188

Comfort
Posted on May 11, 2016 by David M Willis

188 thoughts on “Comfort”

  1. Flynn58

    Second panel, girl with triangle grin unlocked

    1. DarkoNeko

      She’s staring at uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuus >_<

      1. SmilingNid

        All of her eyes see what you did in the dark.

        1. EvilMidnightLurker

          And now I’m having another NGE: Nobody Dies moment. That one where Rei’s eyes open in the dark room, and all the other eyes open next to her and you realize that the entire Reiquarium is right here with her.

      2. Felix

        nah, she’s clearly checking out the bridge of her nose.

    2. Bicycle Bill

      And it will only get better the more she practices.

    3. JessWitt

      Next Lisbeth Salander book: The Girl with the Triangle Grin

    4. Cephalo the Pod

      The alts for Dina in a fighting game would just express different emotions.

      Well, there wouls be two of each expression. One Classic!Dina, the other DoA!Dina.

      1. Historyman68

        HAT COMBO

      2. Animaniac

        But you couldn’t win with Classic!Dina, you’d try the best you could and lose in the final seconds.

    5. Orion Fury

      Months ago Willis knew a third of the commenters would be asking for one. I just don’t see the appeal.

    6. Aeron

      Dina went full Noodles.

    7. Asterios

      its a Calvin Smile, but where is Hobbes? first one is Charlie Brown.

      1. No I Haven't Had My Coffee Yet

        Yes, Dina, go back to the faces. Can you do Tenniel’s Cheshire Cat? How about the Joker?

  2. TheTJ

    Got l close there in panel two Dina!

  3. miados

    And you don’t move your hand more then a centimeter unless it is against their back while in a hug.

  4. Alice Macher

    The thing is, Becky would probably find these faces hilarious. “More! Do another one!”

    1. Cerberus

      She probably would… hell, that’s probably why she’s doing them. Just double checking to make sure Sarah wouldn’t serve as a Becky placeholder in that regard.

  5. Mr. Random

    Dina would make a FINE Joker.

    1. Doctor_Who

      “Why…so…Styracosaurus?”

      1. Bagge

        Nah, if she would be a superhero villian there is only one choice.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauron_(comics)

        1. Doctor_Who

          And if she were a hero…

        2. Bagge

          If there is not a story arc featuring those two as primary antagonists someone at Marvel is not doing their job right.

        3. AGV

          Most likely Reptil I’d say

      2. Historyman68

        Or Dr Dinosaur from Atomic Robo

        1. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          I don’t think she’d approve of Mr. Ceratosaurian Maniraptor Mimic.

        2. EvilMidnightLurker

          Or Stegmut.

    2. Makkabee

      “Dina would make a FINE Joker.”

      “Why so saurian?”

  6. Airyu

    My friend told me about a scene from Big Bang Theory where Sheldon pats Penny on the shoulder robotically and say’s “there there” because he thinks that’s how to comfort people and that reminds me of Dina rn.

    1. tim gueguen

      But Dina could never be condescending like Sheldon generally is.

  7. Cheshrin

    She almost had it in Panel 2!

  8. Captain Whitebread

    I see a lot of avatar fodder in this strip.

  9. DarkoNeko

    Oh god the smile is finally off. It washaunting me. Sarah, do your big sis job and explain her.

    1. DarkoNeko

      also NO, no going back to the faces !

  10. motorfirebox

    Non-bathing suit area… unless you find yourself in a Slipshine.

    1. DarkoNeko

      Of course, it’s a Joe avatar saying that.

      1. motorfirebox

        You cannot imagine how happy I was to get this avatar. I was happier than [blatant sexual innuendo].

        1. Orion Fury

          [Insert Crass Joke Here]

        2. Sageress

          I was happier than UTERUS

        3. 3-I

          Every uterus should have a smile that big!

  11. Doctor_Who

    Whatever you do, don’t so the faces and the touching at the same time. You’ll wind up on a list.

  12. Just A. Thinker

    By Thor’s Hammer, Dina

    1. Doctor_Who

      By the power of Greyskull!

      1. MatthewTheLucky

        By Odin’s Beard!

        1. Orion Fury

          Thundercats, Ho!

        2. M-M

          By merlin’s saggy pants

        3. Koms

          By Voldemort’s mouldy shorts

        4. Bicycle Bill

          By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water….

          Oops. Never mind.

        5. Tacos

          By the Grabthar’s hammer. By the suns of Warvan…

        6. SgtWadeyWilson

          I won’t say the line!

        7. Deanatay

          I WILL I WILL

          You shall be… AVENGED!!

          😀 😀 😀

      2. trlkly

        That would turn her into Walkyverse Dina, I think. She looks bigger and more like an adult there.

  13. Kindra

    Poor Sarah. She’s clearly been through some stuff even more the bullying.

  14. Paul

    Non-bathing suit area — that is good advice.

  15. Catullus

    Panel 2 Dina would be the most disturbing thing I’d ever seen in this comic, had it not been for… well… yesterday.

    1. Cyntalan

      I don’t know, I find ’em both equally disturbing for different reasons.

    2. 3-I

      I am still screaming in my head.

  16. Stephen R. Bierce

    *looks around for some Doobie Brothers to throw on the Muzak*

  17. Paul

    Panel one reminds me of a Charlie Brown grin.

    1. Doctor_Who

      “The Little Red Haired Girl looked at me!”

      …Say, do you think Becky could be the Little Red Haired Girl? Might explain why she never gave Charlie Brown the time of day.

      Also, I am 1000% convinced Billie is a grown-up Lucy.

      1. Rukduk

        That last statement makes way too much sense. Also, would that make Walky Linus?

      2. Dean

        Nah, Ruth was the little red-haired girl.

        1. Some1

          Ruth is Peppermint Patty!

    2. Cephalo the Pod

      It looke just like Joyce trying to deflect a question about atheists going to Heaven.

      1. Orion Fury

        I do believe that’s a thing now.

        1. Rukduk

          Yep, good ole’ Francis said so, so for Catholics you are correct.

        2. Pope William T Wodium

          I get the impression that Joyce is decidedly not Catholic.

        3. Rukduk

          While acknowledging that you are 100% just goin along with stating that the metaphorical door has been opened.

        4. Orion Fury

          And that’s one of the many things I don’t like about Christianity. Too many different sects. Though as far as Popes go, I rather like this one.

  18. Schpoonman

    “Okay, go back to the FAAAAAAAACES.”

  19. Uncertainty Moth

    So how long until the fanart shows up of the moment where Amber had to explicitly state “non-bathing-suit area?”

    1. Rukduk

      I’m gonna guess about an hour. Half if Yotomoe decides it’s an intriguing idea.

      1. Some1

        well heres my take 🙂

        http://imgur.com/CoQwdSd

        1. Kryss LaBryn

          Lol.

  20. Cephalo the Pod

    I actually like Dina’s smiles in Panels 2&3. I guess they look more disturbing in real life.

    1. Cephalo the Pod

      *1&2.

    2. Doctor_Who

      I still say that in real life Joyce’s smile would be terrifying. Know that Overly Attached Girlfriend meme? Basically that.

      1. Cephalo the Pod

        OAG’s smile is fine. It’s her state that’s freaky.

        1. Cephalo the Pod

          *stare.

  21. Adept Arcanist

    I like the Charlie Brown wobbly smile in panel 1.

    The panel 2 smile will haunt my nightmares… It’s what Joyce would look like if she was a serial killer. ._.

  22. newllend(henryvolt)

    Aww is Sarah not comfortable being out of her element? Well suck it the fuck up.

    1. Cerberus

      Sarah handles being shook out of her comfort zone incredibly well. She is especially good at handling people experiencing strong emotions around her.

      Yup, definitely. These are not lies.

      1. Orion Fury

        Especially if the person is in a self-inflicted downward spiral where no-one else will acknowledge it.

        1. Cerberus

          That is the exact scenario that brings out the best in her balanced self-care and non-panicked decision making skills!

        2. Emily

          Sarah actually does pretty well stabilizing crisis situations it’s the aftercare where she has to deal with a traumatized human being where she’s out of her depth.

        3. Cerberus

          Very true!

        4. Orion Fury

          She’s a hero. Saves the day, just isn’t any good at the clean up.

  23. JessWitt

    What’s the fee for attending Ms. Saruyama’s classes on social (peas and) cues?

  24. Tacos

    That face in the second panel looks like Dina’s finally snapped. Like she found out that suddenly everything she knew about dinosaurs was false or something.

  25. Rukduk

    1. This is very sweet of Dina. 2. The fact that Sarah instantly brought up divorce when describing reality being sucky might be a hint as to why she feels and acts the way she does. What if her parents had a messy divorce when she was a kid?

    1. Marie

      She might get along with Joe better than she thinks.

      1. Rukduk

        Joe: “So your parents had a messy divorce as well?”
        Sarah: “Yep.”
        Joe: “Did we just become friends?”
        Sarah: “Nope. We aren’t Finn and Poe, and this isn’t Star Wars.”

        1. StClair

          now imagining Sarah in Poe’s Finn’s jacket.

      2. Cerberus

        Yup, I bet they could actually do a lot for each other… if Joe wasn’t mostly fixated towards angling any expression of emotional vulnerability into pushing for a sexual encounter.

        Actually that probably sums up Joe’s potential usefulness to a lot of characters who aren’t men.

  26. modulusshift

    Panel 2 is almost a Calvin. That’s kinda close to Joyce, I guess…

  27. Cerberus

    Comic Reactions:

    Oh, Dina, a true scientist, experimentation with variation and repetition. And you even selected a control group guaranteed to provide you with a non-smiling face to compare against. 🙂

    Panel 1: Ah, yes, college nihilism. Where it seemed like the deepest in philosophy to conclude that “life sucks, man”, before eventually realizing that that wasn’t so much philosophy as untreated depression.

    Also, I’m a little concerned with how quickly and thoroughly Sarah is turning to despair and overwrought statements. Joyce just had a sulky week and she’s already talking doom and gloom about how Joyce will “never smile again”. Given how easily she turns to this sort of nihilistic despair, I’m wondering if the truth on how “broken” Dana was might have been somewhere between where Raidah and Sarah thought it was.

    If so, I hope Sarah has learned somewhat from her previous mistakes.

    Panel 2: And let’s just highlight that divorce bit right there seeing as how that was signal flared without prompt. I’ma guess that’s a major contributor to Sarah’s overall trust issues. Also, if Sarah wasn’t already on the list of characters in major need of a decent therapist, I feel we can add her onto it here.

    Panel 3: And Dina sneaks in with a very good comment to derail the self-pity train Sarah is riding.

    Panel 4: And you can see in her blush that it partially worked. I wonder how much her resistance to reaching out and comforting Joyce is based in her practiced misanthropic presentation versus how much she associates caring for someone emotionally as losing boundaries, getting sucked in to the point of failing classes, and lots of people yelling at her for doing wrong.

    Panel 5: 8o Uh…. Dina? Where exactly did you touch Amber when she was training you on how to comfort someone? No wonder Amber said you were awful at this.

    1. John

      The list of characters in major need of a decent therapist is basically just the cast list.

      1. Rukduk

        I think maybe a couple of background characters are ok? Then again, I probably only say that because we don’t know them that well.

        1. nightsbridge

          Asma is fine. Sierra is ok.

        2. Tacos

          Also Lucy and Jacob. They seem fine.

        3. Jason

          I don’t think Dina needs a therapist. Possibly a diagnosis, that would allow her to go “okay, so this is how I differ from others”- that may help her, but I wouldn’t say she needs therapy.
          Carla probably doesn’t need therapy either, but I say that with full awareness that we have no real idea of how her gender identity has affected her life or if she has real lingering issues that she’s not in a place to process by herself. Just being under the trans* umbrella can bring a whole host of issues that are difficult to process alone- perhaps as we learn more about her we’ll see whether or not that’s the case for Carla.
          And Mike is just Mike. I don’t think therapy can do much for “assholeitis”. That definitely seems to just be who he is, rather than having any psychological reason written for it.

          Fun fact: I’m training to be a counselor and I often ponder how I would work with different fictional characters. DoA is a playground for that.

        4. Cerberus

          That is really really cool!

      2. Tan

        Sierra seems perfectly well-adjusted, as does Marcie. Jacob has shown no signs of therapy-needing, though we don’t know him in a great deal of depth. Dorothy has a few issues related to being an overachiever, but she’s largely self-aware of them and her existing support network seems sufficient.

        Walky -probably- doesn’t need a therapist so much as a simple guidance counselor. Mike’s a dick but there’s nothing that specifically suggests his dickitude stems from any sort of psychological trauma or disorder. Raidah’s only known issue is holding a grudge against Sarah, which honestly probably doesn’t really affect her day-to-day life beyond when we see her in strips.

        1. Cerberus

          I think Raidah could benefit from like a short-term therapy just related to processing what happened with Dana, but beyond that, I would agree. Especially since she’s now seemed to realize what she needs to do for her own mental health which is to stop actively seeking out Sarah for confrontations and instead just avoid her because their interactions are toxic (and in some cases actively bullying to Sarah).

    2. Orion Fury

      Well, it can be inferred that Amber had knowledge of what Dina did not know about personal space, and thought it wise that she know where it is socially acceptable, so as to minimize any faux pas.

      1. Koms

        Maybe when Dina touched her on a bathing suit area? 😀

  28. Kernanator

    Is it weird that the older I’m getting, the less I identify with Sarah?

    1. Cephalo the Pod

      Only because it’s just Sarah and not the cast as a whole with whom you’re identifying less.

      1. Kernanator

        Mostly I’m just rolling my eyes more at Sarah and thinking, “God, just stop with your pseudo-philosophical bullshit and eat a cinnamon roll, you’ll feel better.”

        1. Tacos

          Eh, she’s a teenager. A lot of people spout pseudo-philosophical stuff at that age.

        2. Needfuldoer

          She’s a Sophomore trying to play the ‘big sister’ role to a cast of Freshmen, which just gives her more opportunities to do this.

  29. Cephalo the Pod

    Sarah is pretty blatantly projecting whenever she talks about how broken Joyce is. It’s not like she (unlike us the readers) has any logical reason to expect exactly something like divorce in Joyce’s family. Obviously that’s somethjng from her own life.

    What’s gonna happen if (when?) Joyce comes back somewhat okay, after finding allies in her family, after finding out that her family isn’t completely horrible? How is Sarah gonna take that?

    Is she gonna have an internal crisis? Is she gonna start fuming over how much better Joyce is taking it than Sarah did with her own personal problems? How will Sarah react when Joyce doesn’t turn out just like her roommate?

    1. Cephalo the Pod

      Y’know, when I said “her roommate” I meant Joyce, but I guess I could have also meant Dana. Weird.

      1. Cerberus

        Honestly, I’m still suspicious that the Dana situation was mishandled by Sarah, either because her dad was unsafe or because Sarah partially reacted to her inability to set good boundaries against people in pain and her own assumptions of doom.

        But even if not, I imagine that Joyce coming back relatively okay would be a bit off-putting for Sarah, simply because it might be a sign that she’s not the best predictor of people’s emotional state and level of “doomed” which is not a thought she wants to entertain much after all the hell she’s been through making the call she did on Dana for better or for worse.

        1. CJ

          From what I saw, Sarah needed to end the situation with Dana to stay reasonably sane and be able to study.
          Living at such close quarters with a totally depressed person doing drugs is going to affect anyone’s sanity. Could she have handled it better? Maybe, maybe not. Dana’s other friends seems to have chosen to ignore the problem – and they also obviously were not privy to the full blast of reality Sarah had the dubious privilege to see.

          From what we have seem of her, asking someone to swap rooms for a time wasn’t an option, asking for a different dorm room would have gotten Dana in trouble with the university and probably warned off for doing drugs, so contacting the father seemed like a reasonable move. Was it a move for Sarah’s best? Yes, definitely. For Dana’s? I’m sure I don’t know. But those friends whe hate Sarah for “ratting on Dana” sure don’t know either. And they look like they can afford to fail some courses for a year without losing the financing of their degree – which is a privilege Sarah does not have.

          Sarah does act like a frustrated co-dependent sometimes, i.e. she seems to have the impulse to get involved and try to help but learned that’s not a good choice – but her feeling of responsibility didn’t go away

        2. Cerberus

          Oh yeah, I think she was in a desperate position and needed to do something for her own academic survival and so made the best choice she could think of with the information she had.

          My thinking she got it wrong is not based on her trying to do her best, but simply not having the requisite life experience and carrying biases that informed less than ideal decision making.

          Like, her major situation with Dana was not that she was doing drugs and crying, it was that Sarah believed it was on her personally to save Dana rather than referring her to mental health services. Sarah also has awful boundaries and doesn’t know how to let a roommate have space to try and process hurt and disappointment and it personally distracts her because she’s got a bit of a “white knight” complex where it’s on her personally to make sure someone ends up well.

          She also obviously doesn’t know all she would regarding suicide intervention or resources like suicide hotlines and the like that would have reduced the stress on her and has a personality type where she assumes the worst will happen and leap towards that nihilistic conclusion possibly beyond the evidence (Joyce is in a bad state, but is not in danger of harming herself or others and is by no means guaranteed to never be smiley Joyce again even if she will certainly never be the same in terms of her outlook on things like the humanity of queer people).

          Additionally, she is uniformed about things like 5150s or in-patient that would have been a much better option for Dana if she really was in a state where she literally couldn’t have been left alone by a Sarah studying in the silent room and potentially sleeping in the library before important tests (a time-honored tradition among those with shitty roommate situations) for fear that Dana would kill herself. And also seems to be unaware of the possibility of parents being dangerous or abusive to their children as well as randomly biased or uninformed about the benefits of psychological services because we’ve seen her with Joyce and know that she’s not even offering it or pointing out its an option and that’s not at all because she’s above giving direct advice.

          We also know she has a bias to authority and think it can solve problems. Her idea for solving Joyce’s sexual assault was to involve the police and Joyce’s parents believing they would play an overall helpful role rather than potentially increasing the amount of trauma or putting her in a dangerous mental situation. Hence why her solution with Dana defaulted to more authority roles.

          This also combined with a bias against drug use. Like, I’ve never actually used drugs, but working where I do teaching kids with all manner of fucked up home lives and mental conditions, I regularly see the role drug use plays in serving as a coping strategy when one is devoid of many healthy coping strategies. I’ve literally seen the role things like pot use play in keeping someone alive and in my state, it is recognized as a medical drug for managing things like depression, surviving abuse, anxiety, pain management, and so on. I’ve had to do interventions to keep students alive because some well-meaning dipshit decided what they needed most was to live drug-free and it turned out that that just left the kid without their coping strategies to keep them from turning to worse methods like suicide attempts or high-risk behavior.

          And pot is by far one of the milder substances to be addicted to. Most college students at one point or another at least try it and pretty much every generation currently in existence has had the majority of the population at least use it regularly in their youth. Dana being “addicted” to that was never an issue except that Sarah is a moralizer on the subject and believes strongly in the law and is unaware of the anti-pot laws legislative history of being mostly a weapon intended to provide an excuse for targeted enforcement against black men in order to perpetuate social inequalities.

          And she firmly believes in the law and what is legal and believes that laws must always be enforced, because until then, presumably, she hadn’t encountered life experiences where the legal thing to do wasn’t the right thing to do for someone’s well-being.

          And with Dana, well, the meat of that bad decision was thinking that Dana’s turning to these coping strategies of massive marijuana usage wasn’t directly related to her dad being shitty and abusive and she didn’t have the background to understand it.

          And well, Dana’s dad probably is shitty and abusive. I mean, he fucking yanked her out of school simply because she was smoking pot and was a bit depressed. Who the fuck does that? Hell, even if Dana was on active suicide watch, there’s much better ways of handling that than removing her from her entire social support network, derailing her entire education, and getting her into legal trouble with her school.

          And that implies that he’s scarily controlling and dangerous to Dana’s mental health. Raidah having kept in contact with Dana noted to Sarah that Dana herself doesn’t think this was for the best, which is much more likely to be coming from someone suffering a very controlling and awful dad than someone who’s just sulking because they can’t access their weed anymore (and if she was the type to do that, then she was never in any danger to begin with and Sarah could have safely left her alone long enough to study and get at least halfway decent night’s sleep before test days).

          Which means Sarah ultimately placed her in a position more likely to result in her committing suicide (absent a coping strategy, actively living with a toxic parent who now controls her entire life) because she didn’t know how to handle her being potentially suicidal.

          And while I say that, I don’t want to go all Raidah on her. Sarah legitimately didn’t know and made the best choice she could with the biases and ignorances and lack of emotional growth she had. She made genuinely empathetic conditions but doesn’t have an adult lifetime of providing intervention care for mentally ill people in her life. Nor did she have any training for the role she ended up providing for Dana.

          She made a choice. That choice was probably wrong for Dana, but it was not born out of malice on Sarah’s part and as you note, Sarah’s options given her own issues were limited and suddenly time-dependent.

          And with that I’ll end my word vomit analysis of the mental health and processes of two fictional 19-year olds.

          Sorry everyone for the giant block of text that’s now blighting the screen.

        3. Cerberus

          Damn, that was even longer than I was worried it would be. My bad, y’all!

        4. Emily

          That’s a lot of jumping to conclusions based on very little evidence. It’s entirely likely that Dana’s dad pulled her out of school because he felt that maybe the best place for her when she’s grieving that badly is with her family. Heavy drug use does not necessitate an abusive home life I assure you from personal experience sometimes people just are really bad at coping with their feelings. Marijuana addiction is not some benign thing worthy of derisive scare quotes it can be a serious problem that debilitates a person’s ability to function independently. Bringing your child home because they are addicted to drugs and spiraling into depression is not “scarily controlling” it’s like the bare minimum of decent parenting.

        5. Cerberus

          Not really, it’s pot. Like it’s not good to be taking it if you have no reason to take it and like any medication has its list of side effects including some really nasty adverse reactions. But it’s still far and removed from it being a heroin addiction or even as detrimental as an alcohol addiction.

          Taking someone out of school for pot in the year 2016 is actually pretty odd and not really that okay and would be a sign at best of the sort of strict punishment-obsessed parent figure kids try ang get as far away from as possible. At best. Given my experiences teaching kids and studies on the psychological treatment of addict populations, drug usage in unsafe or debilitating quantites frequently stems from abusive home enviroments or abusive street conditions creating a self-reinforcing spiral.

          It’s not the only reason, true, but the correlations are higher than you might think. And I’ll admit I’m struggling to imagine a caring family man who just cares so much about family and isn’t abusive who will literally disappear her out of school immediately after told before she has a chance to say goodbye to friends. Combine that with the fact that Raidah reported that Dana thought months later that she wasn’t in a better place than literally crying her eyes out every night are some MAJOR red flags for me.

        6. CJ

          Hm, I do not take excessive pot smoking in young people lightly – there are indicators that – specially in case of traumatized persons – excessive abuse of pot over a longer period of time has a higher incident rate of people going into full-blown paranoid episodes than those who do not do so. Something to do with still developing brain structures or some such, i.e. the effect on the young is worse than on adults. It’s not as riskless as I tended to think it 20 years ago.
          And though it might be the only stop-gap solution to severe emotional pain available to some people, it only serves to block the pain and prevents processing, so I’d rate it as a tricky survival strategy at best – because to process the pain, you need to stop using it anyway and then you have to deal with withdrawal on top. If its the choice between pot and suicide attempts, yeah, pot is the comparitivly better strategy. But still a long shot from a good one.
          I’d never considered taking Dana out of school as an overblown measure. Rather took it as hiding the problem from the college thus keeping ways open for her. I don’t have any experience with how colleges work but my reading seems to indicate you can be expelled for a number of reasons a German university wouldn’t care about (as long a you do not attack any member of the staff, being expelled needs severe cheating or not paying your dues or failing trice, but neither your habits about drugs, alcohol or sex life are an issue nor your mental health).
          Your reading of it as a controlling measure came as a surprise to me. With the scant knowledge we have, it’s a possible thing. Though I’m not sure about the worth of her social support system – they were not very much involved anyway. It’s a standard measure to get substance abusers to get clean to take them out of the environment that enables the substance abuse. This does indicate her father reacted to her doing drugs and not to her being unable to deal with the pain of her mother’s death, though, so at least it looks like he doesn’t deal with the situation adequately.
          I wonder if Willis will give us more input on the situation.

        7. Cerberus

          In my experiences as an educator, minor side effects due to medication trumps dead.

          And sadly, I’ve already seen one incident just this year of a student having their supply of medicinal marijuana impacted lead directly to a suicide attempt and the student being on a full month of suicide watch.

          And even if pot were as bad as Reefer Madness makes it out to be, taking away a bad coping strategy like drug use without having previously created alternate trusted coping strategies is asking for a really bad end.

          Even an awful coping strategy like self-harm can be “better than the alternative” if that’s the only thing the individual has to fight against killing themselves.

          Is it ideal? Hell no!

          But it’s sure as hell less permanent than death or even the health risks of even an unsuccessful suicide attempt.

          Also I’d be curious about the control group of that study as abuse survivors in general tend to have elevated incidents of paranoid episodes. If you find it again, definitely send it my way! 🙂

          Oh, also, the get clean, get away method is no longer best practices in drug abuse rehabilitation because of the high recidivism and suicide rate. Nowadays a “Seeking Safety” model is preferred and has better outcome results as it creates new coping strategies before stepping down drug use. And to avoid dislocating from social support networks until this process is further along.

          The old method sounds morally better to organizations like DARE but leads to a lot of dead homeless teens.

        8. CJ

          Sorry, a judge I was dating mentioned it in context of her frustration about the many your people (mostly men) who suddenly have a very violent episode of a certain type that come before her. And she didn’t have to read the files to know the combination of abuse and early excessive pot abuse in the perps history. I grilled her about it because I always saw pot users as rather lethargic and not at all prone to violence.
          Since then, other incidents of a connection of excessive pot and paranoia came my way (the worst being the suicide of a friend’s nephew who had developed the paranoia 10 years ago, has been stuggeling withnit since, and suicided last year).
          I don’t know about morally better for one method or the other. Social pressure to drink or take drugs is a proven effect, if your social network drinks or uses drugs you have to be rather confident to not conform and do so, too.
          I can imagine that – given the current developement of fundamentalism – a lot of 12 step groups (who provide a new social support network while encouraging to stop taking drugs) may have become rather hung up on a narrow definition of “higher power” with all fundy bullshit that derives from it and are not as beneficial as they were. (I’m talking about individual groups, not the concept here!)
          So, what would I do if I were working with homeless teens who take drugs? I’d try to get them a home first and worry about drugs later. But – luckily for all concerned – I do not work with homeless teens because I do not believe that anything I say or do while there are stoned can have any positive effect (though lots of negative ones), so my frustration would be the most prominent thing they’d notice about me, which would hurt them where they are already hurt.
          I admire the people who can do this, I thinks it’s much more difficult and demanding that rocket science.

    2. Showler

      I feel as though Sarah’s read on Joyce includes a bit of fear. She doesn’t just think that Joyce is broken forever, she’s afraid that she is. If Joyce recovers I expect Sarah to be relieved.

    3. hof1991

      Sarah’s childhood may have included parental drug abuse and co-dependency, starting with no time for caring for a child and leading up to divorce. An alcoholic dad and a enabling mother might have primed her to cut drug users out of her life. Plus, we don’t see her parents and she relies entirely on scholarships. No druggie is going to ruin her life (again).

      1. Cerberus

        Both you and Showler’s points are really good. I could definitely see that as a potential origin.

  30. Jess

    You have to hand it to Dina, she just keeps trying for that smile!

    1. Deanatay

      She’s a hero scientist – she doesn’t let failure shoot her down.

  31. John

    You have a lot more options for comforting Sal than, say, Dorothy.

  32. Cephalo the Pod

    Man, Sarah is kinda just Roomies!Ruth, isn’t she.

  33. krylani

    That smile’s all *wrrRRrrRRr DING!*

  34. Palamdrone

    Panel 2 right on the button. That is the Joyce!

    1. Needfuldoer

      She’s 99% there, just has to figure out how to meld her teeth into one solid mass to get it perfect.

  35. Dara

    My partner Anna will testify that Dina is exactly me in these last two strips with The Smiles.

  36. Kelli

    Panel 2 Dina for the win.

  37. Keulan

    Dina is panels 1 and 2 is somehow both adorable and scary at the same time.

  38. Bagge

    “Apply a light touch just like this… and this… and THIS. I want to be your Joyce and I want you to be my Becky, in mind, in spirit and in body. non-bathsuit-area and bathsuitarea alike, like the hadrosaur…”

    Amber: “WHAT THE WHAT?????”

    Dina: “It’s called a slashfic, when characters are described in a titilat…”

    Amber: “I KNOW WHAT A SLASHFIC IS!!!”

    1. Cerberus

      Amber: While I acknowledge that can be comforting, that is NOT what a comforting touch of sympathy means!

      Dina: That’s not what the stories you write when you think I’m not in the room say.

      Amber: … Bucky has needs…

      1. Orion Fury

        Deep, rooted, new arm needs…

      2. Rukduk

        I wonder who she’d write Black Panther with. For that matter, how freaky do fanfiction writers make Vision in bed? Hmm, I’ll be back, I’m a bit curious now. *comes back after five minutes* Dear god but I need bleach.

        1. StClair

          You have seen that which cannot be unseen.

      3. tim gueguen

        I’d expect her to be a Transformer ficcer instead of a superhero ficcer.

        1. Jason

          We’ve seen her stay up all night reading superhero fic, I’m sure of it. For the life of me I can’t find it though.
          …I feel like I’m going to end up re-reading the archives to find it, as if I don’t have other things I need to be doing.

        2. Jason

          …Okay, after actually posting that I found it.
          http://tinyurl.com/ltyot86

  39. Rani

    …I feel like I’m watching Nascar. We got that Sarah is a decent person otherwise incapable of change the first dozen times she got called on it, comic.

    This wouldn’t be so annoying were it positioned closer to the beginning of the arc. Instead, it’s where this comic seems to retreat to the second any of its other crazy plot threads approaches anything like a climax or resolution.

    What compounds the irritation that it was, in fact, at the beginning of the arc. Just with synonyms of the words they’re saying now, and a slightly different ‘Dina is a lovable, lonely eccentric/Sarah shuts her down” gimmick.

    At this point, the only thing that separates these vignettes from a “Sorry I’m out for the week because of x convention/have a goofy drawing in the meanwhile” strip is that Willis’s artwork is strong.

    tl;dr: I realize it’s in the nature of stupid people to repeat their mistakes endlessly and that this is called “Dumbing of Age” for a reason, but if the strip itself is being stupid we’re having a problem.

    1. Rani

      i know these comics are buffered-I’m mostly speaking to the next batch he’s working on now.

      1. Cerberus

        Given that if I remember right, he wrote these while in the midst of sleepless new daddy nights, I’m just shocked that all the scenes aren’t just a figure endlessly screaming “I need sleep! HELP!”

        1. BenRG

          +1 Ditto

        2. Emily

          I think I’d enjoy that more than constantly retreading the “Sarah is a bitter misanthrope with a heart of gold” thing with no sign of any meaningful character development.

    2. Pope William T Wodium

      I get the feeling this conversation is going somewhere plot-relevant, rather than just being a character moment.

  40. Lan

    I can’t help but laugh at her goofy ass smiles. They scream of “I AM TRYING MY HARDEST. I WILL WIN THIS SMILE-OFF.”

  41. Orion Fury

    Is no one going to discuss that fact that’s there’s probably a dead body in Dina’s room?

  42. Peny

    It’s been an hour and a half since the upload and I still don’t see anyone with a Dina smile as their gravatar. Disappointed.

    1. Idontcarenomore

      Unless you meant the Triangle Smile?

  43. Idontcarenomore

    Check yesterdays chat list Peny.

    1. kkiten

      What chat list? The comments?

  44. Idontcarenomore

    I love the last panel.
    Sarah is just going to have lock Dina out of the room or accept the fact that Dina just won’t be ignored. (If she likes you I guess.)

  45. kkiten

    Why did Amber have to clarify?

    1. Needfuldoer

      Dina takes “bathing suit area” literally and avoids the middle of other ladies’ shoulders because that’s where the straps would be.

      1. Eukie

        From observation of how other people interact, she also suspects that Amber forgot to mention that certain parts of the head are off-limits. Certainly, she has not observed anyone attempt to comfort someone else by touching their nose… but that could be an observational bias.

  46. Reltzik

    She’s getting close to the Joyce smiles, though. Panel 1 is “Joyce, kinda turned on and swoony”. Panel 2 IS the smile, just with the eyes wrong.

    …. also, how can Sarah see the face Dina’s making in Panel 2 to tell her to knock it off? Is there a mirror or something?

    1. pencildragon

      ime dorm rooms often have mirrors on the doors? i totally assumed dina is looking at the mirror in panels 1 &2

    2. EvilMidnightLurker

      Not quite. She needs to learn how to fill her mouth with a solid unbroken mass of tooth.

  47. quarktime

    That, there…THAT is DISTURBING.

  48. BenRG

    I’ve said this before elsewhere but this sequence is revealing to us just how sweet Dina can be! I mean, can you imagine any of the other main cast offering to teach another how to offer comfort via physical contact?

    Naturally, Sarah doesn’t want it because Dina is doing a good job of comforting her, something that she really doesn’t want.

    1. Needfuldoer

      Amber taught Dina in the first place…

      1. Cerberus

        And that’s why she wants to pass it on.

        She’s like, oh, do you need training in this as well? I was recently taught and it helped me. I even successfully applied this technique and a variation to support my girlfriend when she was in emotional distress, so I have albeit non-conclusive evidence towards its potential veracity.

  49. Shadow12000

    Instructions not clear, hand currently on friend’s face, they seem mad. What do?

    1. Amazi-Stool

      Tell her to shut up!
      (or something about god rewrote time to be a b-hole).

  50. Plasma Mongoose

    Dina and Joyce need to FAAAACE off against each other.

    1. inqntrol

      In a smile staring contest!

  51. Jake'm

    Dina’s face in panel 2 reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes for some reason.

  52. DarkoNeko

    Was thinking ; as much as green is Dina’s colour, Sarah is suprisingly pink-schemed, for someone with such a dark outlook on life.

    1. Silly Name

      I think Sarah’s color is a light purple, not pink.

  53. chris73

    If Dina ever went bat-shit crazy with an axe I’d imagine she’d have a panel two smile on her face

  54. Silly Name

    Am I the only one picturing Amber showing Dina a chart of where it’s appropriate to touch other people and in what situations?

    1. begbert2

      A chart she got from Faz.

      “Those areas he marked ‘touch here’ – touch anywhere but there.”

  55. JP

    One does not simply

    attempts the Triangle Smile maneuver!

  56. SundaesChild

    It okay, no be cry!

  57. CianM1301

    She almost had Joyces’ smile down in that second panel. Too many teeth, though.

  58. WaytoomanyUIDs

    OK, I’m pretty sure Dinas just trolling Sarah now.

    1. Bagge

      I really think so too.

      More specifically, I think she tries to develop a sense of humor and is a bit of hit and miss about it.

  59. LaShawn

    Panel 2 I started hearing the Paranoia Agent theme song.

  60. Mouse

    Aw. Dina learning all these appropriate social interactions and being this awkward takes me back to my first retail job.

  61. pjeseb

    So, this is the part where we remember that the horrible, abusive, manipulative wannabe superheroine taught Dina how to comfort people.

    1. Emily

      Amber isn’t evil she’s just a train wreck emotionally.

    2. Cerberus

      Yup, Amber’s in a real bad headspace right now and doing some not entirely okay things because of her reaction to said headspace, but she’s much better when not in that space.

  62. Scar Man!!!

    *taking notes*

  63. Kat Waterflame

    I am enjoying this new Gravatar. 😀

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