Probably a bit much for a morning interaction. Maybe eventually.
NGPZ
like at the very least she may well be led to the start of that rabbit hole by either Dina or Charlie. hell even Joyce
but yeah I’m not expecting any immediate breakthroughs :(
deliverything
It’s way off topic for the current comment, but on the subject of autism or not… there are some interesting musings under the strip at https://www.forwardcomic.com/archive.php?num=408 which speculate that both autism and allism are both on the same spectrum, and “”hyperautistic” or “hyperallistic” individuals are simply those who are far enough to one side or the other that it impacts their lives – they exhibit these traits so strongly that it is reasonable that accommodations be made for their unique style of neural processing.”
A caveat, though: as that’s a comic about neurodivergent people in an imagined future, the author had extrapolate to how understanding of such things might progress over time. What’s written there is presumably accurate for the setting of his comic, but not necessarily outside it. Even so… seems plausible to me. Then again, I’m no neuroscientist.
Xujhan
In the interest of furthering the tangent: I predict that we’ll eventually move past the ‘spectrum’ model too. Human experience is so multifaceted that even if there are statistical trends about which things tend to correlate together, almost everyone will be ‘non-typical’ in at least some ways.
Big Z
Honestly, much the same as discussions of “intelligence”, anytime I see any human behavior placed on a two-dimensional spectrum, I assume the truth of the matter is going to eventually end up as a multivariable web in some kind of hyperspace-looking graph.
S.R.
Interesting musings, but someone might need to tell the author that fidget spinners /are/ in fact a disability aid- for some people. If someone has ADHD, i.e. their brain either doesn’t produce or doesn’t retain enough dopamine (because that is at its core what ADHD is), they might struggle to focus properly in certain situations, and/or they might find understimulation to be almost physically painful. Dopamine is the “you’re doing activities that help you survive” reward chemical, and our brains understand a lack of it as us wasting our time and effort on things that won’t help us survive. ADHD, essentially, makes our hindbrains think we’re spending most of our time dooming ourselves for lack of productivity. All those instincts can’t understand that being understimulated in, say, a classroom isn’t actually dangerous- those bits of the brain understand that understimulating classroom as something that will eventually get us killed. Which is why the brain latches onto any bit of dopamine it can get, because it can’t differentiate between dopamine from doing an actual survival thing and dopamine from a fun spinny device, and the dopamine-starved brain is desperate for anything that feels like it’s helping with survival.
Fidget spinners (and other stim toys) were “touted as a disability aid” because they ARE. They can help to fill in that dopamine absence and convince the brain that we aren’t going to starve. They just happen to also be fun dealies that kids can play with, ADHD or no, and did get really hyped up for a bit there.
(this concludes my rant on a condition which is very much misunderstood or not fully understood by a lot of people, and which is actually very bad for us on multiple levels, given the amount of stress it puts the brain and body under to be literally convinced that we’re slowly getting ourselves killed.)
Anonymous Reader
Okay… thank you for this. I recently got diagnosed with that stuff and this explanation was actually really helpful. Honestly, a lot of this journey has been constant “oh, so that’s what that was” moments. This was short, sweet, and to the point in a way that most explanations of this stuff hasn’t been.
not someone else
They were literally invented for ADHD kids and only got popular after the NT kids decided they wanted them. Then a whole bunch of kids in some places had to deal with all fidget toys being banned because “that looks distracting and I don’t believe your problems are real”.
In the back of her mind Dorothy is cheering to have another thing she can put on her plate to put off dealing with the reality of having gotten what she wanted
Yeah because real things continue to happen even when you’re in the throws of fresh sapphic love……..Don’t trust fresh sapphic love. It needs to ripen a little first.
This is specifically why I think they broke up. Dude did not have fun that night.
Erica
I dunno maybe he wanted to show his penis to people?
Sirksome
Another thing is I kinda like the Becky+Mary dynamic. It’s like they’re not exactly friends but Becky is willing to interact with her on her level without much judgment and it lets Mary talk back to her earnestly in ways Becky immediately undercuts without insulting her. It’s entertaining.
Erica
Becky is the only person who seems completely unphased by Mary which allows her to actually have conversations with her and I do think it’s great
Tequila Mockingbird
Yeah, but he sticks around, so he must be getting something out of it.
Thag Simmons
He’s awful in a lot of the same ways that she is, and he doesn’t seem like he has much of a spine.
Taffy
Yeah, like a year in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.
Tequila Mockingbird
Pardon but… huh? Is that a reference to the way he exposed himself in Mary’s half-arsed Hell House? Or something else that I’m forgetting?
Taffy
That’s apparently the penalty in Indiana for indecent exposure, yeah.
Effie
Was it half-arsed? I think they might have seen his whole arse
Scruffy looking nerfherder
Yeah, but is that worse than forcing your ex to date somebody, then immediately trying to get them to drop them in the midst of a weird break down brought on by her inability to let people in(which you bore the brunt of) after already going through a weird up and down relationship with her after she’s tells you she needs space, but then immediately drops the love you bomb afterward. Then even after you give it another go around, she proceeds to cheat on you with the gal who has been antagonizing your relationship with her the whole time?
Dorothy is definitely up there in the bad GF conversation.
Nadamás
I take issu”Force to date somebody” part, because that didn’t happen
Scruffy looking nerfherder
Fair enough, she did not put a gun to his head so forced is a harsh word.
There’s no arguing that she is the major catalyst in even existing at all.
Thag Simmons
Wow, that is the single least charitable way to describe it.
Annaphylaxis
Get ready for a lot of that, unfortunately, I think.
Scruffy looking nerfherder
How would you have put it? It’s not like she’s Satan or anything, but this are just the things that happened and she’s kinda been a bad girlfriend to Walky.
Jennifer definitely takes the number one spot though.
Thag Simmons
I think stuff like saying she forced Walky to date Lucy is extreme, but I would note that I am making a reference to another webcomic where that sentence was immediately responded to with “Oh, I really don’t like how that wasn’t a firm no”
Well, “Och, I really dinnae like how much tha were na a firm, Na” to be precise but that’s not relevant, the point is it’s not a statement that comes from someone who can muster a strong defense
TerribleTransit
Those are a hyperbolic parody of “just the things that happened”, but it’s far from an accurate retelling of events.
First: the love bomb. Dorothy first dropped that in “Relieved” back in 2014. Needing space wasn’t until 2018, and Walky started that one in the strip “Carry” (Dorothy reciprocates the sentiment and then asks for a pause in the next few strips).
The other ups and downs, especially the lack of respect for the pause are valid criticisms.
After formally breaking up, she encouraged Walky to date someone he had a close connection to and some chemistry with. While it may not have worked out, I don’t think there was anything particularly wrong with it. Plus, on a technicality, Dorothy was not his girlfriend at the time so even if this was bad I’m not sure it counts against her “girlfriend score”.
She absolutely didn’t try to get back with him immediately. She waited a couple weeks until after Walky had broken up with Lucy. Mostly. Maybe jumped the gun a little, if you want to complain about that it’s fair.
Finally yeah, the cheating, which is absolutely happening and would probably put her in the bad girlfriend running all on its own.
Like, you got some points in there, but also some straight-up falsehoods.
Casi
I know that’s spoken by Durkon from OOTS, but i can’t remember which story arc that was in
Thag Simmons
It’s from early in the yet unfinished Book 7
Jon
And is THAT an Order of the Stick reference??
Thag Simmons
Yeah, one of a couple sentences from OOTS that live rent free in my head.
Good comics, would highly recommend for anyone who isn’t familiar and who has a tolerance for kind of rocky early chapters.
I actually think Paul broke up with her. He’s been very absent from her presence lately. I guess if true that wouldn’t take away that she was a girlfriend if that’s all it takes to rank as the worst. Still I’d say an active girlfriend has more potential to suck if my Mary and Paul broke up theory is true.
Bryy
That would also partially explain Mary’s comment about predatory men. I mean, Religious Extremists don’t really need a reason to obsess over the people they hate. But still.
Tequila Mockingbird
That was an intentional misgendering of Carla. Transphobes often see trans folk as inherently “dangerous” and “deviant.” That’s the “rationale” behind a lot of those asinine Bathroom Bills.
The assumption is “they must be perverts, they’re DIFFERENT!” Thing is, bigots aren’t even creative, they just recycle this horseshit on a different group depending on the decade. This same baseless accusation has, and still is, leveled against gay men, lesbian women, and African-Americans.
That was one of Jim Crow law’s “justifications” for separate bathrooms. Racists genuinely thought of them as inhuman predatory animals who just lived to attack people. It’s how they paint every out-group they don’t understand and/or just don’t like. Anything that is “not like us” is a threat, and guilty until… well, just guilty. Full stop.
That whole bit was Mary going out of her way to dehumanize Carla… because Mary is a Euclid-class bongo.
Sirksome
I just checked and I totally forgot his name. It isn’t even Paul, it’s “Peter”. He also hasn’t been seen since Halloween. Between that and Mary saying “Halloween happened.” Like the holiday is some notorious relationship test I really think they broke up.
John Campbell
I don’t think his surname has ever been revealed in DoA, but in the Walkyverse, he was Peter Paul. Because Peter Paul and Mary, gitit?
Thing 2
Peter Paul and Mary probably got to ya brain…
The Queer Agenda [frog memes]
Damn, you’re probably right. Mary loved flaunting their relationship as obnoxiously as possible, and that seems to have stopped.
Dorothy has a worse history of screwing with Danny and Walky, but it’s unintentional and she feels regret for hurting them. Joyce has no prior history, but her complete lack of giving a shit about Joe is something else. So, debatable
Jerach
I don’t know how much feeling regret matters if she keeps repeatedly hurting Walky in the exact same way.
thejeff
This is hardly the “exact same way”.
First time around she certainly did fall in love with someone else and cheat on him. The issue was more that she got more serious about him than she planned.
403 thoughts on “Good, good”
NGPZ
aside from that heavy news Dorothy about to get,
Dina strip appreciated as always *T^T* <3
Tequila Mockingbird
Dina is easily in the S Tier of characters. Possibly the top. That’s just science (and she has the empirical evidence to back it up.)
Steamweed
“S” stands for “Science”!
(or maybe “Science!”)
((unsure))
Doctor_Who
S also stands for Saruyama.
Tequila Mockingbird
It is both of these things at the same time… Schrodinger’s Tier!
Steamweed
Super Saruyama?
Tessea
I thought it was ‘stience’.
Amós Batista
She’s the OP char, definitely
Enigmatic Jack
Subtle, Dotty. You’re handling all of this exactly right.
Steamweed
Perfect gravatar is perfect.
Animedingo
Dorothy getting a much needed reality check
NGPZ
fingers crossed Dina also somehow someway gets Dorothy to embrace being autistic ;-;
Nymph
Probably a bit much for a morning interaction. Maybe eventually.
NGPZ
like at the very least she may well be led to the start of that rabbit hole by either Dina or Charlie. hell even Joyce
but yeah I’m not expecting any immediate breakthroughs :(
deliverything
It’s way off topic for the current comment, but on the subject of autism or not… there are some interesting musings under the strip at https://www.forwardcomic.com/archive.php?num=408 which speculate that both autism and allism are both on the same spectrum, and “”hyperautistic” or “hyperallistic” individuals are simply those who are far enough to one side or the other that it impacts their lives – they exhibit these traits so strongly that it is reasonable that accommodations be made for their unique style of neural processing.”
A caveat, though: as that’s a comic about neurodivergent people in an imagined future, the author had extrapolate to how understanding of such things might progress over time. What’s written there is presumably accurate for the setting of his comic, but not necessarily outside it. Even so… seems plausible to me. Then again, I’m no neuroscientist.
Xujhan
In the interest of furthering the tangent: I predict that we’ll eventually move past the ‘spectrum’ model too. Human experience is so multifaceted that even if there are statistical trends about which things tend to correlate together, almost everyone will be ‘non-typical’ in at least some ways.
Big Z
Honestly, much the same as discussions of “intelligence”, anytime I see any human behavior placed on a two-dimensional spectrum, I assume the truth of the matter is going to eventually end up as a multivariable web in some kind of hyperspace-looking graph.
S.R.
Interesting musings, but someone might need to tell the author that fidget spinners /are/ in fact a disability aid- for some people. If someone has ADHD, i.e. their brain either doesn’t produce or doesn’t retain enough dopamine (because that is at its core what ADHD is), they might struggle to focus properly in certain situations, and/or they might find understimulation to be almost physically painful. Dopamine is the “you’re doing activities that help you survive” reward chemical, and our brains understand a lack of it as us wasting our time and effort on things that won’t help us survive. ADHD, essentially, makes our hindbrains think we’re spending most of our time dooming ourselves for lack of productivity. All those instincts can’t understand that being understimulated in, say, a classroom isn’t actually dangerous- those bits of the brain understand that understimulating classroom as something that will eventually get us killed. Which is why the brain latches onto any bit of dopamine it can get, because it can’t differentiate between dopamine from doing an actual survival thing and dopamine from a fun spinny device, and the dopamine-starved brain is desperate for anything that feels like it’s helping with survival.
Fidget spinners (and other stim toys) were “touted as a disability aid” because they ARE. They can help to fill in that dopamine absence and convince the brain that we aren’t going to starve. They just happen to also be fun dealies that kids can play with, ADHD or no, and did get really hyped up for a bit there.
(this concludes my rant on a condition which is very much misunderstood or not fully understood by a lot of people, and which is actually very bad for us on multiple levels, given the amount of stress it puts the brain and body under to be literally convinced that we’re slowly getting ourselves killed.)
Anonymous Reader
Okay… thank you for this. I recently got diagnosed with that stuff and this explanation was actually really helpful. Honestly, a lot of this journey has been constant “oh, so that’s what that was” moments. This was short, sweet, and to the point in a way that most explanations of this stuff hasn’t been.
not someone else
They were literally invented for ADHD kids and only got popular after the NT kids decided they wanted them. Then a whole bunch of kids in some places had to deal with all fidget toys being banned because “that looks distracting and I don’t believe your problems are real”.
Haaaaet.
Thag Simmons
Yeah, I don’t know how well she’s going to take this.
Dot
In the back of her mind Dorothy is cheering to have another thing she can put on her plate to put off dealing with the reality of having gotten what she wanted
Meagan
I was thinking along those same lines.
Seralyna
seems kinda harsh. I think she’s probably just pretty upset about her friend
Dot
She is, but she is also a chronic self-sabotager who does not deal well with success.
Cholma
And then Dorothy blurts out, “ACAB!”
chuckroast
Is that preaching to the choir or yelling at them?
Sirksome
Yeah because real things continue to happen even when you’re in the throws of fresh sapphic love……..Don’t trust fresh sapphic love. It needs to ripen a little first.
Yet_One_More_Idiot
I believe you mean throes… unless our two new little sapphic sisters were tossing each other around the room like sumo wrestlers last night? ^^
Proxiehunter
No, like professional wrestlers.
Andrusi
Professional sumo wrestlers, then.
Yet_One_More_Idiot
You say that like sumo wrestlers aren’t professional? xD
GholaHalleck
Please Let Dina rip her to pieces. Please. I need the best GF to obliterate the worst one.
Nadamás
Mary is a girlfriend so that competition is already won.
Erica
Mary is the worst person but she’s probably a great girlfriend to her horrible person of a boyfriend
Nadamás
We see during Halloween that’s very much not the case, she makes him embarrass himself for her hell house.
Erica
Link? (Not cuz I doubt you I just would like to see it again)
Nymph
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/journey/
starts there ?
Sirksome
This is specifically why I think they broke up. Dude did not have fun that night.
Erica
I dunno maybe he wanted to show his penis to people?
Sirksome
Another thing is I kinda like the Becky+Mary dynamic. It’s like they’re not exactly friends but Becky is willing to interact with her on her level without much judgment and it lets Mary talk back to her earnestly in ways Becky immediately undercuts without insulting her. It’s entertaining.
Erica
Becky is the only person who seems completely unphased by Mary which allows her to actually have conversations with her and I do think it’s great
Tequila Mockingbird
Yeah, but he sticks around, so he must be getting something out of it.
Thag Simmons
He’s awful in a lot of the same ways that she is, and he doesn’t seem like he has much of a spine.
Taffy
Yeah, like a year in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.
Tequila Mockingbird
Pardon but… huh? Is that a reference to the way he exposed himself in Mary’s half-arsed Hell House? Or something else that I’m forgetting?
Taffy
That’s apparently the penalty in Indiana for indecent exposure, yeah.
Effie
Was it half-arsed? I think they might have seen his whole arse
Scruffy looking nerfherder
Yeah, but is that worse than forcing your ex to date somebody, then immediately trying to get them to drop them in the midst of a weird break down brought on by her inability to let people in(which you bore the brunt of) after already going through a weird up and down relationship with her after she’s tells you she needs space, but then immediately drops the love you bomb afterward. Then even after you give it another go around, she proceeds to cheat on you with the gal who has been antagonizing your relationship with her the whole time?
Dorothy is definitely up there in the bad GF conversation.
Nadamás
I take issu”Force to date somebody” part, because that didn’t happen
Scruffy looking nerfherder
Fair enough, she did not put a gun to his head so forced is a harsh word.
There’s no arguing that she is the major catalyst in even existing at all.
Thag Simmons
Wow, that is the single least charitable way to describe it.
Annaphylaxis
Get ready for a lot of that, unfortunately, I think.
Scruffy looking nerfherder
How would you have put it? It’s not like she’s Satan or anything, but this are just the things that happened and she’s kinda been a bad girlfriend to Walky.
Jennifer definitely takes the number one spot though.
Thag Simmons
I think stuff like saying she forced Walky to date Lucy is extreme, but I would note that I am making a reference to another webcomic where that sentence was immediately responded to with “Oh, I really don’t like how that wasn’t a firm no”
Well, “Och, I really dinnae like how much tha were na a firm, Na” to be precise but that’s not relevant, the point is it’s not a statement that comes from someone who can muster a strong defense
TerribleTransit
Those are a hyperbolic parody of “just the things that happened”, but it’s far from an accurate retelling of events.
First: the love bomb. Dorothy first dropped that in “Relieved” back in 2014. Needing space wasn’t until 2018, and Walky started that one in the strip “Carry” (Dorothy reciprocates the sentiment and then asks for a pause in the next few strips).
The other ups and downs, especially the lack of respect for the pause are valid criticisms.
After formally breaking up, she encouraged Walky to date someone he had a close connection to and some chemistry with. While it may not have worked out, I don’t think there was anything particularly wrong with it. Plus, on a technicality, Dorothy was not his girlfriend at the time so even if this was bad I’m not sure it counts against her “girlfriend score”.
She absolutely didn’t try to get back with him immediately. She waited a couple weeks until after Walky had broken up with Lucy. Mostly. Maybe jumped the gun a little, if you want to complain about that it’s fair.
Finally yeah, the cheating, which is absolutely happening and would probably put her in the bad girlfriend running all on its own.
Like, you got some points in there, but also some straight-up falsehoods.
Casi
I know that’s spoken by Durkon from OOTS, but i can’t remember which story arc that was in
Thag Simmons
It’s from early in the yet unfinished Book 7
Jon
And is THAT an Order of the Stick reference??
Thag Simmons
Yeah, one of a couple sentences from OOTS that live rent free in my head.
Good comics, would highly recommend for anyone who isn’t familiar and who has a tolerance for kind of rocky early chapters.
Adeptus
OotS is a gem through and through.
Thag Simmons
She very demonstrably is not.
Sirksome
I actually think Paul broke up with her. He’s been very absent from her presence lately. I guess if true that wouldn’t take away that she was a girlfriend if that’s all it takes to rank as the worst. Still I’d say an active girlfriend has more potential to suck if my Mary and Paul broke up theory is true.
Bryy
That would also partially explain Mary’s comment about predatory men. I mean, Religious Extremists don’t really need a reason to obsess over the people they hate. But still.
Tequila Mockingbird
That was an intentional misgendering of Carla. Transphobes often see trans folk as inherently “dangerous” and “deviant.” That’s the “rationale” behind a lot of those asinine Bathroom Bills.
The assumption is “they must be perverts, they’re DIFFERENT!” Thing is, bigots aren’t even creative, they just recycle this horseshit on a different group depending on the decade. This same baseless accusation has, and still is, leveled against gay men, lesbian women, and African-Americans.
That was one of Jim Crow law’s “justifications” for separate bathrooms. Racists genuinely thought of them as inhuman predatory animals who just lived to attack people. It’s how they paint every out-group they don’t understand and/or just don’t like. Anything that is “not like us” is a threat, and guilty until… well, just guilty. Full stop.
That whole bit was Mary going out of her way to dehumanize Carla… because Mary is a Euclid-class bongo.
Sirksome
I just checked and I totally forgot his name. It isn’t even Paul, it’s “Peter”. He also hasn’t been seen since Halloween. Between that and Mary saying “Halloween happened.” Like the holiday is some notorious relationship test I really think they broke up.
John Campbell
I don’t think his surname has ever been revealed in DoA, but in the Walkyverse, he was Peter Paul. Because Peter Paul and Mary, gitit?
Thing 2
Peter Paul and Mary probably got to ya brain…
The Queer Agenda [frog memes]
Damn, you’re probably right. Mary loved flaunting their relationship as obnoxiously as possible, and that seems to have stopped.
Yeet
yeah, dorothy has been a bit of a fuckup of a girlfriend to walky but mary was outright awful on purpose
RassilonTDavros
Slightly confused by this comment. Is Dorothy really being a significantly worse girlfriend than Joyce is in this scenario?
Erica
Dorothy has a worse history of screwing with Danny and Walky, but it’s unintentional and she feels regret for hurting them. Joyce has no prior history, but her complete lack of giving a shit about Joe is something else. So, debatable
Jerach
I don’t know how much feeling regret matters if she keeps repeatedly hurting Walky in the exact same way.
thejeff
This is hardly the “exact same way”.
First time around she certainly did fall in love with someone else and cheat on him. The issue was more that she got more serious about him than she planned.