323

Awesome
Posted on August 18, 2016 by David M Willis

323 thoughts on “Awesome”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    yup, aaaaaaany minute now she’ll crack from all that denial

    Dina don’t ever stop being adorkable *^.^*

    1. Ana Chronistic

      “Were you receptive to my punchline? I have a tracking number for it? 9853 2346 1243 6543 1985 1983”

      1. Aeron

        Your punchline was delivered but you were not home. It has been sent to the regional distribution center. Please arrive between the times printed on this notice to avoid any further delays.

        1. 6Qubed

          and if you have time, please leave feedback on how well you were served

        2. BenRG

          “Regional Distribution Centre” meaning a warehouse complex far outside any population centre in nearly another state that has no customer parking and hyper-vigilant rent-a-clampers ready to pounce and impound at a moment’s notice.

    2. Deanatay

      “There’s never too much denial.”
      “Actually, I think there’s – ”
      “I SAID THERE’S NEVER TOO MUCH DENIAL”

  2. butts

    Yes, Dina, step on your own joke. That is how humor is constructed.

    1. Leorale

      Jokes are also funnier the more you explain them. Then they are humor-jokes of mirth.

      1. butts

        “If it’s funny once, it’s funny again… and again… and again…” — my dad, always

        1. Needfuldoer

          butts’s dad is Seth MacFarlane confirmed!

        2. DSL

          I would have said Jay Leno, but he just repeated what were technically punchlines in ever-increasing tones of desperation.

      2. Shaunock

        They continue evolving until they reach the zenith of humour: Puns.

        1. N0083rP00F

          I shall leave this hear
          – warning this is hazardous to ones health
          – A slight case of death may occur
          – may cause a case of ear worm
          – itchy posterior
          https://youtu.be/8I3zCQzZx68

      3. Dara

        The _best_ jokes have _footnotes_.

        1. das-g

          The best footnotes (of jokes) have more footnotes. Or chapter end notes. With more in-depth explanation in interludes and in the appendix (both of which have their own foot- and endnotes).

          Yes, I’ve read (and very much enjoyed) “The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer” by Sydney Padua.

          Hovertext and author cometary is fine too, though.

      4. Deanatay

        Explaining a joke stuffs more humor into it!

    2. Fart Captor

      She just wants to be sure Sarah knows she’s bein’ sassed!

    3. Bagge

      I LOVE how she has spent the weekend practicing her sense of humor. I hope Becky is suitably impressed

    4. Emperor Norton II

      Are we sure that Dina is joking?

      1. Bagge

        I’m pretty sure Sarah has spent a large part of the weekend pondering that very question.

        1. Emperor Norton II

          It will not be Joyce that drives Sarah over the edge.
          It will not be guilt about Dana that does it.
          It will not be Raidah and Jacob that does it.

          What will drive Sarah over the edge, is trying to figure out if and when Dina is actually making a joke!

        2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!

        3. Bagge

          ES IST NICHT FUNNY!!!!!!!

        4. Emperor Norton II

          Litt viking-humor:

          “Kvifor hogg du hovudet tå bror din, Gorm?!”
          “Han sto så lagele te fe hogg!”

      2. DSL

        Hallmark of a good joke.

      3. Orion Fury

        Wait, that was a joke?

        1. leafirebender

          same, I can’t figure it out

    5. Geneseepaws

      Like the second derivative;
      0). the joke
      1). The explanation
      2). The background of why it’s funny

      1. Deanatay

        This is why the second explanation of a good joke is always “It’s funny because it’s true”.

  3. SailorCake

    The best weekends involved kicking n window frames!

    1. Wheelpath

      True, but this definitely wasn’t the best either with all the Becky “tolerance” floating around

      1. Leorale

        Hank came around though, he remembered/realized she was a real person and everything.

    2. Tacos

      I thought the best weekends involved building pillow forts and stuffing your face with junk food….

      1. Zach

        You do that after you break into a random house with excess mail out front!

        1. N0083rP00F

          Chain or scale?

        2. Tacos

          Plate.

        3. SgtWadeyWilson

          Umm… if the fun stuff’s already outside, why break in?

        4. Orion Fury

          Even more funner stuff could be inside?

  4. Stephen R. Bierce

    *plays The Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes” on the hacked Muzak*

    1. Cholma

      Excellent choice! *sings along with that velvety smooth Michael McDonald voice*

      But what a fool believes he sees
      No wise man has the power to reason away
      What seems to be
      Is always better than nothing
      And nothing at all keeps sending him

  5. Solenoid

    If you deny acknowledgement of the joke, I shall have to flog this dead horse.

    1. -Sentinel-

      That’s how my dad operates.

      *makes terrible pun*

      *nobody laughs*

      *assumes people didn’t get it, and makes mental note to make it again later*

    2. Doctor_Who

      “Not a literal horse, though. That would be both revolting and futile.”

    3. Opus the Poet

      What did that horse do to deserve that kind of treatment

      1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        Put itself behind the cart.

        1. Solenoid

          If you try to pull the horse with the cart, you’re gonna have a bad time. It couldn’t be helped.

        2. a snow ʍousɐ

          Never put the horse after the cart.

    4. N0083rP00F

      Is Ponderosa serving back to serving those French Steaks again?

      1. N0083rP00F

        Dang, one serving too many

        1. SgtWadeyWilson

          That’s what happens when you go to a place with a buffet.

        2. Orion Fury

          You roll the dice. Sometimes seven, sometimes two.

  6. John

    It is not just a river in Egypt.

    1. Deanatay

      Denial River springs from the Nope-Spring deep in the Idontthinkso Mountains, just south of the Yourproblemsarestupid-Nobodycares Plains.

  7. Dean

    ‘The denial is here, it’s just not evenly distributed” -probably not William Gibson.

  8. Moblin Umbrella

    Surplus of denial was my nickname in highschool

    1. -Sentinel-

      Can’t remember Dina looking like your avatar. Is it from a preview panel?

      1. Leorale

        She she Becky found the vending machine.

    2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      But did you have a band named that?

      1. Moblin Umbrella

        Yes, we played songs such as
        My Girlfriend Is So Loyal
        I Have Time For This
        It’s Not a Phase
        and many many more

        1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          Order before midnight tonight! A battery of battery-operated operators are standing by!

        2. Orion Fury

          Please order, we can’t afford chairs, and they’re getting tired.

    3. Dara

      oh good that’s an icon

      it needed badly to be an icon and it is

      things are pretty good

    4. Roborat

      Mine was Nick.

  9. Van Jealous

    “My smile is STUCK! I can not go back to your FROWN LAND”….Don Vliet

  10. Doctor_Who

    Dina goes on to say that perhaps Sarah should change her name to Cleopatra because she is “Queen of Denial”. Then she explains that this was a pun, or play on words, because “The Nile” is a famous river. Midway through her lecture on the importance of the Nile in Egyptian culture, and its role in the development of human civilization, Sarah finally just wanders off.

    1. Dana

      Her explanation of Egyptian history would be heavy in descriptions of how archeology and paleontology borrow excavation techniques from each other.

      1. Bagge

        “The ancient civilization is of course not as ancient as the Cretaceous Period, from which remains of Aegyptosaurus has been identified…”

    2. SgtWadeyWilson

      After the “a pun, or play on words” bit, I heard the rest in Death’s voice. I know the Doctor turns out to be all the Great Wizzards, and Rincewind already does an awful lot of running, but umm… where was I going with this?

  11. Just Me

    Maybe Sarah needs to hang out with Billie? They can feed each others need for depression.

    1. Disloyal Subject

      It would just be a feedback loop of negativity.
      Granted, given that it’s those two, it could work, but given that they don’t really like each other it’d be just as likely to end in violence.

  12. Nono

    Did Sarah open her door to her own roommate, who pretty much just walked through without even a glance at her?

    1. Doctor_Who

      Perhaps she is in close enough proximity to Dina to be within her invisibility field.

      1. inqntrol

        It doesn’t work for other people, Dina tried to sneak with Becky in the hospital to check on Ruth, but Becky got caught.

        1. Doctor_Who

          Ah, but Becky has the most powerful Lesbian field on record. It extends several meters from her body, far outside the limits of Dina’s invisibility field. NORAD’s gaydar picks it up (don’t ask why they have that). It’s been known to cause Jedi to have homoerotic thoughts from half a galaxy away.

        2. Cerberus

          They have it for strategic… uh… cruisin- I mean cruise missile purposes. Yes, our cruise missiles are guided by lesbianism now. *sweatdrop*

        3. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          I read that sci-fi novel!

          (Well, not really, it was a lot more twisted and sick than that.)

        4. Geneseepaws

          As long as the units of measure for the missile match the units of measure for the missile’s harness guided Lesbianism still works.
          And the missiles are not required anyway. Right?

        5. Disloyal Subject

          Is that why all those Jedi stood there and let me cut them down tonight? They were reminding themselves that “There is no emotion, there is peace” in a futile effort to avoid thinking about boobies? That’s just not healthy. Repression like that has got to have negative effects even aside from letting a Sith get past your guard and bisect you.

        6. NelC

          Lesbians get the best powers.

          Why isn’t Lesbian a class in D&D?

        7. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          Too unbalanced, unless you really load them up with setting-dependent disadvantages.

        8. thejeff

          You mean like in the real world?

        9. Orion Fury

          Well that took a sad twist.

        10. MatthewTheLucky

          Ah, but Becky’s own field makes everyone around aware that there’s a lesbian nearby, cancelling the effect.

        11. MatthewTheLucky

          Okay, that was freaky.

        12. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          So if Becky does learn to use the DinaSEP field, will it trigger gay panic because people are sure there is a lesbian nearby but can’t see one?

        13. Cerberus

          Leading one person in the back to finally break down and go “okay, it’s me. It’s me, everyone!”

        14. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          Or several start saying that at once. Cue laugh track.

        15. Bagge

          Followed by a romantic comedy, updated to account for all variables.

        16. Emperor Norton II

          I am assuming that this will be one romantic comedy movie that Bagge would watch the hell out of!

        17. Orion Fury

          So we know that won’t be happening here, what with the pre-pulled tag and all.

    2. rectilinearpropagation

      Yep. I’m sure that Sarah will take her roommate ignoring her well. It’s not like she lost all her friends from last year. It’s not like anything just happened to remind her of why and how she lost all her friends from last year. She will not react to this like she’s losing another friend.

      This is definitely not going to become a thing.

      1. Fart Captor

        People would be more responsive to Sarah’s feelings if she would stop hiding them all the time

        1. Cerberus

          Just like Becky… and Billie… and Carla… and Amber… and… Actually, it’d probably be faster to list the DoA characters who don’t hide all their emotions deep inside out of fear.

        2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          “Finally I have found a place safe from emotional turmoil. Or a bunch of Vulcan infiltrators.”

        3. Fart Captor

          Not quite.

          Becky hides fear and angst, Billie and Carla don’t want people to think they care about people, and Amber is afraid to let her self express anger or any of an assortment of very specific feelings

          But only Sarah hides pretty much everything. Even happiness.

        4. Cerberus

          Hmm, interesting point. Which really slams home how much that Freshman year fucked her up. She’s scared of even showing joy or relief, because she’s scared of that being used against her or dragging her into an emotional connection that will explode terribly.

        5. insomniac

          Not to completely downplay the impact of her freshman year, but she was a self-described bongoy misanthrope before she ever met her roommate.

          But yeah, Sarah’s in a thing where opening up is uncomfortable, but keeping closed off is lonely. It’s a thing.

        6. Cerberus

          Totes agree. She was a misanthropic introvert who didn’t trust people before having all that go down. So now, she’s just terrified at the notion of reaching out again, because in her mind, her pessimistic “push everyone away” attitude was the “healthier” one.

        7. Disloyal Subject

          Huh. Now that I’ve got the unhealthiness of the Jedi creed on my mind… Sarah’s a poster child for those who go dark places trying to stick to it.

          There is no emotion, there is peace.
          There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
          There is no passion, there is serenity.
          There is no chaos, there is harmony.
          There is no death, there is the Force.

          That third line might give her trouble, but it’s amazing how badly a sacred code can get butchered in a few millennia of translation, going from “these things exist in balance” to “that thing is terrible and bad and wrong, you should only use and be this one.” Not that the Sith creed is all that much better.

        8. fogel

          Is Sarah really a misanthrope? She struggles against it, but she does care, certainly about Joyce.

        9. Bagge

          THE MIGHTY GALASSO HIDES NOTHING!!!!!

        10. Bagge

          Except for ninjas. Never presume a man does not have ninjas at his disposal.

        11. Cerberus

          And a crippling worry that other people may have crucial information of the “gender conundrum” that has secretly bamboozled him and thus given him a weakness that could be exploited by his restaurant enemies.

        12. Solenoid

          I really don’t want to see the return of Ninja Rick

        13. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          You never see a ninja return until it is too late.

        14. SgtWadeyWilson

          Not even as a one-off gag cameo, or reference to him as a character in one of the cartoons?

        15. Orion Fury

          And I was wondering the exact opposite. In a similar vein to what Mr Pool there was thinking.

        16. foamy

          I’m with you. Ninja Rick was pretty awful.

        17. thejeff

          However, my headcanon is now that he does still work for Galasso, he’s just an effective ninja now and thus we’ve never seen him.

          And it will stay that way throughout the comic, since Galasso will never have public need for a ninja.

        18. rectilinearpropagation

          That really doesn’t have anything to do with acknowledging her presence.

      2. Koms

        Joyce will probably talk to her later. I hope she does. Dina is quite astute. She “sees things that nobody else sees”

        1. Nono

          I actually don’t think she will. Sarah gives off the veneer of ‘I’m fine’ so much that Joyce might automatically assume that.

          The problem with appearing self-confident all the time is that people don’t notice when you’re actually not.

        2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain. It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain. I am a rock, I am an island.

        3. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          Ooops, should have copied somewhere that got “its” right.

        4. SundaesChild

          This is what happens when you fake it, but never make it.

    3. saltchocolate

      That is the thing that just happened, and I am feeling for Sarah right now.

  13. Mr. Random

    You are the sad one. It is you.

  14. Whammy

    My attempts at burns tend to go about as well as Dina’s there. I’m much better at passive-aggressive snide comments and sarcasm.

  15. Rukduk

    Darn it Sarah, you ruined Dina’s first social “burn” on someone else by making her explain it. Now she’ll never truly understand how epic it was for a first try.

  16. TrueVCU

    Projectors gonna project

  17. Lailah

    Shoulda taken Carla up on her cartoon talk, Dotty.

  18. JessWitt

    DoA: Let’s lady it up in here!

  19. Lailah

    What’s interesting is that we’re missing the forest for the trees. In large parts, Sarah was correct. That weekend was AWFUL. Joyce doesn’t even know where to go to worship, which is a huge deal for her. Joyce isn’t broken, but now she wants to stay Home, not in her parents home. And I don’t think she’s really processed what a change that is.

    1. Needfuldoer

      One thing Sarah didn’t count on was Joyce having positive takeaways from her trip back home. She expected her to come back an emotionally drained wreck, if at all.

      Hank and Jocelyne may not have completely made up for Joyce’s newfound pariah status in the community, but they proved to her that at least some of the good she was raised with is genuine.

      1. Gholateg

        Which makes Sarah’s experiences even more heartbreaking, because she probably never had that.

        She went from shitty situation to shitty situation and people are giving her guff for not trying to be positive.

        Sometimes you need something positive to happen to you for that to start working.

    2. Fart Captor

      I think she has. After punching Toedad right in his stupid face, she commented on how home didn’t feel the same anymore

  20. Romanticide

    Dinah Sarah is not infalible, and she has a tendency to look at the worst case scenarios, she is probably waiting for another shoe to drop.

    1. ninja_jesus

      Shoes always come in pairs, unless you’re Johnny Four-Feet.

      1. Needfuldoer

        His come in pairs of pairs.

  21. Crumplepunch

    Aaaaaand there’s our collection title.

  22. Tenchan

    Who else but Dina? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    1. insomniac

      Ba-da-da-da-da-DA!

      (bwop)

  23. cesium133

    Don’t let Becky hear panel 3, or she might spontaneously combust.

    1. Bagge

      It’s OK, she’s busy hugging Hank. She’ll keep doing that for awhile.

  24. Firewater513

    Urg, the bechdel test. One of the stupidest concepts ever. Incredibly sexist things can pass it, incredibly empowering things can fail it. It amounts to nothing, but it still annoys me that some people treat it as a serious thing.

    I do, however, like the somewhat ironically made counterpart to it (supposedly one of many, cus people do that), The MacGyver Test:
    -The absence of the mother is not required for the father to be portrayed as a competent dad.
    -An honest, hard-working man is in a successful or leadership position and is not portrayed as a hapless loser.
    -The female protagonist shows interest in male protagonist before he is the hero.
    -The male protagonist solves problems in creative ways, and only uses violence as a last resort to carry out his goals or mission.

    1. Solenoid

      Fairly sure one of the earlier strips way back illustrated exactly those problems with the Bechdel Test. Which means the characters know this, too.

      1. bhtooefr

        Good call, forgot about that: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/04-the-bechdel-test/indicator/

        And the next strip’s first panel then goes into my argument.

    2. bhtooefr

      The Bechdel test is a useful tool, although arguably not for its original purpose of figuring out what media is sufficiently feminist.

      Widespread failures of the Bechdel test are symptomatic of underrepresentation of women in media – so the test can be applied to the entire entertainment industry, or a certain format, or a certain genre, to highlight those underrepresentations.

      1. Flynn

        Accccctuuuuallly 😀 (it’s inevitable that someone jumps in here) the original purpose was simply highlighting the lack of lesbianism in media. it was a throwaway joke that basically, ‘women can’t even not talk about men, much less be lesbians onscreen’.

        The fact it ended up being a handy statistical guideline (meaningless on an individual basis, quite telling as a trend), and very simple to apply, means it stuck around.

        (Also I am pretty sure that Dorothy should be saying her life should *start* passing the Bechdel test).

        1. Elitist oars

          Why do you think its purpose was “highlight the lack of lesbianism in media”? In the original comic it was mentioned, it was noted that “Alien” was the last movie the character could see, as it passed the test.

          “Alien” had nothing to do with lesbianism, but it was very progressive in the sense of attempting to be gender-blind, at least internally, and so it passing the Bechdel Test came as a natural consequence of *that* choice.

        2. Flynn

          Okay, fine, not TECHNICALLY. But in context, it was a throwaway joke in a queer comic about two queer (pretty sure) characters deciding they wanted to see something they could relate to.

          So while the most they could hope for was ‘implied lesbians’, and therefore they were settling for a simple gender interaction, queerness *was* the context.

        3. Flynn

          Part of the context. Obviously gender was the other part of the context, which is why lesbians, not ‘queerness in general’.

      2. Heatth

        The “original purpose” was never, ever, about “what media is sufficiently feminist”. That is the misinterpretation that people keep bringing up when mentioning why it is garbage.

    3. Elitist oars

      The Bechdel Test is one of the best things ever, and it matters *statistically*. Of course “incredibly sexist things can pass it,” and “incredibly empowering things can fail” it. If you’re using it to determine if a *single* thing is sexist, you’re doing it wrong. You should be using it alongside the Reverse Bechdel Test as a metric to determine the presence of a particular kind of sexism in a wider range of things.

      In your “McGuyver test”, you’ve completely failed to understand the benefits of the Bechdel test, which is that it’s very very clear, and it thus doesn’t require an arbitrary judge to make arbitrary judgments about whether it passes it or not, and thus it can be used as a metric. “Is not portrayed as a hapless loser” is not a binary clear-cut distinction. “Competent dad” is not a binary clear-cut distinction. “Creative ways” is not a binary clear-cut distinction.

      “Two named women talk about something which isn’t a man” however is a clear-cut distinction. And thus is actually usable and useful, unlike the useless criteria you’ve put in your McGuyver test.

      1. davidbreslin101

        The reverse Bechdel- frequently passed in the pre-title sequence.

        I do honestly feel that anyone creating fiction today should aspire to pass the Bechdel test as often as possible.

        1. thejeff

          At least should have it in mind and not fail without thinking about it. Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense.
          Nor would it be helpful to put in otherwise pointless “Bechdel pass” scenes, where the hero’s love interest has a passing conversation about the weather with woman she addresses by name, but who doesn’t appear elsewhere in the movie.

    4. Conuly

      The Bechdel test is not really a measurement of how feminist something is. It’s simply a flat-out measurement of representation. Are females adequately represented according to this incredibly low bar? Well, all righty then!

      Of course, many perfectly good movies fail. A few craptacular movies pass. It isn’t very much good as the sole tool for evaluating the merits of any particular movie. It is, however, a fairly good tool for evaluating the film industry as a whole.

    5. Bagge

      The Bechdel test WOULD be stupid… if not such a big chunk of blockbuster movies repeatedly fail it. Just like Conuly said, it is a lowest bar.

      1. Bagge

        For illustration… let me come up with a new test. the “Stationary car” test. It asks if a) there are real cars in the movie or just models and b) if they actually move. It is designed to illustrate Hollywood’s tendency to use cars not as modes of transportations but part of the scenery as a signal that the movie takes place in a “real” city.

        This test WOULD be stupid for the simple reason that there IS no such tendency and even if it existed it wouldn’t be very indicative of a serious cultural problem (although I suppose it could make a column in ‘motorists weekly’ or something).

        In the same way. The Bechdel test WOULD be stupid if the majority of big movies actually passed it. Then there would be a much better lowest bar would could set.

        1. Bagge

          …OK, I’m less than convinced that I didn’t horrible confuse my point. Anyway, it would be great if non-men could take a larger part of mainstream media.

        2. Orion Fury

          I…think i get it?

        3. Bagge

          Thank God for that. I think I will take a rain check on trying to clarify further – at this point I would just dig myself down deeper.

      2. Amazi-Stool

        What is “such a big chunk”?

        A majority of 2016’s biggest movies pass the Bechdel test.

        This “such a big chunk” credo might be no longer supported by facts.

        1. Lailah

          Yer article is about blockbusters. Yer article explicitly says 33% of those blockbusters failed. 33% is still a god damned big chunk. Even if the only movies of 2016 were blockbusters (Spoiler alert: no), that’s still a large fucking chunk taht couldn’t find two women to talk to each other.

        2. ClaudeWicked

          Or perhaps, didn’t care, or have a reason to care.

        3. Amazi-Stool

          Yer article is about blockbusters.
          Well yes!
          From Bagge’s comment, to which i replied:
          “if not such a big chunk of blockbuster movies repeatedly fail it”
          Context were blockbusters, article is ’bout busters. (Ghostbusters?)

          Even if the only movies of 2016 were blockbusters (Spoiler alert: no)
          Blockbusters are less experimental, more formula-driven than movies with smaller budgets, so change is less likely to happen in blockbusters.

          But nothing prevents to create statistics about other movies, too.
          Why the fear of facts and sticking to just assuming?

        4. Lailah

          I can’t create statistical data like this. That requires me to have a budget and time, and inclination, to watch every movie of a year.. But even within what you offered, things aren’t. Fucking. Good. Again, this is the minimal standard: 33% of the top grossing films (“But they’re formulaic! That should be good! lol.) did not pass the minimal standard of female participation.

          33% of the mine lacks properly breathable oxygen – mine deemed completely safe is a completely asinine thing. It would be asinine to say it was even safe for breathing. That’s an ENORMOUS chunk of blockbusters that failed to meet a minimal god damned standard.

        5. Amazi-Stool

          “That requires me to have a budget and time, and inclination, to watch every movie of a year”.

          Not necessarily: There are sites like bechdeltest.com which have a bit more movies than top 50 (78 for 2016).

          But that’s the point: Are there enough good movies to chose from?
          If you cannot watch all of them, and it appears more than 50% are good, than where’s the problem that there are some rotten tomatoes?

          That’s a whole different story than the situation in the original Bechdel comic: Nothing to chose from in the then current offer.

          33% of the mine lacks properly breathable oxygen – mine deemed completely safe is a completely asinine thing.
          You pay money to visit mines? Strange choice of entertainment!

          the minimal standard of female participation
          Minimal standard? So every movie must comply to it?
          It’s not about the statistics any more, it really means no exceptions allowed!

        6. Lailah

          Your inability to read metaphor, and cheap attempts to twist words are noted. It is the minimal standard of female participation. It’s hard to say women participated in the movie without it. A woman may have, but women basically did not. Individual movies not meeting the standard is fine. There are sometimes legitimate setting reasons (Castaway being a rare, particularly extreme example), and that’s fine. But even if we pretend that every movie that failed had a good reason, it says something that this is what we choose to make our movies about. Even without genuinely good reasons in the setup, sometimes that’s just how things work out. This /can/ be fine in /an individual work/.

          You did not ask “are things getting better?”, to which I would have said yes. Over the last few years, we’ve been going up and down around the 50% mark for the big names. You implied that the current state of affairs is fine. That 33% of all *TENTPOLE* movies, the big names that are meant to draw everyone in, couldn’t be arsed to have two characters from the slightly more populous gender interact means we’re good, and why are people even talking about this? Yer an irritating schmuck.

        7. Amazi-Stool

          Also “33% is still a god damned big chunk.”

          That was my question: What is “such a big chunk”?

          What is the criteria?
          32% is not good enough, so should it be less than 20%?
          10%?
          5%?
          Or is only 0% acceptable?

        8. Lailah

          The one that emerges when women actually have roughly equivalent roles in movies as a whole. Surprisingly, I can’t be totally sure what that is, because this is a state that has never actually occured in the media as a whole. Go figure. I imagine it’s a lot closer to 5%.

        9. Amazi-Stool

          The one that emerges when women actually have roughly equivalent roles in movies as a whole.
          And now we have a totally different – and much better – criterion.

          Which further highlights why applying the Bechdel test as a serious rule was just a bad idea.

        10. Lailah

          No. That isn’t a criterion. That is a goal. That is an endgame. The Bechdel Test is a question centered around a criterion. “Do women usually have speaking parts with each other, about topics besides men?” It is part of that endgame. It is an EXTREMELY BASIC part of that endgame.

          And we have jackasses walking around complaining that the canary in the coalshaft isn’t sophisticated. I’ll worry about that when I rarely need to replace it. For now, well.

    6. Cerberus

      Uh not really.

      It’s not meant as a hard-rule of “is this feminist or not”. Hell, it’s not even a test. It’s based on a joke comic back in the 80s which is in turn based on a conversation with a friend of Allison Bechdel’s at the time named Liz Wallace:
      http://dykestowatchoutfor.com/the-rule

      The whole usefulness of it (which Leslie pointed out in the strip where she brings it up) is to note how few movies can even pass a rule as simple and basic as “does it have more than one woman, do they talk, do they talk about something other than a man”.

      That’s not a high bar for movies to clear and the fact that few movies do is a problem and the point of the joke strip at the time. That if you try and watch only movies that actually involve a diversity of women with full and complete roles you’re not going to be able to watch much because the industry over all does not value those stories.

      And it’s been popularized and turned academic because it gives words and a name to a phenomenon seen in most media wherein women’s roles are severely reduced or treated as tokens because the presumed intended audience of the product is frequently men or what old rich white men assume women want.

      And yeah, there’s a lot of other “rules” that are basically pointing out the paucity of gender diversity.

      Kelly Sue DeConnick’s “Sexy Lamp Test” on whether or not the girl character could be replaced with a sexy lamp and still serve the same on-screen function.

      Or Robot Hugs’ Fleshlight with a Post-it note test. Which is whether or not the woman character could be replaced by a fleshlight with a post-it note based on how many women’s roles in many action franchises is to basically give some plot-relevant information, be a quick sex scene and then either disappear into the background or be tragically shot to give the man “purpose”.

      And really all these rules frequently are about the same thing: “Women don’t exist enough in most media”. And that’s the problem all of them are outlining at their most basic level.

      So yeah, it’s not meant to be a perfect arbiter of feminist or not, it’s about showing the sexist swamp we’re all in where some people’s response to “hey, maybe women should fully exist in some stories on occasion” is “you’re right, our handsome male protagonist who gets the girls should be a nerd power fantasy instead of a jock power fantasy”.

    7. Dandi_Andi

      Yes, sexist things can pass the Bechdel test and emotionally empowering things can fail it. The Bechdel test is not and has never been the be-all end-all test for sexism. It is simply a basic litmus test for the presence of an explicitly female perspective being represented in a piece of media. It is meant to start a conversation, not end it.

      Do some people misuse the Bechdel test? Absolutely. Sometimes people are wrong. That happens when people discuss complex and nuanced subjects like the depiction of gender in media. Some people use it as a shorthand substitute for discussions about gender; not actually applying the Bechdel test, but using it to refer to gender issues broadly. Here, I think it is clear Dorothy is using it casually to refer to meaningful female companionship. The actual Bechdel test is not meant to be relevant to this discussion.

    8. Lailah

      Oh my Lord and Taylor. Men frequently go out of their way to behave as though tiny concessions in child rearing are huge sacrifices, then want everyone to pretend we think men, as an aggregate, are doing their fair share of parenting in society. Yer not. If you want us to say you are, tell the dudes that aren’t to do their damn job as a parent.

      and you attached your test to /pacificism too/. It wasn’t enough that you have the bulk of Smart Person roles, but the hero has to both be a Smart Person /and/ a pacifist. Apparently you’ve forgotten you live in a society that hates nonviolence or something? You’ve confused your lack of nonviolent roles with an /insult/ in what I assume must be reaching of the highest caliber.

      And then you have the audacity to complain about the canary in the coal shaft not being the most super specific and sophisticated test. The canary can not tell you anything more complicated than “is this place doing badly at one particular thing?” It does not tell you if the mine shaft’s supports are properly laid out. It does not tell you whether proper safety policies are being followed. It does not warn you of Clowns beneath the adamantine. It tells you one. God damn. Thing. “Is it safe to breathe in here?”

      The Bechdel Test is the canary in the coal shaft of the media. It is an extremely basic barometer that measures one thing. That it dies as frequently as it does, and with such speed, and consistency, is Bad. There is a sickness in how we present women in fiction, as a whole. That sickness is extremely basic. We do not present women as characters who have interests and are as varied. We do not often have women to fill out support roles besides those of “love interest’s friend” or simple stock roles who interact with the protagonist, who is almost always male.

      1. Cerberus

        This metaphor. Just all of this metaphor.

        The Bechdel Test is the warning sign that gets us to ask the follow-up “why are so many movies failing such a simple test” and thus note things that would otherwise lie like invisible gas in the shafts such as the way women are not frequently made the main protagonists of movies and if they are, they are frequently surrounded almost entirely by men to “make up for this discrepancy” and things like how because so many movies show an 80-20 men-women split, we expect that to be followed in movies in all things including background characters, making the world look like a land with a very specific woman-hunting plague.

      2. Emperor Norton II

        BOOM, pipe bomb of truth delivered through a most excellent metaphor!

    9. Chris Phoenix

      You know what sucks about the Bechdel Test?

      It was invented in 1985.

      It’s still relevant today.

      That sucks.

      1. Cerberus

        Oof, yeah, that’s a big one. This has been floating around for 30 years and it’s still relevant and it’s still relevant in most media.

        That’s just a depressing factoid no matter how you look at it.

        1. APersonAmI

          You mean fact. A factioid is something untrue that people speak of so often it becomes accepted as fact. I don’t mind spelling mistakes and such, but I figured you might want to know that you said the opposite of what you meant to say.

        2. Cerberus

          Not saying the opposite of what I mean. Yeah, I can see the benefits in that.

          Thanks.

    10. Emperor Norton II

      “The female protagonist shows interest in male protagonist before he is the hero.”

      Really? Really? Really? Really? You’re complaining about the Bechdel test, then shows up with your own “test” in which the female protagonist is there to show interest in the male protagonist, because obviously only the -man- can be a hero of a movie…

      …Yeah, I think I will stick with proper use of the Bechdel test (as explained by many other posters) rather than this sexist, brainless drivel, thank you very much.

      1. thejeff

        While that bit of the test does point at the frustrating trope of “love interest only falls for main character because of his heroism”, it not only has the problem you describe, it fails in any number of other ways. Not only does it assume the man must be the hero, it assumes there’s a hero at all. Entire genres fail simply because the question doesn’t apply.

        Much like other genres likely fail the first part of this test because the movie doesn’t deal with fatherhood. Or pass the last because it’s not an action movie.

        1. Emperor Norton II

          In short, it is a rather stupid test specifically designed to try and make it appear as if men are being badly represented in movies too.

          Completely forgetting that what the Bechdel test (and also the Sexy Lamp Test/Flesh-hole with a Post-it Test) really shows is that men is what drives the plot forward, and there is practically always at least one male protagonist without whom the entire movie falls completely apart.

          But the MRAs of the world -have to- come up with stupid “tests” like that because they know that simply doing the reverse Bechdel will show that there is ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM finding movies where men will communicate in a meaningful manner with one another about other subjects than women. There really isn’t. And they know it. 99% of all movies pass that test without even trying. And most of those pass that test in the first five minutes of the movie.

          But being the fragile little things that they are, their egoes won’t allow them to look at this simple fact and say “You know, the statistics are in fact skewed towards men, isn’t it?” It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad and toxic.

    11. SundaesChild

      A serious question(meaning, I welcome some perspective, and I fully admit that my own is SUPER limited): doesn’t the context of the conversation matter? Obviously, if all the theoretical non-male characters talk about is the subject’s manliness/desirability, that’s a big problem. If they are concerned about a male’s stabilty, or lack of direction, though, is that straight up bad or good? Or what if two men are talking about a non-male character in a non-objectifying manner?

      I guess my real question might be two-fold: is it possible to both a)not enforce gender sterotypes, and b) acknowledge the characteristics themselves as distinct strengths?

      1. TheGrammarLegionary

        If I recall properly, the point was to demonstrate that, according to movies, it’s impossible to get any plot to move without a man to drive it. That’s why talking only about men counts against it; if the women need to be talking about men the whole time for their dialogue to have relevance to the plot, it’s obviously a male-driven plot. As other commenter have noted, that’s not a bad thing on its own, just when it’s ALL THE TIME.

      2. thejeff

        As TheGrammarLegionary said, it’s not automatically bad. Context does matter. But the fact it’s still so rare highlights the issue.
        Defining it that way also makes it much more clear cut and less subject to confusion.
        In the original joke, Alien passes because the two women discuss the monster.

        To get a better grasp, compare with the equally simplistic Reverse Bechdel test: Two named males, discussing something other than a woman. No more nuance, but far more movies pass it. This reflects both how much more prevalent men are in movies, but how much less those men are focused on women than the other way around.

      3. Lailah

        Why is the only relevant thing for two women to talk about a man? Why can you only move the plot forward by discussing men?

        Because by far, the only relevant characters are men. No, there is no valid reason for the issue to only come up with romance. I remember this dodge coming up with TFA. I considered it senseless (Maz Kanata and Rey talk about The Force, why are you even making up this bullshit?), but even putting that aside… so what? Part of the point is that there aren’t female protagonists’ who are worth discussing. It doesn’t actually matter that Trinity and Neo are destined lovers or whatnot. What matters is, the only valid conversation she could have with The Oracle was about Neo. There is an economy of time in a movie – in principle, nothing happens that does not drive plot, build character, or build setting, and preferably you hit at least two of the three (and one of those is ‘drive the plot’). And when under this time constraint, hollywood in particular never considers women worthy of these goals.

        1. Lailah

          And there aren’t female support characters to talk with those female protagonists. As I said, TFA did /barely/ manage to pass, thanks to Awesome Grandma, but let’s say it hadn’t, because of her. You have Leia there, and the protag is Rey, and you couldn’t find a conversation on something that isn’t a dude? They couldn’t talk about Rey, the actual protagonist?

          But even then: One movie failing isn’t actually an issue. TFA did a lot of important things, and ultimately even had it failed, I wouldn’t consider it terribly important. It is exactly one movie. Circumstances could always, in any isolated case, say that X doesn’t happen, even if X is really easy, because in theory, design is organic. It’s not particularly troublesome that individual movies don’t do this. I don’t expect a conversation between, let’s say, cleaning staff in a prison movie just to say you got a ‘gold star’ (which it isn’t, it’s more of a minimum effort thing). The problem is that failure is endemic in hollywood. It happens allt he time.

          Actually, it’s not just hollywood. Even with fewer time constraints, allowing both larger casts and less of an obsessive need for an economy of words, video games and TV Shows often fail.

        2. Cerberus

          Even a lot of webcomics fail the test, largely because they are getting a lot of their tropes from general culture. There are a lot of two dudes talk about stuff and act wacky kinda webcomics where the girl characters if they exist, mostly exist to converse about the guy characters in their lives.

          Hell, if I remember correctly, it took the original Roomies a really long time to fulfill the Bechdel Test.

    12. showler

      Is there a name for the test where somebody posts something inflammatory on a discussion board and then doesn’t return to argue it further?

      1. Lumin

        Yes, that’s trolling. In the original and sometimes notably more skilful and intelligent sense. Although usually not.

  25. Bagge

    Awwwwwwwwww, Dotty and Joyce are back together. Dorothy missed her and Joyce take pride in telling her friend about all her adventures. Beat still my heart.

    Yes, Dorothy, now when you are with Joyce you can have lady time and pass the Bechdel test together, just like Twilight. Sparkle, you perfect cinnamon rolls!

    1. Emperor Norton II

      I didn’t even see this comment before I made my own below. It makes me happy that we were both referencing MLP independently!

      1. Bagge

        And I didn’t even make an MLP reference, but a Twilight reference (in itself a reference to Joyce’s favorit Bechdel-passing movie)
        http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/04-the-bechdel-test/indicator/

        I’m sure Dorothy agrees that everypony here is CRAZY!!!

        1. Bagge

          Becky, of course, is 20% cooler.

        2. Emperor Norton II

          Oh gods, yes! Becky is sooooo Rainbow Dash. Especially the part where they both refuse to allow themselves to be seen as “vulnerable”, or a Debbie Downer.

          Heck, I think my imperial headcanon will now read Becky in RD’s voice.

        3. Bagge

          One of Rainbow Dash’s defining moments for me is when she enters the library in lesson zero to give support to Twilight as she is being told off by Celestia – and enters the library with a completely unnecessary combat roll. Because combat rolls are COOL!

          I wouldn’t be the least surprised to see Becky do the same thing here
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/superglue/

      2. Emperor Norton II

        Oh wow. I thought that the punctuation mark was a mistake and you were talking about MLP’s Twilight Sparkle there (since MLP is one of the few shows that passes the Bechdel test with not only flying, but also swimming and running colours).

        No blame falls on you, but I hope you understand why this MLP-fan made that mistake. 🙂

        1. Amazi-Stool

          It’s a bit extreme in the other direction – not exactly the ideal to strive out for.

          Cause it’s a failure in the “eat your own dog food, follow your own rules” department.

          The only male member of the main cast is nothing more than a pet (Proven in Equestria Girls: Spike turns into a dog).

          So almost every episode fails the reverse Bechdel.

          Yeah we know: “Target audience, it’s a show made for girls!”

          Lame excuse, next time someone complains about a movie failing the Bechdel test, would you accept when producers say “women are not our target audience”?

        2. Emperor Norton II

          And whoooosh, the point of the Bechdel test went right over your head.

          Any single movie can fail the Bechdel test and still be perfectly fine for it. The point is rather how often it happens and why it usually happens (hint: It’s not artistic direction), especially compared to how -extremely seldom- it happens the other way around.

          So yeah, this one show. This. One. Show. fails on the other side, and you’re treating it like it’s equally bad as the overwhelming statistics of women not getting proper representation -as a whole-.

          It isn’t. It Really Isn’t. Plenty of posts further up that explains this better, especially by Lailah.

        3. Amazi-Stool

          And whoooosh, the point of the Bechdel test went right over your head.
          Actually not, but my point – may not have been expressed clearly enough (and went over your head).

          Any single movie can fail the Bechdel test and still be perfectly fine for it.
          It’s not a single movie, it’s a TV series. And lauded for passing the Bechdel test.
          And that’s my point: If it’s so good at representation of female characters, why was it not possible to have a better representation of male characters? Is there some rule against it?

          and you’re treating it like it’s equally bad as the overwhelming statistics of women not getting proper representation -as a whole-.
          I don’t! I just say that it’s not the ideal to strive out for.
          And that “overwhelming statistics” – well, see my other posts.

        4. Cerberus

          I’d give a single fuck if the response to seeing nothing that represents me in most every form of media every made wasn’t “fuck you, who cares, you’re nothing”.

          And if there weren’t an avalanche of men coming in to every singular example of a woman-focused media piece whining about how the boys don’t get equal time while disappearing every time women wanted to talk about how so many works presume that male audiences are the only ones that matter.

          Hell, how many times have we seen it with Dumbing of Age where someone comes in to whine about how it’s sexist cause it doesn’t show the dudes enough or its anti-Christian because it sometimes has a Christian villain in ways Evangelicals aren’t used to seeing in culture?

          So if there’s one show that doesn’t follow the Reverse Bechdel Test or let the male characters swarm and overtake the show because “how could we expect the ‘real’ target audience to be inspired by them”, and it still manages to succeed? Good for it.

          And to answer your point, the difference is power. Just like with racism versus reverse racism. The latter has no power. A marketer saying “aw, sorry girls, you’re not our target demographic” has power. And it has power because most marketers say girls are not only their target demographic, but that in anyway making it appealing to them in a non-insulting manner would scare of their “real” demographic.

          It’s just one more drop in a full bucket bolted to their backs.

          Someone saying it to boys?

          Fuck, we’ve seen how violently boys have reacted to being told that certain minor products weren’t designed with them in mind as the main audience (not hostile to them, mind you, just not intended for them).

          Death threats, stalking, endless screaming on the internet, attacking the writers, attacking the artists, attacking fans, trying to bankrupt the companies responsible, get the family members of those working on the programs fired. Because men tend to grow up feeling entitled that all work must be intended to them first.

          And that’s the actual problem. The Bechdel Test is the canary in the coal mine. The toxic gas is this shared culture where we view men as humans and women as reward tokens. We view men as the consumers of all media. We view men as entitled to have all works reflect them.

          And so, no one even bothers pretending women are human and the sum total of those social messages convinces said women that they are worthless, that their lives are only provided with meaning when they date or prop up the men in their lives, that their function is to sacrifice and fade into the background for their man, and that it is not their function in society to dream big or think of being a success or an important person in their own right.

          And I’m saying this, because studies have actually backed up this as well as corroborated it with regards to race, sexuality, and gender identity to note that when folks don’t see themselves reflected in cultural narratives and media, they have marked decrease in mood, performance, and self-confidence. And for things like queer identities, may even experience delays in figuring out their own selves simply because they don’t see themselves reflected.

          Men don’t need to be reflected like this in everything (though I would agree with some people’s comments that men need to see alternative models for how to be a man that don’t follow traditional scripts and allow for femininity [thank you Steven Universe for this one]). But women, queer folks, non-white folks?

          They really do.

        5. Bagge

          Hear, hear!!!

        6. LeRoyEstMort

          Preach, sister! Truth is power.

  26. Bagge

    Sarah has a rather similar expression to here
    http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/surprise/

    I think she is a bit jealous of the people in Joyce’s life that can spend time with her WITHOUT berate her and being a sourpuss crankypants. Sorry, Sarah. Joyce likes you too!

    1. Cerberus

      I think she might be jealous of the concept of getting close to people like Becky and Joyce are or Dorothy and Joyce are.

      Like, we know that Sarah is a a strong introvert and a bit misanthropic just in general. But she’s also been through a last year where she tried to dig deep and be really there for people and with people. And she even was trusted and included enough to be the main emotional support for a person in crisis that she nearly fucked up her scholastics to try and support.

      And it all blew up on her. All her friends at the time turned on her because she didn’t know that Dana’s home wasn’t safe (to quote Billie) and all that trust and openness ended up mostly being used to hurt her and teach her that connecting with people is inconvenience and pain.

      So it’s not just that she’s a little jealous of the people in Joyce’s life who can interact without being a fresh shower of pessimism. She’s jealous of being able to interact with anyone without being a fresh shower of pessimism. Cause she’s got too many recent traumas and pain about it to really let herself fully go in that regard.

      1. Bagge

        Ouch, yeah, that makes sense. Especially since Ruth’s example just opened up those wounds for her.

        At least she has Dina and her rapidly developing sense of humor!

      2. Charles Phipps

        Was Dana’s home not safe? I thought it was just the fact she got pulled from school and that ticked off Radiah and the others.

        1. Fart Captor

          All we know for certain is that she’s not happy there.

        2. Bagge

          Raidah seems to think it wasn’t.
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/06-strange-beerfellows/absolve/

          A frustratingly realistic part of Sarah’s story is that neither she nor we knows for sure.

        3. Charles Phipps

          I dunno as there’s a big line between being watched for depression and drug addiction versus an abusive home which is not safe for your family. I moved back with my parents because my mother passively aggressively manipulated me into doing it so she’d be less lonely (and her leg had been injured) and I HATED IT–it was certainly safe, though.

        4. Cerberus

          That still wouldn’t be healthy though even if you were physically safe. And yeah, I went into some detail about why I’m somewhat convinced that Dana’s home is at least abusive emotionally if not in any other way, with one of the biggest red flags that she thinks its awful a year later.

          Like, if she was very recent into being detoxed* and being treated, hey, maybe it’s just the rough process (see Billie right now, she’s very convinced this is a bad path she’s on even though the fact that she’s getting therapy is a very good thing).

          *Not that I can stomach the whole drug panic for marijuana for very long. It’s a freakin’ medicine that has less “detox” effects than either tobacco or alcohol. So, I can’t muster the bother to pretend like she’s getting treated for a heroin addiction or something like that.

          But it’s been a year and she still says this was worse than when she was depressed and weeping every single day. That’s a heavy heavy red flag of a really bad situation and I speak from the very personal experience of having two lovely partners both trapped living with abusive family members as well as mentoring a lot of kids who are stuck with abusive family members that CPS can’t bother to give a fuck about because they’re too busy with the absolutely worst case scenarios.

        5. Cerberus

          I also have developed a strong antipathy to the “scary pot” debates since seeing how much “anti-drug” “I’ll detox you” parental strategies are frequently used just as a justification for pre-existing abuse, controlling access to necessary medicine the kids are using to cope with said abuse.

          So, when I see a lot of parents restricting pot out of “drug concerns” while also playing fast and loose with their kids access to anti-depressants, it starts to paint vivid pictures of how some parents use access to medicines and demonizing a child’s coping strategies in order to impose more control on their life and limit the child’s ability to escape or even numb themselves to the abuse they are suffering.

        6. Charles Phipps

          I’m a big proponent for pot but I thought the issue was the fact Sarah believed Dana was medicating with marijuana for her depression. As Sarah said, “she wasn’t getting better.”

        7. Cerberus

          Which is not the point of pot. Pot does very little with depression. What it helps with is anxiety, physical pain, and so on. Someone who’s both depressed and anxious, say because their mom died and their dad is controlling at the least, is gonna be more likely to be taking the pot more often.

          What Dana needed was an anti-depressant to go with the pot, but she wasn’t seeking aid to get that, probably out of fear that admitting depression would get her sent back home as happened.

        8. Dana

          I’m much less convinced that we know anything about Dana’s present circumstances, good or bad. When Raidah said she wasn’t in a better place she said it was “last time she checked”. We don’t know how closely she and Dana are staying in touch. For all we know they spoke once or twice when Dana was newly home, stinging from what she would see as a betrayal by Sarah. Even if they talk frequently, Dana may use their time to vent, or Raidah may be stubborn in seeing things in a negative light, especially thinking about it during a confrontation with Sarah.

        9. Charles Phipps

          Also, I assume the issue is she’s living at home and isn’t allowed to return to school (presumably due to no longer being supported financially). Which would make anyone miserable.

      3. thejeff

        Just one thing – while it’s quite possible that Dana’s home isn’t actually safe and Sarah’s choice may have backfired, I don’t think that’s what motivated Raidah and her gang’s initial antagonism to Sarah. Unless things were radically different than we’ve been told, Dana was hiding her problems from them and they were pissed Sarah told on her since Dana wasn’t really in trouble. It’s possible they were actually worried about Dana not being safe at home, but it doesn’t seem they let Sarah in on that, even after the fact. It also seems unlikely that if Dana was hiding her troubles after her mother’s death that she’d been that open with them about home abuse.

        1. Cerberus

          I agree. Raidah and the gang turned on her initially because to them Dana was in a rough place but more or less okay and Sarah is bad at communicating, so it sounded like it was because of the pot (which was valid, other people have noted the precarious position Sarah was in with the pot as a black student) and because Sarah needed to hold onto her scholarship.

          Though Raidah’s face in Panel 3 of this comic and her statement of Raidah being a monster does make me wonder if Raidah did actually know about Dana’s abusive dad: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/05-saturdays-all-right-for-slighting/better/

          I dunno, the whole Billie/Carla thing makes me think about seeing different halves of a complete whole. Where Carla saw, like Sarah in this comparison, the depth of the depressive episode in a way that Billie didn’t, like Raidah, but that Billie knew about the abuse.

          I dunno, I’m actually really curious to see more and to see a reappearance of Dana at some point later in the story.

        2. thejeff

          It’s possible. I don’t see it. Raidah’s still focused on the “She was getting better” part.
          It would be an interesting parallel – though I think it breaks partly because Billie did see the depth of the depression, but came closer to sharing it.

    2. Fart Captor

      I dunno, I feel like she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. She’s not used to bad things happening to people and not making them miserable forever after. She’s also not used to friends who are actually understanding, forgiving and supportive.

      She might be jealous, but I’d say she’s more cynical and bitter.

      1. Bagge

        That is true… and also not so little confused. “What is that thing Joyce is doing with her mouth… it looks like a smile, but that can’t be? Right?”

    3. trlkly

      Totally off topic, but I love how this establishes that Joyce thinks pink and red hair do in fact go together.

      1. Bagge

        See, Carol did not try to be mean to Becky when she put her in that dress. She just tried to dress her nicely for Joyce.

        …No? No, i don’t buy it either…

  27. Derek

    ok I might be reading this the wrong way but… is Dorothy saying Carla doesn’t count as a lady? or that the “debate” about Ultra Car was so stupid it doesn’t count as a conversation in her radar?

    1. Fart Captor

      Dorothy and Carla aren’t friends. Friendly, perhaps, but we’ve never seen them hanging out or even interacting except that time Walky got in that big argument with her.

      She also didn’t seem to be super fond of Dorothy at the time

    2. Cerberus

      I think she might not be counting herself as really participating in that conversation given that her main way of interacting with that was to stand back and let Walky fuck it up on his own and offer a mealy-mouthed dodge to avoid getting sucked into things.

    3. Dandi_Andi

      I think she’s referring to meaningful female companionship rather than the specific details of the Bechdel test. She declined to engage in the debate about cartoons, so there really wasn’t s discussion to be had there. We haven’t seen her engage significantly with Carla otherwise. The only people we see her spend much time interacting with in any kind of intimate way are Walky and Joyce.

      1. DonDueed

        And maybe Leslie, but that’s more of a boss-employee relationship than friend-friend.

    4. brasca1

      Dorothy didn’t converse with Carla for any great length of time. She probably said good morning to Sierra when she woke up, but that’s not really a conversation too. Joyce is the only other woman she chats with on a regular basis.

    5. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      Walky was in the conversation, so it was a conversation between a woman and a man, or between two women and a man, depending.

    6. Bagge

      Yes you are reading it wrong 🙂

      She is not reading the comic of her life as we do – she is living it. She interacts with scores of people everyday. Saying hi in hallways, calling mom, interviewing superheroes, getting into pissing contests about cartoons… But unlike fiction, where we are only shown plot relevant interaction, she gets it all, so when she sums it up to Joyce she filters. She does not have a close relationship with Carla as she does with Joyce and Walky.

      It’s also a cutesy way of saying “I missed you and I want to spend time with you”, especially in light of the tug-of-war for Dotty-time Joyce and Walky sometimes engage in.

      1. Bagge

        Oooops, apparently we were a lot of people answering at the same time. “ask and ye shall receive” 🙂

        1. Dandi_Andi

          Indeed. It always surprises me how many replies appear between the time I start typing and when I hit “post comment”.

        2. Cerberus

          We are the flood.

        3. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          Here Come The Flood.

        4. Disloyal Subject

          It’s alright.

    7. Lailah

      Dorothy barely interacted with Carla, and to the extent she did, a man was also part of the subject of HER end of the conversation.

      1. Charles Phipps

        No, Dorothy talked with Carla about Monkey Master. Which is a conversation about a man.

        1. Lailah

          1: Dorothy did not really speak to Carla
          2: To the extent she did, it was about both Carla and Walky.

  28. Cerberus

    Comic Reactions:

    Dina is the best. *roll credits*

    Oh, okay, I guess I’ll say a little more.

    Panel 1: And Joyce goes from agonizing about becoming a criminal type earlier this weekend at the very thought of breaking in to straight up bragging about it to her best friend. She’s really grown so much in so little time and each little taste of freedom makes her more willing to question and less likely to fear.

    And I love Dorothy’s support. It’s practically queer-platonic in its closeness and support and just so joyous to see whenever it comes up in comic.

    Panel 2: Two thoughts: 1) Yay, Joyce is back in her real home. She’s so relaxed and without fear and a good huge part of that is Jocelyne and Hank, but a lot of it is also not being stuck in La Porte anymore. Being where people don’t want to pull her out of school for staying friends with a lesbian and where she can admit to “wrongdoing” without worrying that it will be used against her as proof of “fallen to Satan.

    And 2) Oof, “Walky’s great, but *long pause*”.

    Methinks the NRE (new relationship energy) of Dorothy and Walky’s relationship might be passing, which isn’t a bad thing, per se, but does mean that the problems in the relationship are going to become more clear and honest communication is going to become more necessary if things are going to continue.

    Now it doesn’t necessarily need to continue and there can be a lot of sex to enjoy as things go forward, but I think the novelty of Walky’s caramel abs might be waning a bit and so some of his more annoying toxic masculinity behavior might be starting to wear a bit and might need to get talked out in ways Walky might not be entirely comfortable talking about things.

    But this is also good in a way, because Dorothy has been falling into bad habits too, falling into roles traditionally set for women to be both lover and mother to their boyfriends, being the willing emotional support but rarely getting their full voice. And that’s not going to serve the relationship any good going forward either.

    1. Charles Phipps

      I think you’ve misread Dorothy’s problems with Walkerton. He’s not actually putting her off with his toxic masculinity (which he certainly does help). Dorothy finds it AMUSING rather than upsetting as she just laughs at his attempts to say men only own one pair of shoes or they’re all slobs who live like poor college students. Dorothy is off-put by his IMMATURITY like expecting her to back him up no matter what (which is arguably a relationship requirement of adults as many wives and husbands do the same).

      1. Cerberus

        Maybe. I mean, that’s an equally valid interpretation.

        I guess, I’m mostly defining the immaturity in terms of liking cartoons, being a bit of a man-baby, and having gross eating habits and so on. Which she finds amusing for now (but will likely find less amusing the further she pulls out of NRE).

        And I’m seeing the toxic masculinity defined or at least exemplified by things like the shoes thing, the entitlement to be expected to have her agree with what he says no matter what and not have her own opinions, and the avoidance of all things feels except anger.

        And I’m seeing her as finding those adorable too in NRE. Like, ha ha, he threw a toy at my head. But I guess I’m feeling like I’m seeing signs that she’s starting to be less enamored of that whether it be chafing at being locked out of Walky’s emotions, feeling like her own emotions and views need to be put on hold to “better support him”, or her somewhat disappointed tone before having to tell him that she didn’t agree with his viewpoint on Ultracar.

        Which also might just be me. I tend to see that trend of behavior patterns with a lot of straight women friends of mine of being overly forgiving of toxic masculinity and just general uh…. sort of stuff when NRE is papering over it and then getting steadily less comfortable with those aspects as the relationship goes on. So I could also be very easily just projecting.

        1. Cerberus

          Should also clarify that I believe escaping toxic masculinity is a vital part of the growing up process for most guys, just because when you’re raised as if you’re a guy, you get dumped with so much of it that shedding as much of it as you can ends up becoming part of the process of becoming a better person and man.

          And that struggle is beautiful, because it is frequently difficult, and involves fighting against a lot of nasty messages that limit a guy from accessing his full self in terms of emotions and just being free of some of the anxious fear of failing the impossible standards it sets.

          I think Walky will get there. I’m just worried that his relationship with Dorothy might be a casualty on the way, similar to Amazi-girl’s relationship with Danny being a casualty on the way to her (hopefully eventually) road to stabilized mental health and escaping the ghost of her father in her head.

        2. Chonos

          Everyone seems to forget Dorothy told Walky flat out they were not a long term thing and they won’t interfere with her career. If I had a partner tell me something like that, I wouldn’t be eager to become emotionally invested in the relationship either. Walky keeping Dorothy at a distance is something she engineered, whether she likes it or not.

        3. Cerberus

          Definitely agree. This is not a relationship that was designed to survive past NRE much anyways. And not every relationship needs to be some long-term thing that survives NRE.

          I think this is more the teething problems of Dorothy trying to lie to herself about being okay with this ending short-term like she said she wanted. Because she does love the goof and her natural inclination is to follow the sort of social script about how “relationships are ‘supposed’ to go”. And that might not be tenable for several reasons and this arrangement might work much better as a more casual sexual arrangement rather than a deeply emotionally entangled thing.

        4. Orion Fury

          If only it could be fixed by kicking down doors.

        5. Charles Phipps

          I think what you’re defining is actually unrelated to either as Dorothy is attempting to get both emotional support and provide emotional support for Walky. Except, his problem is he’s not a particularly complex person. What you get is what you see with Walkerton. He’s uninterested in sharing and doesn’t really know how to help others emotionally as we see with his sister(s). Dorothy thinks Walky is hiding things from her but completely misses, no, he simply doesn’t have good opening up skills.

          In short, she keeps raising the bar on him without informing him of it. Amusingly, I think she’s expecting him to be Danny who was a living emotional crutch.

        6. thejeff

          Except he is hiding things from her. Or at least can’t bring himself to talk about them, which is similar.
          She knows damn well he doesn’t have good opening up skills.
          Walky’s very much not “what you see is what you get”, though. One of the things she really loves about him is those moments when he drops the manchild act and steps up. But I think she also likes a lot of the silliness, even if it’s too far for her.

          But yeah, a lot of her missteps in the relationship are likely due to her prior experience being with Danny. Like early on, expecting him to roll over on things like the pajama jeans. Danny would have, without trouble.

        7. Chonos

          As I pointed out earlier, this is the relationship Dorothy wanted. A no strings attached companionship that will end at a time of her choosing. Her getting bent out of shape because Walky is perfectly ok with it and isn’t running to her with his problems is her own fault.

        8. Cerberus

          Would agree, she’s falling to patterns and cultural expectations without examining them. Which is a problem because it doesn’t look like Walky is capable of or wholly enthusiastic about this becoming a more serious, more “traditional” relationship involving large amounts of emotional interconnectivity.

          And that’s a problem because instead of discussing out these expanding roles, she’s just assuming that Walky will slot along with her with the expansions without communication and that she’ll compromise by chipping at things that are important to her like intellectual honesty on her part.

          But yeah, it’s… I wish I knew the term to describe the phenomenon and the closest I’m coming is mononormative (i.e. the powerful cultural “path” that a relationship is “expected” to follow that leads a lot of people to stop listening to what they actually need or can handle because they’re trying to “relationship right”), but I feel that is not a perfect means of describing the behavior.

          But yeah, I’m seeing a very little bit of rockiness between the two of them on that end of the spectrum.

        9. Chonos

          How could he be if the person at the helm of the relationship said “it’s going to end whenever I say?” You keep steering this back into being Walky’s problem when Dorothy is the one who wants a physical relationship she can end whenever she wants but expects the other person, regardless of who, to still act like it’s a long term thing. If she wanted that she should have stayed with Danny.

        10. Cerberus

          No, I fully agree with you. All that up above is very much a Dorothy problem. Wanting to push things in a certain shape with a boyfriend who doesn’t want it and a successful relationship dynamic that doesn’t fit in that shape, because that makes it more relationshipy is very much on her, rather than him.

          And yeah, I really don’t think she’s fully developed away from her relationship with Danny. She wants sex and a finite end-date and something fun, but she’s so used to relationships and feels she should relationships and is in love with the goof, but isn’t really talking about what structure of relationship they are both comfortable with given the dynamic.

          It’s all, I want casual X still, but I also kinda want emotional intimacy and…

          And that’s where she’s slipping into this “mononormativity” (for severe lack of a better word) as much as Walky has slipped into some toxic masculine behaviors on occasion. And both those things are harming this connection they share as it exists now and neither seems fully comfortable really hashing out what they each actually want and are comfortable with*.

          *In my experience, this is a problem in most relationships, where it can be hard to figure out which relationship structure fits the people inside of it and it can be easier to just follow social scripts and see what happens if it happens.

        11. thejeff

          I’m wondering how much the problem is following social scripts generally and how much is just trying to avoid the specific problems of the last relationship. She’s making it absolutely clear with Walky that it’s temporary and will end when she goes to Yale, because she didn’t make that clear enough with Danny and that caused all sorts of trauma.

          Of course Walky isn’t Danny and being overly clingy and losing himself in the relationship isn’t his problem, so setting these kind of limits isn’t a solution. May in fact be making things worse.

          Mind you, I suspect this partly because I’ve done it – screwed up one relationship trying to avoid the mistakes of the last. Didn’t realize it until well afterwards. It’s easy to do and hard to realize, especially when you’re young and don’t have the experience to realize how relationships differ.

        12. Cerberus

          thejeff-

          Honestly, I think it’s an easy trap to fall into in general. Cause you get focused on, nope, not gonna fuck up this thing I did last time that you forget that you’re in a completely different situation with different rules and tripwires.

    2. thejeff

      Panel 1: See! She was right. Crime is a slippery slope. Now that she’s boasting about breaking and entering it can’t be long till she’s scooping out eyeballs with a rusty spoon.

      1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        Nonsense! She would never do that!

        A well brought up girl like Joyce will scoop out eyes with a clean, sterile spoon.

        1. thejeff

          They don’t give you clean, sterile spoons in the joint.

          They also let food touch other food on your plate in jail.

  29. Charles Phipps

    Why aren’t Sal and Sarah friends? They don’t have to talk, hang-out, or do anything together?

    A perfect match.

    1. Fart Captor

      Cuz you’ve generally got to at least one of those things to be friends

      1. Charles Phipps

        Nah. They can share beating up abusers.

    2. 0kami

      The reason why “should interact less” is stated outright here:

      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/fetchin/

      1. Charles Phipps

        Because Sal denies she’s antisocial while Sarah doesn’t.

    3. Andy

      Sarah disapproves of Sal smoking, riding a motorcycle, and having tattoos. Sarah’s disapproval of rebellion is probably going to be very off-putting to Sal. And Sarah makes it explicit in “Fetchin'” when she says “She doesn’t know better.” She sees Sal as a bad influence/bad role model for Joyce.

      1. Fart Captor

        I don’t read her as disapproving of any of those things, myself. Sarah was being about as close to friendly as she gets in that strip. She’s just very suspicious that someone Joyce admires that much could only end up being a cruel asshole in the end.

        I think that glare sure gives Sal at the is basically saying, ”Really? Waiting for a text is keeping you too busy to do this tiny, nice thing for Joyce?”

        And of course, Sal is iterate that Sarah successfully moms her into having to be social for a while

        1. Spencer

          Sarah also didn’t really have anything kind to say about her during the Whiteboard Dingdong Bandit storyline.

  30. Adj

    I have been watching Scrubs on Netflix a lot lately, because it is awesome and makes for good background noise.

    Seeing “lady time” and “let’s lady it up”… I will admit to having a The Todd moment.

    Presumed Lesbian Euphemism Five! *slap* *snap*

    1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      Could be worse, I was having Onegai Twins flashbacks.

  31. Idontcarenomore

    I love Dina and Sarah together. Dina isn’t afraid of Sarah and doesn’t have the ‘knowledge’ of her past that others do, so she just talks to her.

    I don’t think Sarah quite knows what to make of Dina, so she doesn’t try to chase her away. Besides, I don’t think she can chase Dina away. Till Dina wants to go.

    1. Fart Captor

      I think Sarah knows exactly what to make of Dina, which is why she’s a bit more honest with her. (Dina does know about Dana, though. Maybe not the whole story, but when Raidah showed up in the mall, Dina got at least the gist of it.)

      Dina’s social difficulties cause her to be very direct, so it takes a lot for it even occur to her to try to disguise what she’s feeling. She can be deceptive if she needs to be, but it adds another layer of difficulty to something she already struggles with, so she won’t without good reason. Sarah can absolutely trust that Dina means what she says, and has no hidden agenda or machinations going on. It would just be too stressful for her to keep that up.

      I would also assume that Sarah cannot be completely immune to how adorable she is

    2. Jason

      No, Dina was there when Sarah told them the Dana story.

  32. Cerberus

    Panel 3: Sarah staring wistfully at a conversation she doesn’t trust enough to fully join in on. Not able to fully celebrate her coming home and just sitting in the background staring at Joyce, caught on the emotional outside.

    And it sucks. I articulated some of my thoughts up above to Bagge, but I also just empathize strongly because I’ve been there. When you’ve been fucked over in a major shocking way you weren’t prepared for, it becomes really hard to trust people or institutions similar to the one that hurt you.

    And for Sarah helping out a friend and roommate blew up so spectacularly that even after everything she’s built with Joyce, she’s still too scared of reaching out and truly connecting and putting herself at risk like that again to even go up to her and hug her. It’s tragic.

    Also, I call Dorothy and Joyce practically queer-platonic because of lines like that last one. “Let’s lady it up in here”? If you both weren’t canonically straight, I’d be raising such an eyebrow right now.

    And happy smiles that Dorothy is also finding the freedom to be her full self with Joyce as well. I mean, Dorothy and Walky have a lot of good in them as a relationship, but I definitely noticed Dorothy somewhat censoring herself this weekend even before the whole Billie/Ruth calamity.

    And I think her statements around the incident with Carla really highlight that, where she ended up waiting until they were back in the room before she could tell him simply that she didn’t agree with his viewpoint and even then framed it as an apology that he took as a personal attack.

    Even though Joyce is still stumbling her way back out of anti-feminism, she’s still a safer person to talk about stuff like Bechdel Test with (even though her boyfriend attends the same Gender Studies class as her), and I find that a somewhat sad statement with regards to her relationship with Walky.

    Panel 4: Oh, Dina you clever girl. You remembered and you called it out. Hell, it’s probably also the thing Sarah has been second-guessing since she came back.

    She looked like she was smiling, but that’s probably a fluke, she’ll start crying when everyone leaves. The bad times are here again, I’m gonna lose my scholarship. Oh god, what do I do, I can’t do this again.

    Panels 5 and 6: Dina is the best. *roll credits*

    1. Orion Fury

      Dumbing of Age.

  33. Chonos

    Leave Sarah alone, Dina. She’s busy reflecting on how Joyce replaced her with a white blond.

    1. Cerberus

      Dear Bob, Joyce is DC Comics.

      1. ninja_jesus

        Does that mean she fits into the 3 Joyce Theory?

        1. Orion Fury

          So is this the third Joyce, or is there a different one?

        2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          The Joyce that Was
          The Joyce that Is
          The Joyce the Will Be

      2. AlexDenton

        She will be if she makes Dorothy wear something super sexy and tell her to only take super bendy poses.

      3. Amazi-Stool

        I guess you are not writing about Stephanie Brown.

        1. Spencer

          Stephanie Brown totally stepped in on Cassandra Cain’s turf, so it’s kinda fitting in this case.

        2. Cerberus

          Hey, I love Stephanie Brown and believed that her and Cassandra Cain should have taken over the Batcave and had a happy lesbian crime-fighting relationship in it.

          But I’ll also take the piss out of DC Comics continuously trying to follow upfan-favorite marginalized characters with less marginalized, often whiter versions of them (usually involving a “classic” version coming back to life). Especially since I love so many of the characters they keep insisting throwing into the thresh mill. (SB + CC OTP)

          That all said, I have every issue of both of their runs. We did not nearly get enough comics of them being “training buddies” together.

        3. Spencer

          Both Cass and Steph have returned in the new run of Detective Comics.

        4. Regalli

          Especially when they take the marginalized character and have them turn evil in ridiculous convoluted stories written by people who clearly don’t know anything about the character. (Still bitter they took a woman with a learning disability affecting her ability to read and speak and said clearly she could use Navajo code. BECAUSE THAT MAKES SENSE.)

    2. Spencer

      Coming soon is DoA Rebirth, which sees the return of the original white Walky that Willis drew when he was a kid, on account of him being “iconic.”

      The Walky we’ve spent years following now makes intermittent cameos devoted to praising the one true Walky.

      1. Fart Captor

        We also learn that original Walky has been a sleeper agent for the Head Alien the entire time

        1. Orion Fury

          I’m…not sure if I’d read that.

        2. Spencer

          “Dexter & Monkey Master isn’t actually that good.”

        3. Fart Captor

          “I’d like to discuss my feelings at length”

  34. BenRG

    Sarah, this is only a guess but I think Dina is telling you off in her gentle, mild way. She’s trying to tell you that, even though you think that the glass is always half empty, that doesn’t mean that everyone does or that they should. Nor does it mean that it is true!

  35. ClaudeWicked

    Ahh… Reading this comic switches between tension and the feeling of cringe. Any time a character hangs a lampshade, I feel a little more disappointed.

    1. Orion Fury

      Well, it is better than a bare bulb.

  36. Arianod

    Sarah’s life is a constant wait for the other shoe to drop. Must be exhausting.

    1. rectilinearpropagation

      It really is.

      What Sarah hasn’t learned how to do yet is to not share. She keeps warning people because she wants to help them either avoid disaster or at least not be surprised by it. She thinks it’s better in the long term if they know, even if it’s unpleasant when she tells them.

      What she doesn’t understand is you never get forgiven for warning them even in the long term. They think that if you predict something bad will happen then it’s because you *want* something bad to happen. So no matter how things turn out you’re wrong.

      If the bad thing doesn’t happen (or isn’t as bad as predicted) then you’re wrong for making them worry for nothing. You obviously knew it was going to be OK and said it just to make them feel bad.

      If the bad thing does happen then you’re wrong for a multitude of reasons: for wanting it to happen, for not stopping it from happening, for not warning them sooner, for warning them at all.

      Sarah just needs to learn to keep it to herself. Don’t offer warnings unprompted and when people ask what she thinks just say, “I don’t know” or “I’m staying out of it”.

  37. Emperor Norton II

    OK, so recap of the last few days:

    Hank finally wins the collective approval from the commentary field by saying the very best possible thing that could ever have been said to Becky. Bagge makes some comments about Becky that are so great I want to marry them. Yes, I want to marry the comments. Bagge is obviously a great person, but I prefer friendship with her, as long as I can marry those great comments.

    Next, we learn why Mandy and Sierra will never be main characters. They are well-adjusted and responsible individuals, and while that is great to have in real life, it does not make for epic drama in the world comics. And Chloe seems to be the kind of boss you get once in three lifetimes, if that.

    The comment field talks about safe book readings, and how you need to put on the covers to avoid the textbooks multiplying. Bagge continues her epic comments.

    Billie and Carla verbally dukes it out. It turns out they both have good intentions, they both could have chosen better actions; and it’s hard to condemn either one for what they did. Interestingly enough, Billie does in fact not seem to care one bit about herself being outed, it’s all about Ruth.

    The comment field is… lively.

    And finally, today’s strip, more hopeful than in a long time for Joyce’s part. Remember two day’s ago (in comic time), when we had Angry Joyce being angry at everything? Or even just the day before?

    Well, Angry Joyce is not Joyce’s ground state of being, and it never will be. And after some premium dad-ing, she is finally finding herself again.

    And having someone to talk to about everything that will JUST LISTEN AND TAKE HER SERIOUSLY is great therapy for Joyce right now. Sure, Hank is also doing that now, but he is still a dad, and it’s a bit complicated since he’s been part of the whole thing. Someone who hasn’t, and instead is just being a Good Friend like Dorothy, that is doing wonders for Joyce’s well-being. Look at how even as she recaps, she is already getting more relaxed and distanced to the stupid weekend, as if it becomes more dream-like.

    And Dorothy also does another great thing: Simply expresses how much she’s missed Joyce. That’s at least 4 therapy sessions shaved off right there.

    That, everyone, is magical. Which means that MLP was right all along!

    And then, Dina… Oh gods, Dina. You are the fricking best! In the last few weeks, you have clearly started studying humans the way you study dinosaurs. And although they tend to have this stupid habit of changing on you all the time instead of staying frozen in time*, you nevertheless are picking up on things, from your own perspective. And then you drop your perspective on them like a motherfucking pipebomb of truth, and they never see it coming. Which is fitting, because they never see you coming unless you want them to.

    *I guess the fact that the brontosaurus made a comeback had her realise that even dinosaur facts are subject to change, and one must therefore be more adaptable with how one thinks about them.

    1. thejeff

      On Joyce: It’s also partly because this weekend, which she’d been dreading, is over. Helps that Hank passed the test, of course, but it also helps that she’s not constantly worrying about how bad it’s going to be.

      1. Cerberus

        She also got support from Hank on a very important thing. She’s allowed to be damaged and have her own views and see college as more healing than church with him. Like, each one of those things were the exact things Carol was using as signs of wickedness and a reason to cage her, which was also the source of a lot of anger and fear.

        Having her dad be like, oh, yeah, people here at the church are kinda sucking aren’t they and hey, you’re like you’re old man, I was a bit of a rabble-rouser back in the day trying to do what’s right, and I’ll take you back to college early if that’s what you think is best.

        Losing that fear that rebellion equals hell made it a lot easier to handle the fear and panic. And having Jocelyne accept her anger as valid, also allowed her to feel less angry all the time about things.

        So yeah, she’s right, pieces of the weekend were healing. Just as healing as being back here with her friends and knowing one of her parents will fight for her and Becky to stay here.

        1. thejeff

          Oh definitely. Hank was definitely the big factor. Jocelyne helped too.

          I just wanted to emphasize how much her dread of the weekend had been bothering her in the last week. Now it’s done. Even if it had gone worse, as long as she (& Becky) still made it back, she’d be less terrified now.

        2. Cerberus

          I would definitely agree with that. Her being home is very important to her. And would have eased a ton of the stress of the weekend even if it went 90 billion times worse.

    2. Orion Fury

      Yes, ‘lively‘. Like a Viper with Scorpions superglued to it.

    3. Bagge

      Awwww, your Majesty, I thank you for the kind words. And I must say that this comment offer a good match for the ones you proposed to.

      That is a wonderful observation about Joyce that both Sarah and I tend to forget – that she really IS not an angry or bitter person at heart. And now when things are looking up and she get some sweet Lady time with Dorothy SHE IS BACK, SMILE AND ALL!!!!!

      That’s an interesting perspective on Dina’s attitude to knowledge about dinosaurs. Even if the FACTS remain absolute our KNOWLEDGE of them and the STORIES we tell about them change and evolve all the time. Understanding that is a rite of passage in most fields of knowledge, in my opinion.

  38. Keulan

    Dina’s jokes are the best jokes.

  39. motorfirebox

    Don’t worry, Dina. Sarah gets it. She’s just surprised because she never expected to be so thoroughly served by three atrociraptors.

  40. L!ghtn!ng

    Zing!

  41. darkoneko

    Ooh, Dina is a bit cranky.

  42. Eldritch Gentleman

    Poor Sarah, the world is hellbent on drowning her in honey.

  43. BenRG

    At this stage it is probably worth remembering that Carla didn’t inform anyone; that was an assumption that Billie made in ignorance. Actually, http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/chloe shows that it was Rachael Jackson who summoned Chloe.

    1. thejeff

      Though Carla definitely informed Sal of the relationship and was publicly carrying Billie down the hall to throw her in Ruth’s room. It’s not clear if anyone else heard the bit about the relationship, but it was likely to be apparent momentarily. Then Sarah openly revealed how bad off Ruth was and Billie finished the job of making sure everyone knew what was up.

      But you’re correct that Rachel actually called Chloe.

    2. Random832

      Wait – the Rachels have last names? What’s Other Rachel’s last name?

      1. Random832

        Oh, duh, mentioned in the strip. Presumably we don’t know, or it’d be hard to find. I’d hoped there was a character reference or something.

  44. Decepticon357

    OOOOOOOHHH SNAP!!! YOU JUST GOT DINA-MIGHTED!!!

    1. Decepticon357

      By the way, would anyone say that left Sarah feeling Dina-sore? =P

      …sorry, I’ll leave now.

  45. nlips

    Sarah didn’t take into account Hank’s influence.

    1. Bagge

      Few of us did.

  46. BenRG

    Huh… Maybe Joyce should make an effort to include Dorothy more in her social interactions with Sal, Becky and Dina. She’s sounding a bit isolated and pressured from dealing with Walky’s denial to me.

    1. Fart Captor

      Given the option, I think Joyce would include Dorothy in all her interactions with anyone. She’s just been gone all weekend.

    2. Bagge

      And Dorothy does already have a hard press schedule and has often expressed how hard it is to fit in social interaction.

      Personally I think Dorothy just was cute about telling Joyce that she missed her.

  47. Joshua Petersen

    Sarah’s going to need an ice age for that burn, because it was prehistoric!

    Because Dina’s into dinosaurs and doesn’t burn often, so when she does, it’s very impactful.

    Because Dina’s into dinosaurs, and a large impact is a well known even with them.

    Please alter your expression so I know I can stop clarifying.

    1. Orion Fury

      +1.

      I’d given more, but that’s the totality of ones I’ve been give.

      1. Bagge

        +1

        I express my satisfaction with the joke with an addition of a unit-less number only understood in context.

        1. Orion Fury

          Alright, fine. One more comment for tonight. Or was that for Joshua? I don’t want to intercept any intended ones for others, regardless of my need/want for them.

  48. Emperor Norton II

    Ok, I keep reading the last line over and over… And I’m still not sure if Dina is really meant to be joking per se. True, she is conveying the news in a joke-like matter, but I still doubt that she considers it a joke.

    And more importantly, I’m not sure Dina is saying that last line to express that it was a joke. If she wanted laughter, I feel confident that she would have said so in very clear terms, because this is Dina, and as she has clearly stated before, she likes being understood.

    So what I think it is, is her asking for “Has it sunk it yet? Has the very obvious pipebomb of truth reached into your brain, and will you now stop looking confused at what I am trying to tell you?” She is not looking for laughter, merely realisation. Exactly how that realisation will manifest is of less importance, as long as it is manifested at all.

    1. Fart Captor

      I agree she’s not making a joke per se, but she is trying to be humorous, while also pointing out to Sarah that she’s projecting.

      I read it as sass, or possibly snark. I don’t even think she learned it from Becky, but I bet she’d love it

    2. Orion Fury

      I needed the alt-text to point it out to me.

    3. Bagge

      I think Dina has spent the entire weekend practicing her sense of humor, inspired by this strip
      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/item/

      Not only because she is trying to learn a new skill but because she is trying to impress Becky – in a VERY similar way to Becky reading about dinosaurs.

      But I also think she try to make a point.

      1. Cerberus

        Oh, that’s a cute point and totally believable. Becky is funny and made an effort to learn about dinosaurs, so Dina is making an effort to learn comedy.

        1. chris73

          The problem with humour, especially burns, is it can be very easily be taken negatively, especially if the target is feeling sensitive

        2. Bagge

          Something that Becky is acutely aware in HER comedy stylings, but Dina isn’t. There will almost certainly be hurt feelings at some point.

          Sarah KINDA isn’t bothered by it – she knows Dina well enough to realize where her blunt honesty comes from, but even she does not feel much like laughing in moment like this
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/understudy/

  49. Rachel

    Dina is meeeeeeeeeee

  50. leafirebender

    I don’t get exactly what the dis was

  51. Jhon

    Dina is learning snark?

    Sarah, let your misgivings escape into the wild….

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