing the line and making Joyce genuinely uncomfortable, especially when the element of sexuality has just been thrown into the mix for the first time.
Like I said, this is the only time she says anything like that to Joyce–even though she still has feelings for her–so I assume once the initial “I can totally talk about this stuff out loud!” high wore off a bit she realized she’d been overdoing it.
Ok, so, wait a sec, I’ve been rereading the comic (er… I started rereading weeks ago, then paused for a while, and reread a bunch more today) and I came across this. Doesn’t it kind of screw up the “always now” thing that DoA’s got goin’ on? Like, when someone reads this in a few years that’s gonna be a bit too old right?
When the next civilization rises from the ashes and discovers this website floating around the shattered remnants of the internet, Billie’s gonna be like four hundred and seven based on that ID.
Thinking on this a bit too much… what if Dina’s hat was part of a wig? For whatever reason she was really bald… I know its an odd idea. She probably just really likes wearing the hat.
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so according to these rules, remove hat? Y/N
beckys plans to get that hat off – another one bites the dust, another one bites the dust, and another one down, another one down, and another one down. Another one bites the dust!
I honestly don’t know.
FREE HAT! FREE HAT!
Nope. The hat may stay. Becky’s just gonna have to get in the shower or give Dina a haircut or be straightforward about it.
I like that straightforward plan.
Woah, woah. Let’s not get too crazy, now.
Dina wears her hat in the shower.
technically, it’s kinda two hats/caps?
Well Dina has the best fashion sense out of the cast so I think her’s falls under “Fashion Hat”
It also falls under the “obstructing someone else’s vision” category. Rip that sucker off!
MAN I am bad at these stupid friggin’ things…
Specifically, Becky’s view of Dina’s head.
Its hard to disagree with that fact.
every hat is a fashion hat if you try hard enough
Except beanies.
Beanies are never fashionable.
Or hats with earflaps.
fuck are you two on about they are the MOST fashionable hats
Surely not more fashionable than a Royal Guard’s bearskin hat?
Now, why you gotta bring those up? That ain’t fair, bruh.
If Dina wore one of those, she could probably hide in it like a hermit crab.
A Deer Stalker hat is unfashionable? Does Cumberbatch know about this?
Cumberbatch does not have to submit to the fashion rules of us mere mortals.
Deerstalker hats were never fashionable. Like the name suggests, they were usually worn by hunters or outdoorsmen. The deerstalker was the camo-pattern baseball cap of its time.
Holmes only wore his outside the metropolis.
I still think Becky should just ask her normally.
Oh definitely. But points for creativity.
Look at this lameo, thinking being direct and not archaic is the way to be in a relationship, let’s all point and laugh
Everyone knows relationships are made up of crazy sitcom-style schemes!
WWJTD?
(What Would Jack Tripper Do?)
We’ve a loveable space that needs your FAAAAAAAAAAACE
…. okay, I hadn’t thought of it before, but there is probably at least one couple (or more populated relationship) somewhere with exactly that kink.
Per the principles of Quantum Fetish Mechanics, if there wasn’t before, there is now.
…..
….. this is too much power for me to have.
p… p… p… peanut butter?
10 to 1 odds it comes up in Winston NSFW Overwatch stuff.
This notwithstanding eating food off of people has been a thing for a /while/, and someone must like peanut butter enough to center it on /that/.
Again, this comic isn’t called SENSIBLING of Age.
Although that would probably be a significantly less-terrible name.
That sounds like the Japanese knock-off that focuses on the adventures of Sal and Walky.
I obviously spend too much time online. :/
While I agree with you in spirit, in practice there is NO WAY to ask “could you take off your hat for me ‘cuz the thought of what you got under there is making me horny” normally.
I had not thought of that
True, but it’s basically no normal (or maybe “casual” is a better word?) way to ask the same thing about shirts or bras or pants for the first time either.
On the other hand, there -are- classier ways than saying it makes you horny.
“Dina, you’re a great person, and you make my life better every day, and I hesitate to ask… But I would like it very much if you could take your hat off for me…”
(Sorry for the pedantry. Fart Captor has been too agreeable lately, so now I must disagree with everyone else instead. So blame FC!)
And the way Becky is trying to trick Dina into doing something she might not be okay with is really not cool. It also hits hard for me, seeing as I had something like that happen to me on Friday.
Man, that sucks.
I’m so sorry to hear that. I hope you have a peaceful recovery from that and hang in there until then.
With any other girl? Totes.
But it’s Dina. She has no sense of what is “normal” and likes the aspects of Becky that are outside the norm. If Becky were to ask directly, Dina would likely respond positively, but she’s going to have to ask.
And it’s understandable why she is hesitant to do that. She’s been raised her whole life to believe that only the most slatternly and diseased women ask for sexual things. Hint, sure, in the fullness of marriage, but outright state that they have sexual desires they would like met? Nope.
And while she’s thrown away a lot of the baggage, that’s still a hell of a lot different than actually living what throwing away that baggage might mean. Especially when her previous experiences with attempted intimacy blew up painfully.
That all said, girl needs to use her words.
I dunno, if she did we couldn’t get Joyce basically saying “calm ur thirst” and “um, actually” guys ultimately doing something /actually good/.
Well, I gotta hand it to her, that’s one of the more creative ways of trying to get someone to remove their hat.
I choose to believe those guys are members of the official campus hat society. That’s a thing, right?
I choose to believe that Willis is channeling members of the comment section.
Patriotism club. Irresistibly attracted to any conversation involving The Star-Spangled Banner.
Oh, thus be it ever
When free men shall stand…
Wherever would we be without random dudes butting into conversations to prove how smart they are?
They are the unspoken heroes of our time.
Except, of course, that they speak.
A lot.
Oh gods, I’m one of them, aren’t I? NOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Some place blessedly private and filled with peaceful quiet.
…. or alternatively without reception and filled with screaming.
Well actually, they’re not really “random”. They’re just dudes we don’t know who happened to be near by
So, “Random, but with some observation bias thrown in so it’s not fair-die random?”
Well played, well played
Yeah, Becky did call out to the rest of the room and catch some attention with her announcement of an impromptu anthem. Stands to reason that if people with an internet connection and a fondness for trivia and the spreading thereof note that, they’re going to pile into the conversation.
Sorta mansplainers to the rescue!
The “Well, actually…” guys SAVES THE DAY!!!!
I for one hope they will be regular. We could use some healthy competition in the comment section.
I misread that as “comment sextion” at first. Which is what they should have in Slipshine.
Are they mansplainers or just geeks? Not all “well, actually”s said by males to females count as mansplaining.
Because I’m pretty sure these guys would have responded exactly the same way if the conversation they overheard had been between two men instead of two women. It’s more the “Someone is wrong on the internet!” factor, except it’s “Someone is wrong while standing next to me!”
I’m not necessarily seeing the condescension that I would normally associate with “mansplaining,” but that could definitely just be my reading of it. I don’t know.
As long as they aren’t creepy guys attracted to the hatless woman.
Which is why I said “sorta” mansplainers in my joke, because it lacks the central quality of a proper mansplainer, that of ignorantly explaining something inaccurately to a woman who is much more of an expert in that field or much more knowledgable.
But it definitely does have some qualities like that such as barging into a conversation to add knowledge the person does not actually have (both reference articles they just pulled up from their phones rather than actual bases of knowledge). As well as thinking their additions would be wanted in a private discussion between women whether asked for or not.
So, sorta mansplainers.
I’m not sure what exactly is private about making a scene by trying to lead the class in singing the national anthem, but okay.
They’re just reference librarians in training. Answering questions, even rhetorical ones? It’s what they do.
Yes, but what if there were no rhetorical questions?
English literature would be vastly different.
You are just trying to make my head explode, aren’t you?
How does that make you feel?
You’ve just described the comments section of this comic. PERFECTLY.
*plays Jackson Browne’s “For America” on the hacked Muzak*
Okay Becky, this continues to be adorable, but STAHP!
Also, put the hat back on
Definitely!
Nice try, Becky.
I can’t tell if Becky is trying, or just being trying.
Yes.
Is she Becky or More Becky?
Sorry, my Beckometer is out for annual calibration.
Mine broke a couple of years ago, when Becky was first introduced. I haven’t bothered fixing it. It’ll just overload again.
I thought I had mine calibrated, but then this happened:
http://allbuttseverywhereallthetime.tumblr.com/post/149113478637/totallyfixedthis
(Note: contains a level of awesome unmeasurable by any method known to science)
My first thought upon re-seeing that was “How’d you get dino-hat Becky before we were given dino-hat Becky?” but then I realized my mistake.
Totally ‘shopped. I can tell because of the pixels
NOT PIXELS ENOUGH
Much like Walky, her default setting is both.
+1
I vote for a huge Bald SpotTM.
Either that or Becky discovers not knowing was so much better.
It was the mystery that made it so appealing in the first place. What she really needs is a hat removal tease that never shows what she wants to see.
I mean, we already know there are spiders under there.
And of course the spiders have to live on something, so we can posit an entire ecology.
Relevant Questionable Content link
http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3322
I did not know there were even rules to that.
Oh, hell yeah. For example, gentlemen should never wear a hat indoors. The only exception I know of is when “under arms” (carrying a weapon). Of course, that’s behavior ingrained in from the military; I’ve noticed many civilians don’t give a damn about things that (at least at one time) were considered “proper etiquette” or tradition. Kind of like the “don’t wear white after Labor Day” thing, which I think was invented by New York City High Society types)
There’s so many rules about hats, oh my goodness.
New rule! All rules related to hats do not apply!
*logic as we know it implodes*
……. hmm. Guess we shouldn’t be messing with the hat rules, then.
I approve this rule. I got no problem with logic implosions.
But that rule doesn’t apply, either, so the other rules end up applying again.
That’s why logic implosions suck.
Implosions always suck.
I see what you did there.
Won the Internet?
Huh, I wasn’t aware of the ‘under arms’ rule, but I just sorta internalized it. I got most of by hat etiquette by osmosis from my Dad – whenever people wear hats indoors, I get twitchy, because a part of me insists that it’s somehow Wrong.
The other exception to the rule about gentlemen doffing hats indoors is that one ought to wear rather than carry ones hat in an elevator.
As for not wearing white after Labor Day, I thought that applied only to white shoes.
Also it doesn’t apply in public spaces, such as stores.
Theatres, though, fall under the “obstructing view” rule and therefore hats must be removed in such cases, despite being in a public space.
Elevators count as sidewalks for purposes of hat rules.
OK, Becky, at first it was only slightly creepy and mostly cute.
Now it’s getting more creepy* and less cute.
At the same time, I will say this: If someone would tell you in clear words why you shouldn’t be doing this, I’m pretty sure you’d actually listen and realise what you did wrong, and then stop doing it.
I hope someone does that soon before you cross a line of trust that cannot easily be mended.
*Not helped by the fact that I have a certain aversion to national anthems and the people most likely to “spontaneously” sing them in public.
This.
I get that it’s setting up a running gag, but I’m really hoping it will end with Becky getting exasperated, learning to use her words and just ask rather than continuing to try and manipulate Dina into something Becky views as sexual.
And that’s especially frustrating because she seemed to be doing really well on boundaries before after fucking up so spectacularly with Joyce and learning what happened to Joyce and so I’d really like to see her stop before she goes any further down this road of non-consent.
On the other hand, sexy hi-jinks. I’m really interested in seeing what Dina makes of all this.
Becky comes from a culture that teaches people to believe a woman’s body belongs to whatever man owns her at the time (hence Toedad’s statement that she would be regrowing her hair now that he had her back). It’s going to take her a while to get to the point where hats and other accessories are seen as an extension of the self.
Yes, Dina, fashion hat. Warning others that you are in fact three atrociraptors is the height of modern fashion.
Dina’s hat is the most fashionable
Always.
Technically, aren’t atrociraptors always “under arms” because of their teeth and claws?
If they have teeth and claws under their arms, then all bets are off and they can wear hats wherever they like.
What the hell, Becky?
Becky has yet to learn that co-opting patriotism for your own ends is generally the province anti-lgbt parties.
Well… consider her origins.
So said “come-on” line is totes gonna be the title of a Slipshine eventually, right?
Okay, seriously though, while this IS creative, this is also seriously not okay. Someone needs to explain that to Becky now.
Seconded
Even Dina is bound to figure out something is up soon and ask Becky what is going on.
If she doesn’t fess up I’m gonna be SO MAD at her
I don’t think she’ll be mad, though. Not full on mad. She’ll be irritated but also confused, and will ask Becky directly what the hell she’s doing. (Maybe not those exact words.)
Becky will confess what’s really going on, Dina will still be irritated and say that she prefers directness to that sort of round-about approach and again ask what the hell she’s doing.
Becky will confess that she was very very nervous and scared and that tap-dancing around it was a fear reaction. Dina will make some comment about that being basic animal behavior and say that Becky didn’t need to be afraid, and then take her hat off.
Becky will struggle to avoid swooning.
Dina will then ask if there’s any other clothing that Becky wants her to take off. Cue swoon and/or Slipshine. Hilariously sex-clueless Slipshine.
Reltzik, just because I like crushing people’s hopes for fun and profit: Word of god has stated that the level of intimacy is going to progress so slowly between Dina and Becky, that your Slipshine wish -might- come true….
…in 2070.
It’s not so much a wish, as a scenario shared for silliness-value.
…. also, explain how you profit from that. I want in on that action.
He collects a nickle from Mike every time he crushes someone’s hopes and dreams.
Wait, you mean dozens of sitcoms are wrong?
NOT WRONG ENOUGH
Are you suggesting Becky doesn’t respect people’s boundries? *shock*
She absolutely respects people’s boundary’s. It’s just that sometimes she has a little trouble recognizing them. This kind in particular.
IS the hat a boundary for Dina, though? The problem here is deception and lack of openness, not that she’s pushing Dina for something she’s unwilling to provide. (Or is she? We don’t know.)
The hat isn’t the boundary being crossed here (as far as we know). It’s using deception to get what she wants from Dina.
It’s not super horrible, but Becky has more to learn about why what she’s doing isn’t okay.
This.
Though I would argue that using deception to get something sexual out of someone without their knowledgable consent is super horrible and the sooner Becky breaks with this creepy behavior, the better.
You are probably right. The fact that it’s sexual purely in Becky’s head makes me want to put less weight on it, but the fact that it could be worse don’t actually make it less bad.
Everything that’s sexy is sexy purely in someone’s head.
Clif: …. wait, including sex? Isn’t sex sexy simply by some sort of reflexive property?
Reltzik: Not for sex-repulsed ace people it isn’t
At least in this case, on someone’s head.
That too.
Reltzik and Fart Captor: Also not for non-ace people who have a low libido and aren’t terribly interested at the moment.
Actually, now that I think about it, there are lots of times sex isn’t sexy as a matter of course. 😐
But are those cases of sex not being sexy, or of sex being sexy but sexy being unwanted?
I haven’t even heard my countries nation anthem in like 16 years.
In a cave somewhere deep in the heart of flyover country, a red light shines on a colossal world map. A klaxon sounds. A fat guy in a stained a-shirt, camo-print sweatpants and a stars-and-stripes eagle baseball hat wakes from his nap and watches the light focus to a pinpoint on your coordinates.
“Looks like someone needs their daily dose… OF FREEDOM.”
I really should look it up, I used to know all three versions of it.
What *is* the national anthem for the planet of the time monkeys?
Ohh Caanadaa…
Becky you need to cool your jets.
The only thing that’s going to cool those jets is a cold shower.
Actually, maybe a shower (for two) would do the trick.
Otherwise, if everything else comes off… you could let her keep the hat – for that note of mystery.
Now I am picturing the DoA remake of the Lensman series. Not sure who would qualify besides Joyce and Dorothy though.
Oh definitely Mike, though we’re never quite sure if he’s an Arisian or Eddorian.
Mike might be a Palanian in a human suit.
Good point.
Man, you Yanks are weird.
You just now noticed?
Will Becky be able to get Dina to take off her hat?
Will Walky finally admit he has a problem at math and seek tutoring?
Will Amber reunite with Danny?
Tune in tomorrow…and the next one…and the next one!
Same Amazi-time!
Same Amazi-website!
On the next episode of … Soap!
And … what about Naomi?
She finally comes to term with the fact she will have to adopt grandchildren, but that doesn’t keep her from being bitter about it.
One way or another…
I’m gonna getchya, getchya, getchya, getchya…
DAMN YOU, EASY ACCESS TO THE INFORMATION FROM YOUR COMPUTER CONSOLE OR MOBILE DEVICE!!!
Comic Reactions:
Becky, girl, use your damn words!
Okay, I could go panel by panel, but I think the entire meat of it just rests in noting what a lot of other people are noting and that’s:
What Becky is doing is very not okay.
Sure, it’s somewhat amusing because a) she’s failing in her quest and b) it’s an odd fetish to be sure. But it’s worth noting to Becky this feels the equivalent of seeing someone’s bare chest or genitals.
She’s seeing this as a sex thing to see Dina’s head. It’s something she’s sexually craving and will bring her sexual pleasure to see. And to try and use deception to get something sexual for someone else, even if they do not see it as sexual as well, is NOT OKAY.
Not even a little bit and if Becky were to succeed in her goal it would be something majorly bad, an act of if not sexual assault, certainly sexual manipulation and nonconsensual behavior. Hell, even the act of trying is creepy as fuck and essentially equivalent to a creepy dude trying to trick a naive girl into taking off her top so he can perv at her.
And that’s disappointing because Becky was frickin’ amazing at consent for a time, respecting boundaries, never pushing for more even though she wanted, never using emotional manipulation. So to see her bombing at it now is severely disappointing.
And I get why she’s slipping. She’s been through hell this weekend and is in desperate need of closeness and intimacy with her girlfriend to feel connected to this world and out of that nightmare as well as the nightmare of Ruth and Billie’s suicidal ideation.
She’s had terrible experiences with intimate moments with girls in the past and so asking for that likely feels like risking something going really really wrong. She’s also been raised all her life to believe that asking for sex or sexual things is the literal worst thing any girl could do.
And most of all, her only secular experience with how “normal” people do sexy stuff are sitcoms. And sitcoms are very close to the worst things in the world for showing good consensual practices with regards to seeking intimacy. But it’s what Becky believes “secular” people do when they want to “move to a new phase of the relationship” as it were. And so, like many idiot romantics before her, she needs to be dissuaded of that notion and fast.
And finally, it makes sense because she’s scared. Dina is a wonderful thing that’s happened to her, but I doubt Becky really believes she fully deserves her and so is terrified of asking her for what she wants because she’s terrified she’ll say no or think it’s weird or gross or that Becky is weird or gross.
But despite all that, she needs to use her words, because trying to manipulate a partner into something so you don’t have to ask is never okay and Becky needs to stop it.
On top of all this, which is absolutely spot on, let’s remember the immense value Dina places on honesty, guilting Sarah into being forthright with the “you’re Becky’s rebound” thing and scolding her–calling it a betrayal–when Sarah lies about being lonely. (This is, I think, also where a good chunk of her outrage over fundamentalist pseudoscience comes from, that same need for everything to be clear and straightforward.) and the reason Dina holds lying in such disdain is because it makes it harder for her to parse the world, which is already a demonstratively difficult task for her and one that can overwhelm her at times.
So on top of being a violation of sexual consent, trying to manipulate Dina period is one of the worst things you can do to her.
Dina places immense value, also, on people being forthright and direct with her. When Sarah wants her to go away, she tells Dina to go away, and Dina can respect that boundary because it’s been stated in a way that Dina can receive it.
Speaking as an adult-diagnosed autistic who was undiagnosed for my undergrad degree, finding someone who comes out and says what they want from you is amazingly helpful. Because with everyone else, it’s like you’re playing charades, but everyone else gets to see the charade and you can only hear them if they make noises but you still have to figure out what they are. People seeing the charade will still screw it up occasionally – but usually not as badly as you, and definitely not as often as you.
Becky has been around Dina long enough to know Dina likes directness. And long enough to know that it’s not really fair to expect Dina to pick up on hints.
And that’s without even going into the creep-factor of trying to trick your partner into satisfying your kink.
Yeah. The worse part is she really has nothing to worry about. Dina isn’t going to judge her for it or say it’s weird. It’s also a shame she isn’t close with Dorothy as well. If she’d been there for that conversation with Joyce this morning, I imagine she would’ve said “Becky, just talk to her about it”
I really hope she’ll see how this is another consent screwup and be horrified by it before she actually succeeds and damages their relationship.
I think in Becky’s case it’s the problem of “the skills that let me survive then won’t let me thrive now.” We’ve seen this also with Joyce and her inability to make peace with her sexuality.
Joyce and Becky were both brought up in extremely sexually repressed environments – Becky with an emotionally and, likely, physically abusive father and Joyce with an emotionally abusive mother and an enabler father. Both of them very likely received hard and fast chastisement if they displayed anything even remotely sexual. I was brought up in a secular but similarly-repressed household, and I can say from experience that everything is policed, from what underwear you wear (plain white briefs only – daring to buy patterned underpants got the nth degree about who I wanted to show them to, when nah I just wanted to be able to separate out mine from everyone else’s – and God help you if you mistakenly bought a package with a black pair!) to whether you wear shorts and if so how long they are (during the short-shorts fad of the late 90s/early00s, I started buying shorts from the mens’ section because I didn’t want to be called a slut by my mother – and when I bought boys’ shorts she then started harassing me about wearing mens’ clothing and how inappropriate it was etc and calling me “he” in a derogatory sense if I was wearing mens’ shorts) to how you sit (if you’re a “lady,” you don’t sit cross-legged or with your knees apart because it’s “too much of an invitation”) to who you touch when and how and for how long (I once got shit for holding a male classmate’s hand in a class photo – boys “only want one thing” and you “don’t want them to think you’ll just throw it at them”) to how long you’re allowed to look at a man, even if he’s talking directly to you (looking too long was apparently giving him “bedroom eyes”).
To survive in that environment, Becky learned to be oblique about her sexuality and never approach the topic directly. Unfortunately, it’s left her with a reflexive anxiety about sexuality and sexual thoughts which is making it really difficult for her to approach this situation directly (something I know from experience and am still working on in my late 20s). This in turn makes her approach the subject indirectly, in a way Dina can’t receive the signals and is not comfortable with.
I see Dina and Becky having their first real fight over this if it continues.
Oof, yeah. I can definitely see how that would short-circuit Becky’s usual directness.
I really hope this doesn’t end up leading into their first fight
Oh, and Cerberus, while you’re here…
So, if you go back two strips and do a word-search on “motherfucking goddess”, you’ll then see ety inflating my ego to such proportions that I might end up floating away…
…But really, though, ety’s comments gave me a silly little thought. I was thinking that maybe one day you and I could try and set up for doing some sort of podcast thing where we use a decent voice chat program to discuss random aspects of this comic (and possibly other things). Maybe even have some other people join in too.
Now, I reckon that you probably have more than enough on your plate in life to do this. Or you are simply not that interested in the idea. And I’ll be up front, I’m not sure it’ll last for long either. I am not that good at keeping up a project over a long period of time… Though that might be a bit different if I have a partner.
Anyway, you know, just thought I’d ask.
Hmm, I think I’d be interested in that.
My safe email is cerberussadlyno AT gmail DOT com if you want to hit me up with more specific details.
Cerberus, you were absolutely a recipient of a significant portion of my praise, as well, there.
It’s a podcast I’d listen to, and I don’t listen to many.
same here
OK, I screwed up a bit on that comment.
It is true that Cerberus was also a recipient of your praise, and rightfully so. I was simply too absorbed with making an ego joke to make this clear. Now, since Cerberus has faaaaaaaar less of an ego than I do, it wouldn’t feel right to make her part of that joke.
But I still should have mentioned her getting praise in some form. I did not. My fault.
I think you’re dead on. The only relationship experience she has is through a few G rated sitcoms (I’m not even sure she would be allowed to watch PG ones), a few fairy tales, and interacting with people who were super fundamental and thus less likely to engage in PDA. She had it drilled in her since childhood that a wife submits to her husband, that she was meant for only a degree in education so she could better school all the babies she would pop out one day, and that sexual interaction outside of marriage is wrong much less the kind she is interested in. She is having to either learn or relearn everything short of how to use a toilet. Her talk with Dina earlier trying to figure out what is true and false shows that. This is another one of those things she has to learn: How to be in a relationship. And maybe how to adult, but most of the cast currently is learning that one.
I wonder if Becky is starting to see this as more than just getting Dina to talk off her hat? She’s lost so much recently that she has to be aching for something she accomplished on her own. Like “Hey I did something even if it was just getting my girlfriend to take of her hat!”. It might have started out as a sexual thing, but now it’s spiraling into her frantically grasping at straws trying anything – no matter how stupid – to not have to say she failed again like she feels she has at everything else and can’t even accomplish a simple goal.
I’m also not crazy about her continued attempts this publicly… Like… This is an intimacy, Becky. You don’t want her pulling off the hat where a dozen other random people will also see. Go back to her room later, just the two of you, tell her what it would mean to you for her to take her hat off for you, and ask her to do so.
If you’re lucky, perhaps she will do it timed to the Jurassic Park theme in the background.
Dum-dum-dum… dum-dum-dum… dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-DUUUUUUUUUUM *Hat’s come off.*
Yuuuuup, I can see that.
Actually, I’m calling it. That is how this arc will end. Becky FINALLY asking Dina straight up, Dina smiling, we see a closed door with a sock on the handle and Amber being all “the Jurassic Park theme?”
“And how did they get that piano all the way up here?”
I feel like part of Becky’s insistence has to do with not seeing it as an intimate thing*, even though it’s sexual to her, and that’s part of the problem.
* part because lack of relationship experience but also because even very well adjusted people can have trouble with that- it’s not like hiding her head is religious, practically everyone walks around without a hat, etc. foot fetishism is a good example to counter that sort of logic
Yup. A few failed attempts were cute, but it’s getting more and more creepy. Again, to me this looks a lot like a teenager being nagged into showing her boobs.
ASKING Dina to show her head, and her deciding to do it, WOULD be the “next physical step”. This is NOT it. This is just Becky looking for a glimpse of forbidden fruit.
At least she continues to fail hilariously, so that’s something at least.
I just wanted to add I’m loving everyone’s additions and I agree with all of it, it being an intimacy not for public, her getting a bit creepy with it, the desire to not feel like a failure and connect with her loved one, the value Dina places on honesty, and how okay Dina would be if Becky just used her words instead of trying to be all sneaky.
I think calling it sexual assault is a bit much, especially if it’s not sexual to Dina. It’s like someone with a foot fetish trying to get someone else to wear sandals so they can see their toes. Sure, it’s not entirely honest and borderline creepy, but still rather meh
dude
thats creepy as fuck
someone with a foot fetish trying to get someone to wear sandals so they could see their toes? that’d be pretty creepy, dude. if i discovered that the reason my friend kept suggesting a beach trip to me is so he could store up some masturbatory fodder of my bare feet without me realizing it, i’d be pretty fucking pissed off at that friend.
least he could’ve done was ASKED me if he could spank it to my feet. >:(
consider the following:
as a person with a foot fetish, you’re going to be unconsciously presented with things that you enjoy seeing fairly frequently, and there’s no real harm in just quietly, unobtrusively observing and remembering.
the second you start subtly manipulating the situation so that it happens more often or in specific ways, now you’re being gross. before, you were just innocently watching and remembering, now you’re playing puppet master to try and get off. DON’T DO IT, KIDS.
Wasn’t that an episode of Sex in the City?
As always, this was a great read and I think you really captured a lot of what’s motivating Becky into pursuing this through wacky shenanigans.
One of the more negative interpretations of this, I think, is that Becky might just assume Dina wouldn’t understand her reasoning, the way other cast members have demeaned her for being short and not using contractions and being overwhelmed in social situations.
What makes this “okay” for me is that the situation is silly enough that it’s hard not to laugh (as Bagge pointed out, this would be so much worse if Becky was lusting after Dina’s boobs), and that every time Becky tries something the universe itself conspires against her, to the point of having two internet comments materialize in real life to start arguing over her. I think this will end up someplace bad, though, and with Becky needing to confront a lot of the baggage about romance she’s accrued from her upbringing.
I mean, on the one hand, it’s just a fucking hat. A hat!
But on the other, it represents much more for Becky…
Interestingly enough, the further this goes the less I get the sexual vibes. By now I get the feeling that Becky is just trying to get Dina to remove her hat just to say she managed to do it. I think that when she gets to see it, if she does, she’ll wonder just why was she trying so hard.
Hopefully she does learn how it’s wrong to manipulate someone you care about, specially the one girl that has told her straight to her face she likes when things are crystal clear. Becky’s probably just gonna explode and confess at some point, I hope.
She will have that hat off one day…
I want this storyline to end.
Doesn’t it depends on how it ends?
No, it’s physically painful, like some 20’s burlesque slapstick movie.
Happy belated Halloween, Samhain, and Dia de los Muertos!
She wants her to remover her hat in public? For everyone to see?
Yes.
And that makes it even worse, doesn’t it?
Because not only is she trying to manipulate Dina into something that is, if not sexual, then clearly at least an intimacy issue for Dina. She even sleeps with her head covered. She will clearly not take off the hat for just anyone.
So Becky isn’t just crossing Dina’s personal boundaries, she’s crossing them in the absolute worst place to cross them.
Forget sleeping, according to Patreon, she showers in the damn thing. Or at least covers her hat with a shower cap before entering the stall.
I interpreted it as neither intimate nor sexual for Dina, but rather more of a security blanket type thing. A matter of comfort in uncomfortable situations, which as we have seen includes most social/public action/interaction for her.
I mean as a result, inherently, being comfortable with a person without it would, in fact, be an act of intimacy, but I guess I just see that as a little bit different in theme than what seems to be implied by most commenters.
I’m just now realizing that anytime we’ve seen her “without” the hat on (in particular the time with Ethan and the hoodie) the hat she wasn’t wearing could totally just have been her spare and she could have continued to wear her hat under the hoodie.
Okay, that semi-humorous thought aside, I’d like to add that I don’t think it’s even specifically the “Hat” that provides her comfort (though the hat does appear to have some additional significance), but it’s the hat’s dinosaur nature, hence the hoodie/hat need negation.
I could definitely be forgetting or missing additional context to this that would change everything. Just my thoughts at the moment.
None of that really changes the horrible nature of what Becky is trying to do, of course.
Now worried that Becky will get jealous when she learns that Dina once shared her hat with Ethan.
I wonder if Becky would apply Golden Lesbian rules to hat sharing.
Random shot in the dark; if we’ve never seen the top of Dina’s head, might she have alopecia? It might explain her behaviour.
Becky is desperate, need to control those urges …
Am I going to be the first person to wonder about random unenrolled people repeatedly taking up space in a biology laboratory class? I don’t know about Indiana, but that sort of thing didn’t fly at Illinois when I went there. (Now in giant lecture halls, sure, you could get away with that, but in a lab? Not likely.)
She might be kicked out in the next strip, but I’m still surprised they’d even try it….Then again, this is Becky….
It’s less unlikely now that the whole thing with Ross is out in the open. Becky’s unorthodox presence may currently be being tolerated in lieu of ‘something being arranged’.
Little does Becky know that Dina doesn’t simply just wear the hat. The hat wears her.
Hey, Alt-text. Don’t diss Dina’s game. That lined TOTALLY landed her Becky.
So, ‘biology’ is Dina’s ‘journalism’?
Yes.
*Cue Dina giving a three-hour-lecture of the difference between Biology and Journalism*
Dina is all “Dating is about as complicated as I expected.”
Becky and Dina can as well leave now. Those two dues will be at it all night (if they are lucky the find a way to “take the hat off”)
Battle of the nitpickers!
Incidentally, “nitpicker” is not really a good choice of term for stating that someone is being waaay too overzealous about getting trivial details right, considering how picking nits properly is important if you want to get rid of lice.
If there were any form of like/upvote anything here, this would get one from me.
On the contrary.
http://www.today.com/id/44378481/ns/today-today_health/t/no-more-nit-picking-new-fda-approved-treatment-promises-easier-way-defeat-lice/#.WBnni_krKUk
Personally, I prefer silicon oil. Much harder for the lice to evolve resistant against.
Pedants.
We do pedantry.
I ship it.
Shush, Becky! Those two guys are having far too much fun to stop now! Leave them to it!
That’s the dark side of the Internet, I guess. Sometimes there is a little too much information out there!
What do you mean too much information?
Now that’s pure, distilled evil…
You foiled yourself, my lord. You didn’t link to a specific article, so I didn’t get caught in the trap of tabbed browsing.
OK, so how about some 8-Bit Theater, then, Lipke?
No, no, no… damn as my mouse slowly inches closer to the link and I click despite knowing what awaits me.
SO
MANY
TAAAAAAAABS
MOWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
*feels like Black Mage right now*
You know, Becky, maybe you should just ask her directly to remove her hat. That might work better.
Where’s the fun in that? 😉
Becky, why not just be upfront with Dina about your strange fetish? Take it from me. It’s always best to let your partner in early on these things. If not, you’ll either end up very frustrated (and this is where cheating usually happens), or it ends in a messy break-up because the other partner can’t handle it and it’ll be so much more painful when you’ve got long amounts of shared memories and feelings invested.
I think fear of a break-up might be underlying her indirectness. In Becky’s situation she might not see much difference between breaking up with Dina and the end of the world.
Becky stop itttt
I do admire how the universe aligns with Becky’s wishes. She decided that the proper way to address this situation was with SHENANIGANS!!!!
Enter Dina’s spare hat, head-spiders, a greek chorus of nitpickers and Reginald, Fudging Duke of Fudging Thingley and there are ALL THE SHENANIGANS!!!!
NOT SHENANIGANS ENOUGH
I like these guys. I want them to show up randomly when other characters have questions and argue about the details of the answer.
Internet commentators made flesh.
None of us have the slightest idea what you mean.
Well, let me Internetsplain…
I hope they get names! If this were Shortpacked!, they could be something like “Wilkie P. Diaz” and “Jehu Hansers”.
When I think about it, this might be a comforting situation for Dina. Social interactions are HARD and by now maybe even she has picked up that Becky wants something that she is not saying. It would be so much easier if there were clearly stated rules…
THE “WELL ACTUALLY DUDES” TO THE RESQUE!!!! HERE ARE THE RULES, all we have to figure out is which one applies.
I guess I’m just totally lost on the definition of mansplaining. Isn’t it supposed to be, like, capitalizing on a woman’s mistake/assuming it’s wrong because obviously she is a dumb female? Was Chik-Fil-A guy mansplaining at Becky when he told her that he could work there despite being gay?
Also Becky is trying to manipulate Dina into taking her hat off soooo I’m okay with randos um actuallying her plan to ruin.
Actually, I never called it mansplaining or said it was bad, so technically I’m not wrong 🙂
Honestly, I think they are hilarious, but their behavior is on a scale can just as easily tip over to annoying, or even problematic. Compare the Bros from Questionable Content.
You missed a golden opportunity to start that post with “um actually.”
I thought it would be too on the nose.
See? I CAN do subtle. 🙂
No, “Chik-Fil-A guy” was being honest and helpful, not condescending.
Yup. A good rule of thumb is to ask how much space the original participant of the conversation have after the “Well actually guys” enter. Note how none of them care about what Becky is saying once they start to talk to each other, and how neither Becky nor Dina are important for their conversation.
Granted, what Becky tried to say was stupid, but they still took her conversation with Dina and turned it into their conversation.
Hatters gonna hat.
(Sideshow Bob looks in, rolls his eyes, and says, “No, that should read: ‘hātters gonna hāt’; you see, the macron over the ‘a’ indicates that the vowel is long, and — GAH! WHY DO YOU MUTANT FREAKS HAVE FIVE FINGERS?!?!”)
Well there were tetrapods from about 360 million years ago having six, seven and eight digits but five digits got linked with a set of mutations involved in the evolution of sophisticated wrist and ankle joints about 340 million years ago before the amphibians got separated out and well before birds, mammals, and reptiles split out. Which is why most species of jawed vertebrates have five digits on their hands and feet. So yeah, descendants of mutant freaks.
Most species of jawed vertebrates? Leaving out the fish, most are birds, which don’t have five digits on their wings or feet. Neither do amphibian hands or ungulate feet. By now, our 5-on-each is definitely unusually high.
Birds have five digits, two just disappear leaving three. It was the dinosaurs that started it by disappearing one of their digits. Amphibians lose their thumbs but reptiles don’t. Ungulates are weird anyway cause once you have hooves it doesn’t matter so much how many digits you have. But we didn’t say most jawed vertebrates, we said most species of jawed vertebrates, where each distinct species counts once. So yeah, most.
If you’re having fun being pedantic with me, I’m afraid I don’t understand the last bit. From what I can find the jawed vertebrates include over 35000 species of fish, 10000 birds, 10000 non-avian reptiles, 7000 amphibians, and 5000 mammals.
All the birds and amphibians have lost digits, and a good 3000 of the reptiles are snakes so don’t count. So am I missing something if I think fewer have the full 20 fingers and toes than not?
Let’s not get mind control involved here…things are bad enough as is.
Becky is the coyote
Dina’s hat is the Road Runner.
We all know how that pans out
I’m not particularly fond of this arc
Well, we all like different things. Not liking something is nothing to be ashamed of. I’m sure you’re a very nice person with a well developed sense of humor anyway.
Alright I guess
Yeah, that didn’t read as funny as when I wrote it. Sorry.
No worries
Does anybody else get iPhone scam pop ups when they visit this site?
Under that hat is another hat
D’awww… Becky’s such a sitcom character. Totes adorbs.
Oh for God’s sake, just ASK her to remove her hat, then run your fingers through her silky black hair . . .
Don’t listen to him Becky. You can never rest until her head is mounted on your wall where you can enjoy it whenever you want.
What?
entire comment section slowly backs away
Until I said “And creating a nuisance.”
How do you do that “insta-jumping back 3-feet” thing?
It would make my year if Dina turns out to be the one to initiate physical intimacy. Especially if she does it in that straightforward way the alt-text implies.
This. Though year is likely to be decade or so.
*wince* Yep, men really do feel a need to interject themselves into any private conversation between women.
Way to go, jerks.
Perhaps, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility they are equal opportunity jerks.
I feel like Becky makes it not private, though–she addresses the whole room twice in panel three, not to mention the singing. Admittedly she did not ask people to confirm her views on hat rules, but she did ask them to pay attention to her, and they did.
It strikes me as overwhelmingly hilarious that you take issue with that but not using a slur for the developmentally disabled as a username.
Look. Look at that private conversation between two women, one of whom has addressed you all – TWICE – and then began full on singing in the classroom.
That’s outdated, anyway. The proper thing to do when they play the national anthem is to kneel towards Mecca.
…don’t actually do this, they might put you on a terrorist watchlist
Pssht, Becky’s clearly a foreign spy. Only foreign spies do stuff like singing the anthem and waving flags.
…this is getting very creepy.
Before this story arc, I hadn’t given it any thought, but now I really need to know what’s under Dina’s hat.
I want it to be like Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football. Try as she might, Becky is never going to see what’s under the hat. Running gag through the entire strip, and then when they graduate, Dina finally takes off her hat…
…and we don’t get to see what it’s like under there, because she’s already wearing her graduation cap under her dinosaur one.
yyyiiiiissssss
No no no, Dina finally takes off her hat and we cut to black like the last episode of the Sorpranos.
Thank god I wasn’t drinking my coffee just now, otherwise it would have gone up my nose.
i love Dina. there is not enough Dina in my life.
As usual, Becky gets progressively less charming as the concept wears on. 😛
Damn it, Becky, I am BARELY recovering from you harassing Joyce when you came back to the comic. Stop this, or you get the hose.
To be fair, it’s not like that’s normal for Becky. She was scared out of her wits and her entire life was crumbling, so she built a narrative where she’d run to Joyce and she’d be safe and in love forever. When Joyce revealed that she had been attacked at the party the first thing Becky did was compare that kiss to what happened to Joyce and furiously apologize.
Like, no, it wasn’t okay, but it wasn’t Ruth slamming Billie into a wall and jamming her tongue down her throat.
I get the feeling that you’re talking about their kiss. I’m not – I’m talking about the strips following that in which Becky joked about getting intimate with Joyce, because she found it so much fun when Joyce got all uncomfortable and flustered.
Ah.
Well, yeah, I kinda agree with that. I still maintain that Becky just really didn’t understand the severity of those comments towards Joyce until finding out what had happened, but it’s fair to hold that against her, I think.
She did that ONCE, though. Joyce made it clear it made her uncomfortable, and Becky stooped.
If I remember correctly, Joyce didn’t even have to say anything out loud, Becky caught her expression and immediately realized her mistake.
I might be forgetting, but I can’t think of any other times when she did that.
This is the strip I remember with that, and…not so much with the apologizing. (No, Joyce’s behavior in that strip is also not okay.) That said, I don’t remember Becky saying anything like that afterward, and she checks to make sure Joyce is okay with hugging even before knowing about Ryan. I tend to chalk it up to post-trauma emotional tailspin.
That (the first link) isn’t her flirting with Joyce or even pretend flirting. Joyce was still working on accepting Becky as a lesbian, and that was Joyce’s problem. Becky doesn’t need to apologize to Joyce just because she still thought girls kissing was ooky and gross.
Not to mention that “scandalizing” Joyce the way she is in that comic has been part of their friendship dynamic for years. If it was an actual problem for Joyce, they would not be friends. Becky knows Joyce well enough that she doesn’t nudge Joyce so far from her comfort zone that it actually stresses her out.
Becky doesn’t need to apologize to Joyce for openly being a lesbian. She should apologize for saying “shocking you is totally a turn-on for me” and then following it up with describing Joyce in sexualizing language. (And in fact I tend to include it under her “sorry for everything” here, but that’s pure personal interpretation.) Becky being sexual is fine; Becky talking about her sexual reaction to Joyce when Joyce has made it clear that she’s not interested is not. And the fact that Becky pushing Joyce’s buttons is a part of their dynamic doesn’t mean that she’s incapable of ever crossing the line and making Joyce genuinely uncomfortable, especially when the element of sexuality has just been thrown into the mix for the first time.
Like I said, this is the only time she says anything like that to Joyce–even though she still has feelings for her–so I assume once the initial “I can totally talk about this stuff out loud!” high wore off a bit she realized she’d been overdoing it.
Dina seems like a pretty straightforward girl, I bet she’d take the hat off if Becky simply asked her outright.
Ok, so, wait a sec, I’ve been rereading the comic (er… I started rereading weeks ago, then paused for a while, and reread a bunch more today) and I came across this. Doesn’t it kind of screw up the “always now” thing that DoA’s got goin’ on? Like, when someone reads this in a few years that’s gonna be a bit too old right?
When the next civilization rises from the ashes and discovers this website floating around the shattered remnants of the internet, Billie’s gonna be like four hundred and seven based on that ID.
*sigh* Not sure what happened to the link this time, but here.
GAH IT SCREWED UP AGAIN
FUCK IT
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/bigred/
Well, the alt text DOES say that’s not her birth year and you know asian women do tend to retain that youthful look…
I-
Uh-
Okay.
And now I’m seeing this which actually brings it up! I’m on to you, Willis.
Also, this seems like an appropriate strip for me to be caught up to right now.
If anyone ever makes it down here:
[Insert Normal Cavalcade of Comments That I Post Here]
Thinking on this a bit too much… what if Dina’s hat was part of a wig? For whatever reason she was really bald… I know its an odd idea. She probably just really likes wearing the hat.