Golly, I have not been paying attention to how long I’ve been following this comic. Feels like it was just yesterday when I binge-read from start to the most recent panel.
So awesome that it had better reach and did double damage in that NES game so I always played as him until I died to that impossible jump in that one sewer.
That was why I switched to the most useless one I had left before I took any noncombat risks in that game.
It’s worth noting that was my first NES game that wasn’t SMB/Duckhunt or SMB2, so I had plenty of time getting good enough to steamroll through to the Technodrome, which is a near inhuman feat to beat without cheating so far as I’m concerned. Then I started playing Blaster Master and Ninja Gaiden…
Honestly the color coding was the best thing to come from the TV show. Raphael’s characterization was absolutely destroyed, Michaelangelo and Donatello were flanderized to all hell and Leonardo was made, for all intents and purposes, ineffectual and then there’s the villain characters who made it through to the show…
I was so grateful when the IDW comic switched to individual colors after their first story-arc. The difficulty in telling the characters apart is easily the worst thing about the original comics.
No. It is I. but(t)(s). Who has the best name. And that name. Is butts. Clearly a superior name to Slartibeast Button, BIA. Due to the fact. That it has such a comparatively high ratio. Of words that are butts. To words that are not butts. This fact. Is what makes the name which I possess. (Namely, butts.) The best name.
Only going by percentages. SBBIA as twice as many, yet your’s is plural, so it’s possible that you are referring to more than two. Yet SB’s has one and a referred, so then that one could then be more. However your’s could be all of them, which would infer more than SB’s. But taking into consideration…
I entered it on a lark, and was shocked that it wasn’t already taken.
(I’m quite sad that both butt-taco.org and ibuyextradomainscuzihavenopenis.com don’t work right anymore. You can still access them, but both domain names lead to an index instead of the intended page.)
Ethan walked into the warehouse. It was dark and a bit damp. Boxes lined the walls, and wooden beams hang from the ceiling. He looked up and spied a dark shadow moving across the ceiling.
Ethan: You ready to fight Dina!?
Dina jumped down from the rafters, landing on her feet in a squat.
Ethan looks around, memorizing the scenery.
Dina: Ready when you are.
Ethan: Right then…
Ethan pulls out the Windblades and rushes at Dina. Dina dodges and kicks. Ethan rolls with the kick and jumps back.
Ethan: So, what’s been happening lately?
Dina: Joyce wants to form a team.
Dina leaps up into the rafters and turns invisible.
Ethan leaps up as well, searching for signs of Dina.
Ethan: A team? For what?
Dina: To follow that card she got.
Ethan: Well…
Ethan notices one of the beams bend slightly
Ethan: She…
Ethan leaps up and sends a flying kick at Dina.
Ethan: Can count on me!
Dina barely manages to dodge, as Ethan sails past her and is forced to grab onto another beam by one hand.
Ethan: Shit…
Dina comes out of her invisibility and leaps over to Ethan.
Dina: Can’t wait to tell Becky I won!
Ethan: Sorry Dina…
Ethan lifts his other hand up quickly and grabs Dina’s ankle.
Ethan: You’ll have to tell her next time!
Ethan yanks Dina off of the rafter and lets her drop over the edge.
Ethan: Phew.
Ethan pulls himself up and stands on the rafter, peering over the edge, hoping that Dina isn’t too badly hurt.
To his astonishment, Dina isn’t there. He looks behind him, to see Dina standing right in front of him.
Ethan: How!?
Dina: I have very sharp fingernails. I like to keep them raptor like!
Ethan: Only you could make something so creepy, so adorable!
Dina: Thank you!
Dina starts slashing at Ethan with her (claws) fingernails, while Ethan blocks with his windblades. They move back and forth across the beam, somewhat like they’re fencing.
Ethan: You’ve improved since the tournament!
Dina: Thanks; we’ve all been training.
Ethan leaps across to another beam, and Dina follows him.
Ethan: Hmmm, this is a fairly weak beam. There’s a huge crack in the middle of it!
Dina: What are you thinking?
Ethan: This!
Ethan throws a Windblade into the crack. The board begins to collapse as Ethan leaps up and grabs a rope hanging beside his head.
Ethan: Sorry Dina!
Dina drops to the floor and rolls.
Ethan: You okay!?
Dina: I’m fine, but I would count that as a win for you.
Ethan: You did great too.
Dina: Thanks, oh by the way. Joyce is holding a meeting in the dorm common room this Friday.
Dina walks out and Ethan sits in the dark.
Ethan (thinking): Danny’s resurrection… is it really possible? I sure hope so!
It’s a line from a Ninja Turtles movie. They did the quiet/too quiet line, then when they found Raphael, and said “It’s Raph!” I think it was Michelangelo who followed up with “A little TOO Raph.”
That surprises me a bit. I’d always considered the original three to have been released in descending order of quality, with the third easily being the weakest of them.
And besides, the second one had Vanilla Ice. His presence alone should rescue it from ‘worst movie’ status. 🙂
(Of course, the first comment I ever leave on this site, and I see afterward that the previous two commenters made both the points I was going for. Bah.)
That’s called phantom emotions syndrome. To fix it, I recommend watching a marathon of Star Treks 5 and 10, the Star Wars prequels, and close it out with rewatching Batman and Robin 5 times in a row.
No!!! No!!!! No one deserves to watch both Episode 1 and Star Trek 5 in the same marathon!!! No one!!! Also, I forgot, but is Star Trek the one where there’s a clone of Picard? Cause the one with the Picard clone and Wrath of Khan got me the most emotional any Star Trek movie has.
Yeah, Star Trek 10’s the one with the emo Picard clone. Don’t know why everyone always rags on it— sure, it’s not great, but it’s a hell of a lot better than 1, 5, or 9.
No way was it better than 1 and 9. Neither of those were GREAT, true. 1 had major pacing issues and was trying to imitate Kubrik’s 2001, its story was simplistic, and the uniforms needed to leave less to the imagination, but it didn’t have any horrific, fundamental flaws.
9 needed a bigger budget, less action, more sophisticated exploration of the issues, morals, and premise, and better costumes, sets, and sfx, but it was actually the closest to the TNG series in mood, themes, and characterization. It’s a toss-up for me whether I prefer it over 8. (8’s a better movie viewed on its own, but makes no attempt to be consistent with the established characters and history of the series, to the point where it’s jarring viewed in the larger context.)
10? 10 was almost nothing but awful. Everyone was out of character. The actors were clearly done with the characters. No one remembered what the setting was about or what Star Trek was about. The entire plot was terrorism we don’t care about, scavenger hunt with pointless toy merchandising, coup that ends up not mattering, something about life-saving blood transfusion that everyone who should care about it does the exact opposite of the smart thing to make it happen and then forgets about, massive ship battle that’s the whole point of the movie and has maybe one minute of awesome and twenty minutes that should have been cut, a bunch of main characters with plot-padding just to give them something to do, and a completely pointless sacrifice that would have taken a positronic brain one tenth of a second to find ten ways to avoid. The best thing about it was some nice themes about mirrors and opposite numbers that should have and could have been explored better, but weren’t… and yes, they failed to develop those themes and they were still the best thing about it. The entire thing was a wreck. Way worse than 5… which had set the previous bar for awful.
1 and 9 had major issues but they weren’t fundamentally flawed to the core the way 10 was.
Watch all 10 movies in a row. No sleep allowed. When you catch yourself dozing off in hour 17 (going into your 3rd viewing of Batman and Robin), set up a set of medium-voltage wires to shock you every 10 minutes just to be sure you stay awake.
On the plus side, he’s at least seeing Becky even more humanized and seeing how happy she is with her girlfriend, which will probably make it easier to be even more supportive of her and Joyce’s decision to support her*.
*Not saying he’s unsupportive, only that this will help silence any doubts he’s feeling about the moral rightness of “supporting sin” and “following Joyce’s lead”.
So…it seems Becky and Dina have already decided to start doing role-playing. That was quicker than expected, I was pretty sure it was going to take at least two more weeks.
i get from the comments that this is supposed to be cute, and becky seems happy, but tackling your romantic partner to the ground without warning seems a little… off, to me
Can the rest of the comic just be about those two? They just make an amazing couple and it’s nice to see how unlike everyone else these two actually have a chance at happiness together.
we can do a spinoff show just about the two of them, and we can call it “dina loves becky,” and then thirty years later one of them can be the main attraction at the republican national convention
It’s kind of glorious how healthy these two are as a couple, especially when a lot of the other couples have glaring problems. And I think a lot of it stems from a lot of their challenges to overcome coming from outside the relationship rather than in (though I can’t wait for Becky to open up more with Dina as right now she’s carrying a lot of the weight of all those external things).
I’m so confused by the angles. The way Becky was taken down seems to indicate from the front, to which the Browns would have seen her. The ‘facing’ position relative to how she fell put her on the opposite side of the hallway (short direction, not long). As well as the angle of Joyce’s word balloon in the last panel also seems to be coming from the wrong side.
Do Raptors have the ability to create localized dutch angle effects?
Looks like Dina tackled her from the side, which would give her the opportunity to make sure Becky didn’t land on her faaaaaaaace. Joyce and Hank kept moving down the hallway, which makes the orientation of Joyce’s word bubble in relation to the orientation of the panel logical. To me, at least.
I think that the angle we’re seeing them from is just flipping around for panels 3 and 4 to focus on Joyce’s face while she’s talking, then flipping back. Panels 2 and 5 are looking in the same direction
I don’t see how it can last. Remember, this is DoA. So enjoy the adorableness while we got it.
Remember, Dina knows that she is a rebound from Becky’s failed attempt to bed Joyce. I don’t think Joyce is ever going to change her mind beyond friendship with Becky.
But Dina doesn’t know that.
I think this is Dina’s first foray into a personal relationship too. So much could go wrong. I hope it does not.
They really are freakin’ cute together.
Omigosh, I just saw that Becky’s giggles almost exactly mirror Dina’s giggling right after their first (honest) kiss! And you can see Dina grinning happily under her hat.
Seriously, though, this level of adorkable-ness is off the charts.
The Tour de France uses a numeric scale for grading the difficulty of climbs; 4 is the least difficult; 3, 2, and 1 are progressively more difficult (based on length and steepness); and the most difficult are called ‘HC’ for hors catégorie (beyond categorization).
So this level of adorkableness (I love that word, btw) is officially ‘HC’.
Nice 0-100 metric, with 100 being approached asymptotically but never reached. As a bonus, the units in question are degrees, so we can talk about 97 degrees of adorkableness.
Hank already knows about Dina, he saw Becky kissing her goodbye for the weekend. He was a little freaked out (looked uncomfortable) because he’s still in only the first few weeks of going from Evangelical Christian Bigot to Nice Understamding guy, and admitted that he still needed to work on that because he got a little freaked. However, the goodbye happened off panel (we only saw Joyce and Hank’s reactions to it) so it makes sense that this could be forgotten about.
So, Hank has come too? It should be interesting to see his perspective of the current multiple train-crash that is the floor!
Probably almost everyone’s wandered off to see what happens to Ruth. The exceptions are Mary (stormed off to sulk at church), Ethan and Danny (both gone to their rooms to worry about Amber), Amber (taking out her frustration on fictional characters) and Mike (plotting).
I’m really looking forward to Hank’s reaction to Dina and Becky’s interactions; it will say a lot about his real perspective on Becky and her alignment.
Just noticed it. Becky looks like she rotated 180 degrees after Becky pinned her. I cannot help but think of this as a God of War style takedown, where the Minotaur rotates on its back juusstttt so the camera angle is proper.
*Happy squee noises*
*Happy squee noises intensify*
*Happy squee noises start to crack the Earth asunder*
SQUEEEE- uh… maybe I should reign it in a bit.
I love how Joyce exits the elevator saying hi to the hallway, expecting some measure of life and to see people happy or at least happy-ish to see her. And the thing about that is that is shows not only how supportive and caring this little dorm hall has been for her, but also how desperately she missed it being with her folks. This is her safety zone, this is where she feels safe and protected. To the point where when she was getting endless flashbacks going outside alone, she nonetheless could always stand to be alone in her dorm. And so it’s glorious to see her come home.
I love Hank anxiously glancing around at the quiet as well. It’s a nice soft touch that humanizes him and his character really nicely and provides a nice contrast to Becky’s cool practiced nonchalantness.
And that last panel- SQUEEEE- no, the rumbling is too loud, must control my happy. But seriously, these two are just too cute and there is too much to love here.
I mean, this is exactly what Becky has needed from a trip where she’s had to face some of her worst memories, constantly receive and downplay abuse and microaggressions, and was not allowed really a space to breathe and process just how hard it was being back in the town and community that so thoroughly rejected her. Not to mention the community that has done nothing to reach out or support her even though she’s without family and homeless, because in their eyes, it’d be like sympathizing with a man who murdered his parents because he’s an orphan.
So, she needed this. And maybe it’s me being hyper-aware of anxiety symptoms because of my work, but I can’t help noticing the contrast between the stiff hunched shoulders still full of stress in the first two panels compared to the blissful surrender in that last panel. This is all her stress melting away in the best possible way.
Also, I just love their dynamic. That giggly happy sub reaction of Becky’s. Too happy to form words. Echoing that moment when she and Dina kissed and Dina retreated into her hat to happily giggle and just so in bliss to be reunited with the woman she loves. The happy dino dom in Dina doing her power stance over her, but in a way that would allow her to easily escape if she wanted to. The happy satisfied rarr and the knowledge that Dina was probably happily bouncing in Sarah’s chair for the second she heard Becky’s name spoken out loud and likely dashed off at that moment.
I like that it’s a bit non-normative and role-play-y, but that Becky is so game and so happy and sees nothing off about it. It’s her cute smart wonderful dino girlfriend tackling her in the hall and she couldn’t be happier.
They’ve been through the worst of times, but it’s also not gonna be easy being and dating a homeless queer woman with a lot of emotional baggage left to unpack from the circumstances that caused it. But I have a lot of faith in these cuties and I want to imagine them as the sort of college couple that’s still together 10 years later, planning their marriage, because “eh, it’s time” or at least the type of exes who still include each other in each other’s lives and have brunch with their respective significant others.
Screw it, I’ll just ask here since the comments are still nice and busy. Is there a way to get email notifications when you get a response to your comment, or is subscribing to the comments RSS the only way you ever know when new comments appear?
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eeeeeee BEST BIRTHDAY COMIC! =3
(a stark contrast from last year)
Oh, jeez, yeah. Your birthday present last year was Toedad. That’s rough.
Willis definitely made up for it this time, maybe go above and beyond with a slipshine? =3
Oh man, Dina/Becky would be the Slipshine to end all Slipshines. Human civilization would have to pack it in, because it’d all be downhill from there.
Oh crap, you’re right all other pornstuffs and sexy things would become obsolete. I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet.
Willis, pls bring about the end of mankind
Eh, we had a good run.
Did we, though?
Wars,destroyed civilazations,slavery,dictatorship,famine. “Yep,definitely a good run!”
The dinosaurs had a much better and longer run.
Speaking of which, … Happy Birthday and RARRR!
Inqntrol, that seems like what mike would say if he was god
@Clif: the dinosaurs are having a much better and longer run.
…And to think people thought it would be the presidential nominees.
Please play in case of world’s end: https://youtu.be/UC_gXD5OE88?t=2m34s
At least it’s not this: Local 58 – Contingency
I got “sympathy via heavy physical contact.”
Let’s see if he can top it!
Oh right, you got a walking toe last year. Also, Happy birthday!
Aw, man– I almost wish it was my birthday, now!
you got four more months!
So I guess this makes up for getting an anthropomorphic toe last then, yeah?
For the lazy and forgetful
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/evilutionist/
Wow, was that really last year?
Golly, I have not been paying attention to how long I’ve been following this comic. Feels like it was just yesterday when I binge-read from start to the most recent panel.
Same (of course it doesn’t help that I rebinged just a couple weeks ago)
Heh, try reading two of Willis’ comics in real time instead of comic time. 😉
It’s pretty awesome. The only comic that is comparable in length is Schlock Mercenary. (Willis finished a pair of stories.)
Two words: sluggy freelance. It has a monsterously huge archive.
http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/weekly/970825
If you click that prepare to be there all day.
It took me a week the last time I did that…and that was about 5 years ago now.
Also Kevin-and-Kellie and Freefall have ginormous archives.
Although Freefall has been running for a comparable length of time, it’s only three days a week.
dangit I linked that, how did it not link in my post
this is a very happy comic and makes me happy ^_^
Hey it’s my birthday too! 🙂
Eessh, that was a bit of a *doom* moment, wasn’t it?
This is the last year for a while (perhaps ever) that you’ll share your birthday with the sitting US President. Make it a good one.
had the Queen Mum’s for a good long while tho
next time on slipshine.
Originally I misread this as a reply to Aaron’s comment above, and now I’m thinking about Ana Chrobama as a ship. (help)
Happy Birthday!
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday!!!
Happy birthday! My birthday comic this year was Billie brainstorming unsuccessfully, so yours is unequivocally better already. 😀
Mine was Ruth leading in prayer with “Dear Lord, kill Mary”. Which was nice, but not as fun as this.
Happy birthday, Anna!
Well, congrats on surviving yet another year! My birthday was yesterday on the third. 🙂
Happy Birthday! Have a happy Becky!
Happy happy birthday, from all of us to you!
We wish it was our birthday, so we could party too!
My birthday’s the 31st. Here’s hoping I get cute gay girls being cute and gay. Or at least bi girls being cute and bi.
…A little too best?
*sniff* I really, really, really miss the old ninja turtles…
Congratulations on once again winding up in roughly the same place you were born, relative to the sun.
Happy Birthday, almost birthday twin!
Clever girl.
Yep, that is some first level dominance behaviour,mright there.
anyone else notice the grin
Law of large numbers says yes.
Darn, I was hoping to get it first.
This is supposed to be under the next one. Cause I’m an idiot.
Clever girl! 😉
Oh my.
THEY’ll BE PICKED OFF ONE BY ONE!
If it follows the trend, I’d really rather not see what happens when Hank gets picked off.
Whatever happens is an improvement
#NeverJoyce’sMom
If “they” refers to articles of Becky’s clothing, I think it’s going to be more of a “torn to pieces all at once” situation.
I… I think Dina’s teeth are sharpened.
How else can she take down her prey?
Dewclaws!
Those are called ‘thumbs’.
Hamstring them with the hooked claw on her foot?
Dina-onychus antirrhopus
Two weapons: Fear, surprise, and ruthlessness.
The whole Clark wing’s about to come down with a nasty case of Ruthlessness.
FEELS
Captain America: I got that reference
My, my. How… unexpected.
Well I didn’t, off to find out what it is.
I don’t know why I expected anything else.
NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPaaah screw it, that joke’s played out
S`why I went the way I did.
Well, so did I. Wanted to have my cake and eat it, too.
As one always should.
and an almost fanatical devotion to willis
I want to know how Dina got her hands on a Ferengi tooth sharpener.
Of course, she wants to be Saurornithoides Mongoliensis.
(I resisted the urge to google the spelling. How did I do?)
Well, as a specific name, ‘mongoliensis’ is properly not capitalized, but the actual letters used are correct.
I mean, Raph was always my favorite turtle, I don’t think you can have TOO much Raph.
Are you insane?! Donnie all the way, man.
Seriously, Donnie was always the best. Raph was just a jerk and a hothead. Donnie was brilliant, methodical, thoughtful, and compassionate.
And he wore the best colour and had the best weapon!
So awesome that it had better reach and did double damage in that NES game so I always played as him until I died to that impossible jump in that one sewer.
…. no one? No one played that? …. nevermind.
I did.
…In hindsight, I think I know why I enjoyed my Game Boy so much more than my NES.
I did, but I stuck to my principles and played as Mike because he was my favorite.
I did, and also always played as Donnie for the same reasons. XD
I played it. In fact, I played it so much, I became a master of the swimming level.
That’s right, I could play through the swimming level without dying!
Still never got past level 4, though. And only got to level 4 three or four times.
On hindsight, I wonder if playing this game so much is one of the reasons my brain is so warped.
My takeaway from playing that game so much was endless disgust with the difficulty level of later games.
Annoying revelation? You just walk over that hole.
Nope. Different hole. It was near the end of level 3 with an overhead platform that kept you from getting any real altitude on the jump.
That was why I switched to the most useless one I had left before I took any noncombat risks in that game.
It’s worth noting that was my first NES game that wasn’t SMB/Duckhunt or SMB2, so I had plenty of time getting good enough to steamroll through to the Technodrome, which is a near inhuman feat to beat without cheating so far as I’m concerned. Then I started playing Blaster Master and Ninja Gaiden…
Played the Atari version, finished it.
1 boomerang on both floors and shredder is simple-ish to kill.
Color?
No, you’ve gotta tell them apart by their weapons! Like Eastman & Laird intended!
Hipster. Though I wonder how much they twitch from the Michael Bay versions.
Honestly the color coding was the best thing to come from the TV show. Raphael’s characterization was absolutely destroyed, Michaelangelo and Donatello were flanderized to all hell and Leonardo was made, for all intents and purposes, ineffectual and then there’s the villain characters who made it through to the show…
I was so grateful when the IDW comic switched to individual colors after their first story-arc. The difficulty in telling the characters apart is easily the worst thing about the original comics.
But Raph was voiced by Rob Paulson!
I suppose in the current version on Nickelodeon, Paulson voices Donnie instead…
Oh, it’s short for Rafael from Ninja Turtles? I was kind of at a loss.
Unless it’s not that I guess. I don’t actually know or care what the Ninja Turtles are like.
As you can tell. Because I spelled the name wrong. Whoops.
Yeah, and I’ve seen that series of movies multiple time and I missed the joke. It saddened me.
I got the joke instantly and was greatly pleased that somebody remembered those movies – the GOOD live action turtle movies. Aah, the good old days…
Soup is my favourite turtle
Mock!
Put the spoon away, Shredder. You haven’t even managed to quit being Krang’s buttmonkey yet. :p
How do you know my pet turtle’s name? o_O
Bert. He’s ever alert.
My favorite turtle was Tooter.
OMG, you must be as old as me.
62 this coming November.
My guess is that Mary murdered everyone (besides Dina) before fleeing to Cuba.
Mary is too confused by the idea that she might be guilty of something to flee anywhere, much less a godless communism like Cuba.
I’ve heard they have nice beaches, and someone has to spread the Word of God ™.
All those Catholics there need converting to Christianity.
rarr xd means i love you in dinosaur
rarr is a very versatile word in dinosaur, as it turns out.
like “putain” in french 😀
Yes.
“Qu’est que vous dite, vous cassette?”
I like how easily you can imagine the soft and smiley the rarr here is and how different that is to Dina’s usual rarrs.
I imagine her rawr here to be like a kitten’s playful rawr, rather than the RAWR of the raptor.
I was thinking something like the one Tom Hardy used in RocknRolla.
Hee hee hee hee hee indeed. 🙂
The rare Dinasaurus Cutelyodon attacks not with sharp fangs or claws, but with LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP
The death count continues to this day…
You have the second best name.
So many bodies, smothered to death with affection…
Okay, clearly I was wrong. You have the second-best name.
But(t) who has the best name?
but(t)(s) who has the best name?
(ftfy)
You still did not answer the question, though.
Is it Slartibast Button, BIA?
I am assuming that BIA means Butt In Action, by the way.
No. It is I. but(t)(s). Who has the best name. And that name. Is butts. Clearly a superior name to Slartibeast Button, BIA. Due to the fact. That it has such a comparatively high ratio. Of words that are butts. To words that are not butts. This fact. Is what makes the name which I possess. (Namely, butts.) The best name.
But(t) while the percentage is lower, you cannot deny that Slartibast Button, Butt In Action simply has more Butt in it.
More butt, perhaps. But not more butts.
Only going by percentages. SBBIA as twice as many, yet your’s is plural, so it’s possible that you are referring to more than two. Yet SB’s has one and a referred, so then that one could then be more. However your’s could be all of them, which would infer more than SB’s. But taking into consideration…
I am glad we get these serious discussions going on in this comment field, you know.
Truly a thread for that ages. Or at least butts.
I thought it was “By Imperial Appointment”, but what do I know?
Should I change it to Slartibutt Buttons, BIA?
Well, you get partial credit then. If you hadn’t taken my first choice, I wouldn’t have had to get creative.
Also I love it whenever you and “tacos” have adjacent comments
I entered it on a lark, and was shocked that it wasn’t already taken.
(I’m quite sad that both butt-taco.org and ibuyextradomainscuzihavenopenis.com don’t work right anymore. You can still access them, but both domain names lead to an index instead of the intended page.)
I never much cared for the butt taco joke. Was probably in the minority when it came to that, though.
Questing of Age
And now for Umbrella Paint’s DOA battle!
Dina vs. Ethan!
Ethan walked into the warehouse. It was dark and a bit damp. Boxes lined the walls, and wooden beams hang from the ceiling. He looked up and spied a dark shadow moving across the ceiling.
Ethan: You ready to fight Dina!?
Dina jumped down from the rafters, landing on her feet in a squat.
Ethan looks around, memorizing the scenery.
Dina: Ready when you are.
Ethan: Right then…
Ethan pulls out the Windblades and rushes at Dina. Dina dodges and kicks. Ethan rolls with the kick and jumps back.
Ethan: So, what’s been happening lately?
Dina: Joyce wants to form a team.
Dina leaps up into the rafters and turns invisible.
Ethan leaps up as well, searching for signs of Dina.
Ethan: A team? For what?
Dina: To follow that card she got.
Ethan: Well…
Ethan notices one of the beams bend slightly
Ethan: She…
Ethan leaps up and sends a flying kick at Dina.
Ethan: Can count on me!
Dina barely manages to dodge, as Ethan sails past her and is forced to grab onto another beam by one hand.
Ethan: Shit…
Dina comes out of her invisibility and leaps over to Ethan.
Dina: Can’t wait to tell Becky I won!
Ethan: Sorry Dina…
Ethan lifts his other hand up quickly and grabs Dina’s ankle.
Ethan: You’ll have to tell her next time!
Ethan yanks Dina off of the rafter and lets her drop over the edge.
Ethan: Phew.
Ethan pulls himself up and stands on the rafter, peering over the edge, hoping that Dina isn’t too badly hurt.
To his astonishment, Dina isn’t there. He looks behind him, to see Dina standing right in front of him.
Ethan: How!?
Dina: I have very sharp fingernails. I like to keep them raptor like!
Ethan: Only you could make something so creepy, so adorable!
Dina: Thank you!
Dina starts slashing at Ethan with her (claws) fingernails, while Ethan blocks with his windblades. They move back and forth across the beam, somewhat like they’re fencing.
Ethan: You’ve improved since the tournament!
Dina: Thanks; we’ve all been training.
Ethan leaps across to another beam, and Dina follows him.
Ethan: Hmmm, this is a fairly weak beam. There’s a huge crack in the middle of it!
Dina: What are you thinking?
Ethan: This!
Ethan throws a Windblade into the crack. The board begins to collapse as Ethan leaps up and grabs a rope hanging beside his head.
Ethan: Sorry Dina!
Dina drops to the floor and rolls.
Ethan: You okay!?
Dina: I’m fine, but I would count that as a win for you.
Ethan: You did great too.
Dina: Thanks, oh by the way. Joyce is holding a meeting in the dorm common room this Friday.
Dina walks out and Ethan sits in the dark.
Ethan (thinking): Danny’s resurrection… is it really possible? I sure hope so!
WHEN DID DANNY DIE?!!!!
NOOOOOO HE MUST COME BACK!!!!!
I am not dissapoint. Dis iz gewd
It’s super effective!
What? nobody else was making the joke.
Clueless old guy: raph?
It’s a line from a Ninja Turtles movie. They did the quiet/too quiet line, then when they found Raphael, and said “It’s Raph!” I think it was Michelangelo who followed up with “A little TOO Raph.”
From TMNT2: Secret of the Ooze. There’s a sequence where the other three Turtles sneak into a Foot hideout to rescue Raphael which goes like this:
“That was easy.”
“A little too easy.”
…
“It’s quiet.”
“A little too quiet.”
…
“It’s Raph!”
“A little too Raph.”
“It’s Becky!” “A little too Becky.”
…Is basically how you would summarize this.
Ah, the second movie was my least favorite. (Of the original movies, not of all TMNT movies ever.) That’s why I missed the reference.
I normally hear that about the third one.
I hate the Ninja Rap. The third one is bad, but it didn’t torture viewers.
That surprises me a bit. I’d always considered the original three to have been released in descending order of quality, with the third easily being the weakest of them.
And besides, the second one had Vanilla Ice. His presence alone should rescue it from ‘worst movie’ status. 🙂
(Of course, the first comment I ever leave on this site, and I see afterward that the previous two commenters made both the points I was going for. Bah.)
Dina is best horror movie monster.
She’ll murder everyone with her cuteness.
Smother them with her adorkableness.
She’s like an Anurognathus.
Ok that’s too adorable and thus it’s hurting the black pit people tell me is where my heart is located.
That’s called phantom emotions syndrome. To fix it, I recommend watching a marathon of Star Treks 5 and 10, the Star Wars prequels, and close it out with rewatching Batman and Robin 5 times in a row.
Oh, come on, all of those incite plenty of emotions.
…Hate is an emotion, right?
After watching that marathon, you either simply become immune to all feelings, or hate stops being an emotion, and instead becomes a state of being.
Either way, you will never feel positive emotions again in your life.
These… positive emotions. I’m not familiar with them. Where do they lie on the axis from hate to rage?
Probably to the left from Albuquerque.
Let me guess, you watched Highlander II one too many times, right?
Just kidding! It is the best movie in the series, one can never watch it too many times!
Actually, I managed to avoid that particular train wreck. Reltzik was spot-on, though.
You definitely need to at least watch the literal train wrecking scene that happens in Highlander II. It is just too awesome for words.
No!!! No!!!! No one deserves to watch both Episode 1 and Star Trek 5 in the same marathon!!! No one!!! Also, I forgot, but is Star Trek the one where there’s a clone of Picard? Cause the one with the Picard clone and Wrath of Khan got me the most emotional any Star Trek movie has.
Yeah, Star Trek 10’s the one with the emo Picard clone. Don’t know why everyone always rags on it— sure, it’s not great, but it’s a hell of a lot better than 1, 5, or 9.
I actually really like Star Trek 10. Although emo Picard clone needed a little work, I liked B4 and Data’s heoric sacrifice was heart wrenching.
No way was it better than 1 and 9. Neither of those were GREAT, true. 1 had major pacing issues and was trying to imitate Kubrik’s 2001, its story was simplistic, and the uniforms needed to leave less to the imagination, but it didn’t have any horrific, fundamental flaws.
9 needed a bigger budget, less action, more sophisticated exploration of the issues, morals, and premise, and better costumes, sets, and sfx, but it was actually the closest to the TNG series in mood, themes, and characterization. It’s a toss-up for me whether I prefer it over 8. (8’s a better movie viewed on its own, but makes no attempt to be consistent with the established characters and history of the series, to the point where it’s jarring viewed in the larger context.)
10? 10 was almost nothing but awful. Everyone was out of character. The actors were clearly done with the characters. No one remembered what the setting was about or what Star Trek was about. The entire plot was terrorism we don’t care about, scavenger hunt with pointless toy merchandising, coup that ends up not mattering, something about life-saving blood transfusion that everyone who should care about it does the exact opposite of the smart thing to make it happen and then forgets about, massive ship battle that’s the whole point of the movie and has maybe one minute of awesome and twenty minutes that should have been cut, a bunch of main characters with plot-padding just to give them something to do, and a completely pointless sacrifice that would have taken a positronic brain one tenth of a second to find ten ways to avoid. The best thing about it was some nice themes about mirrors and opposite numbers that should have and could have been explored better, but weren’t… and yes, they failed to develop those themes and they were still the best thing about it. The entire thing was a wreck. Way worse than 5… which had set the previous bar for awful.
1 and 9 had major issues but they weren’t fundamentally flawed to the core the way 10 was.
*needed to leave more to the imagination
5 times? Must they be in a row?
YES.
Watch all 10 movies in a row. No sleep allowed. When you catch yourself dozing off in hour 17 (going into your 3rd viewing of Batman and Robin), set up a set of medium-voltage wires to shock you every 10 minutes just to be sure you stay awake.
The shocks may actually help you forget about what you’ve seen. Sounds like a plan.
Wait, Batman and Robin? I think the combination of Jar Jar Binks, Star Trek 5 and Bat-nipples is against the Geneva Convention.
And I would never inflict it upon a prisoner of war.
Just my friends. >=]
“On the way here, I felt a great disturbance, as if a dozen dormies suddenly cried out in Drama, and then were suddenly absent.”
WE HAD A DINA.
IT GOT LOOSE
SHE HAS BECKY
wow wow, you’re gonna have to back up and explain this from the beginning
You got a twit! Congrats.
I feel like I’ve heard this from a different source.
Hey now, I’m a scientist and that was still too fast for me.
The wild Dina has pinned her prey, she will eat out tonight.
Ayyyyy
NICE ONE
This is genious. You deserve a thousand cookies.
FANTASTICO
SEXO LOCO
YOUR MOM FOR A NICKEL
With her FAAAACE
Stop the Faces!
*applauds* Well done.
At least someone in the wing gets to tonight.
So that’s what happened to all the guys who went into the long grass
They got ticks ?
Then we must flea!
They encounter wild Pokemon?
That’s tall grass. Completely different.
They found rupees?
Been a while since we had a FWUMP! around here, huh?
No Flashbacking!
I think it’s been
over four yearsa few weeks.Too cute. The cuteness will devour us all.
Now I’m picturing the Rachels in Rachel Green hairdos.
Hank is about to discover what his daughter’s college life is like and I don’t know if I should be very worried or just laugh about it.
On the plus side, he’s at least seeing Becky even more humanized and seeing how happy she is with her girlfriend, which will probably make it easier to be even more supportive of her and Joyce’s decision to support her*.
*Not saying he’s unsupportive, only that this will help silence any doubts he’s feeling about the moral rightness of “supporting sin” and “following Joyce’s lead”.
I think that in the worst-case scenario, we’ll get to see Hank do his version of Joyce’s freak-out face
He’s got the eyes for it.
I thought a raptor would hunt the weakest one first. why attack the strong becky first?
For the thrill of the hunt?
The raptor knows that Becky will put up the least fight.
Dina isn’t really trying to devour her, she’s trying to form a herd. <3
awww….that is an adorable image. dina mom teaching her herd all about dinosaurs
and each member of the her wearing a different dino hat. I pick triceratops
Something’s got Becky, and IT KILLED KENNY, you bastards.
THE CUTE OH MY LORD I AM DYING
Did you just mention Turtles 2
Hit by the Dina-raur
Are Becky and Dina adorable in this strip? “Is, like, Schwarzenegger hard to spell?” “Yeah.”
DoA experiments with the horror genre for exactly three panels.
There might be another coming up. I’m not sure Hank is quite ready for this.
“Oh no, the Tickleosaurus has Becky, she’ll either die laughing or orgasm; maybe both.”
Does it HAVE to be either/or?
It should never be mutually exclusive. Well maybe the die part.
That’s what Beckysaurus gets for being a noncanonical dinosaur.
If that’s what happens then sign me up to be one.
So…it seems Becky and Dina have already decided to start doing role-playing. That was quicker than expected, I was pretty sure it was going to take at least two more weeks.
That’s freakin’ adorable.
“Agatha and The Rachels” is a horrible band name.
Aw, come on! No, “Clever girl”? I am so disappointed in you, Becky!
I don’t think she’s see the movies. And that joke was kinda done about a year ago.
It’d be a nice counterpoint to it though, it said in a positive context instead of a horrifically negative one.
Eh, I was speaking in reference to Dina questioning if Ross understood the reference he was making. But positive would be nice.
awwwwww
I’m kinda jealous. Every time I’ve greeted someone by tackling them, they did not appreciated it.
Their fault, clearly.
They are fault.
There is a fault.
Depends on the type of friends that you have.
I can’t tell if you missed the joke, or just took it in a different direction and now I don’t get it.
The key is to do it on carpet or a bed and make sure they are not carrying multiple breakable objects in cartoon hijinks fashion.
i get from the comments that this is supposed to be cute, and becky seems happy, but tackling your romantic partner to the ground without warning seems a little… off, to me
http://quotecloset.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/calvinhobbes-tackle-300×390.gif
So glad I’m not the only one who got that vibe from today’s strip.
Most likely, Dina’s tackle didn’t actually have the force in it to push Becky to the ground, she just fell on her own to follow through with the game
Don’t forget Dino and Fred Flintstone.
Dagwood and Mr. Beasley the mailman.
In the absence of a black guy or comic relief, lesbian dies first.
The elder mentor figure better watch the fuck out, because his minutes are numbered.
Arguable, Becky is the comic relief. Or at least tries to be when under stress.
Ruth’s just been taken away, so maybe the trope’s been subverted.
Then again, there’s always Sarah…
My brain just exploded from cuteness overload :X
I’m surprised, I was expecting them to get back while all the stuff with Ruth was still going on. Instead we get adorable Dina. I’m ok with this.
Can the rest of the comic just be about those two? They just make an amazing couple and it’s nice to see how unlike everyone else these two actually have a chance at happiness together.
we can do a spinoff show just about the two of them, and we can call it “dina loves becky,” and then thirty years later one of them can be the main attraction at the republican national convention
NO IT CAN’T BE WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO SEPARATE JOYCE AND BECKY LIKE THAT YOU MONSTER
fine…it can be a comic about dina, becky, and joyce.
Joyce is the wacky neighbor?
It’s kind of glorious how healthy these two are as a couple, especially when a lot of the other couples have glaring problems. And I think a lot of it stems from a lot of their challenges to overcome coming from outside the relationship rather than in (though I can’t wait for Becky to open up more with Dina as right now she’s carrying a lot of the weight of all those external things).
I’m so confused by the angles. The way Becky was taken down seems to indicate from the front, to which the Browns would have seen her. The ‘facing’ position relative to how she fell put her on the opposite side of the hallway (short direction, not long). As well as the angle of Joyce’s word balloon in the last panel also seems to be coming from the wrong side.
Do Raptors have the ability to create localized dutch angle effects?
Don’t over-analyze things. Just go with it and learn to love the feels.
It’s just a comment.
Apparently.
Dina’s love has reality altering effects
Looks like Dina tackled her from the side, which would give her the opportunity to make sure Becky didn’t land on her faaaaaaaace. Joyce and Hank kept moving down the hallway, which makes the orientation of Joyce’s word bubble in relation to the orientation of the panel logical. To me, at least.
But, why wouldn’t Joyce turn around? Isn’t it just one long hallway? Do Becky Giggles create a stealth field?
Joyce hears horror movie background music. Turning around is never a good idea in horror movies.
Or horror games. Creeps me the fudge out.
Dina’s just that good at not being seen.
Rule 1: Don’t stand up.
Rule 2: Don’t choose an obvious bit of cover.
I think that the angle we’re seeing them from is just flipping around for panels 3 and 4 to focus on Joyce’s face while she’s talking, then flipping back. Panels 2 and 5 are looking in the same direction
It’s the tall grass. Anything could be hiding in there.
I think this was the longest thread I’ve ever started. It makes me happy.
awwww!! i love becky and dina’s relationship i really hope it lasts forever
OH GOSH THAT’S REALLY CUTE
I, too, always want people to finish that “too quiet” line with a Secret of the Ooze reference.
I don’t see how it can last. Remember, this is DoA. So enjoy the adorableness while we got it.
Remember, Dina knows that she is a rebound from Becky’s failed attempt to bed Joyce. I don’t think Joyce is ever going to change her mind beyond friendship with Becky.
But Dina doesn’t know that.
I think this is Dina’s first foray into a personal relationship too. So much could go wrong. I hope it does not.
They really are freakin’ cute together.
Omigosh, I just saw that Becky’s giggles almost exactly mirror Dina’s giggling right after their first (honest) kiss! And you can see Dina grinning happily under her hat.
Seriously, though, this level of adorkable-ness is off the charts.
Off the charts? We need better measuring tools then! Or bigger pieces of paper. Still, angry!
Eh, it’s easy enough. Take our current scale and add one category at the end: “Beyond instrumentation.” It now has a number that can be charted.
…. and we can now say that the adorkable-ness is up to 11.
So we’re not just expanding the range but using the same numerical scale, thus calling this 10?
The Tour de France uses a numeric scale for grading the difficulty of climbs; 4 is the least difficult; 3, 2, and 1 are progressively more difficult (based on length and steepness); and the most difficult are called ‘HC’ for hors catégorie (beyond categorization).
So this level of adorkableness (I love that word, btw) is officially ‘HC’.
I told them to use a logarithmic scale!
We did.
Just compose your present function into the tangent function.
Absolute Adorkableness Measure = Tangent (New Score * 9 / 10)
Nice 0-100 metric, with 100 being approached asymptotically but never reached. As a bonus, the units in question are degrees, so we can talk about 97 degrees of adorkableness.
Ah the starfox memories 😀
Joyce: Dad, meet Becky’s dinosaur girlfriend.
Hank already knows about Dina, he saw Becky kissing her goodbye for the weekend. He was a little freaked out (looked uncomfortable) because he’s still in only the first few weeks of going from Evangelical Christian Bigot to Nice Understamding guy, and admitted that he still needed to work on that because he got a little freaked. However, the goodbye happened off panel (we only saw Joyce and Hank’s reactions to it) so it makes sense that this could be forgotten about.
So, Hank has come too? It should be interesting to see his perspective of the current multiple train-crash that is the floor!
Probably almost everyone’s wandered off to see what happens to Ruth. The exceptions are Mary (stormed off to sulk at church), Ethan and Danny (both gone to their rooms to worry about Amber), Amber (taking out her frustration on fictional characters) and Mike (plotting).
Oh, and Dina! Let’s not forget Dina! 😉
Yeah, today’s strip is a good example of what happens when you forget about Dina.
Hank’s continued presence gives me hope that he wants to make sure there’s at least a plan to get Becky situated properly.
He could just be walking them in, but I really want to think that he’s ready to take his Cool Dad game to the next level
Adorable
Good thing they came after all the tragedy went down.
That was a cute sneak attack by Dina. 😀
Come on, Becky. Give her a “clever girl”. You know you want to.
Yeah, Frank, better do a lot of smile and nodding…
Hank… whatever. Joycedad.
She’s too in her subby happy place to form words. Which just makes this all the more amazing.
Dawwww… <3 Wish I had someone to pounce me like that when I get home each day.
get a dog/Cat/panther
I’m really looking forward to Hank’s reaction to Dina and Becky’s interactions; it will say a lot about his real perspective on Becky and her alignment.
As cute as this is I fear the shoe is about ready to drop unless Billie intends to hide Becky in Ruth’s room.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyygooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood.
This is my absolute favorite strip of the entire series. Hands down.
The hover text makes me so happy… It’s admittedly one of my favorite quotes from my second-favorite movie of all time.
(Yes, I know that Secret of the Ooze wasn’t a “good” movie, but it was fun, and I’m as much a Ninja Turtles fan as Walkyverse Amber, darn it!)
<3
Open the door, get on the floor, Becky’s gonna do a dinosaur!
Actually it looks like the dinosaur is gonna do Becky, but that doesn’t scan.
Okay, this is cute.
I quote that bit (or at least paraphrase it) whenever someone says something that allows it.
Super adorable, I have just died of squee. Could swear I heard two powerful magnets slamming together. Then one of them was giggling.
This has been a very very long weekend for everyone involved
Just noticed it. Becky looks like she rotated 180 degrees after Becky pinned her. I cannot help but think of this as a God of War style takedown, where the Minotaur rotates on its back juusstttt so the camera angle is proper.
This was absolutely adorable
Comic Reactions:
*Happy squee noises*
*Happy squee noises intensify*
*Happy squee noises start to crack the Earth asunder*
SQUEEEE- uh… maybe I should reign it in a bit.
I love how Joyce exits the elevator saying hi to the hallway, expecting some measure of life and to see people happy or at least happy-ish to see her. And the thing about that is that is shows not only how supportive and caring this little dorm hall has been for her, but also how desperately she missed it being with her folks. This is her safety zone, this is where she feels safe and protected. To the point where when she was getting endless flashbacks going outside alone, she nonetheless could always stand to be alone in her dorm. And so it’s glorious to see her come home.
I love Hank anxiously glancing around at the quiet as well. It’s a nice soft touch that humanizes him and his character really nicely and provides a nice contrast to Becky’s cool practiced nonchalantness.
And that last panel- SQUEEEE- no, the rumbling is too loud, must control my happy. But seriously, these two are just too cute and there is too much to love here.
I mean, this is exactly what Becky has needed from a trip where she’s had to face some of her worst memories, constantly receive and downplay abuse and microaggressions, and was not allowed really a space to breathe and process just how hard it was being back in the town and community that so thoroughly rejected her. Not to mention the community that has done nothing to reach out or support her even though she’s without family and homeless, because in their eyes, it’d be like sympathizing with a man who murdered his parents because he’s an orphan.
So, she needed this. And maybe it’s me being hyper-aware of anxiety symptoms because of my work, but I can’t help noticing the contrast between the stiff hunched shoulders still full of stress in the first two panels compared to the blissful surrender in that last panel. This is all her stress melting away in the best possible way.
Also, I just love their dynamic. That giggly happy sub reaction of Becky’s. Too happy to form words. Echoing that moment when she and Dina kissed and Dina retreated into her hat to happily giggle and just so in bliss to be reunited with the woman she loves. The happy dino dom in Dina doing her power stance over her, but in a way that would allow her to easily escape if she wanted to. The happy satisfied rarr and the knowledge that Dina was probably happily bouncing in Sarah’s chair for the second she heard Becky’s name spoken out loud and likely dashed off at that moment.
I like that it’s a bit non-normative and role-play-y, but that Becky is so game and so happy and sees nothing off about it. It’s her cute smart wonderful dino girlfriend tackling her in the hall and she couldn’t be happier.
They’ve been through the worst of times, but it’s also not gonna be easy being and dating a homeless queer woman with a lot of emotional baggage left to unpack from the circumstances that caused it. But I have a lot of faith in these cuties and I want to imagine them as the sort of college couple that’s still together 10 years later, planning their marriage, because “eh, it’s time” or at least the type of exes who still include each other in each other’s lives and have brunch with their respective significant others.
HEE HEE HEE HEE
*ahem*
Darkness, that was girly…
HEE HEE HEE HEE
*AHEM*
Dammit, stop making me laugh like that!
Paraphrasing, slightly.
The unseen sixth panel contains copius amounts of snuggling between this raptor and her prey.
Snuggles are how you get the meat tender.
Becky’s fiiiiiiiiine.
Raar! Yay!
Dina uses Tackle.
It’s super effective!
Becky is paralyzed (by laughter)!
She can’t attack!
I just finished reading the comic from the beginning. My understanding of the characters is much better now.
And what a great spot to end the marathon!
woah. Congrats. How long did it take you?
God these two are too cute!
Honestly, the fact they gave me Mike’s avatar really makes this comment
Clever Girl.
FORRRPLAY?
Screw it, I’ll just ask here since the comments are still nice and busy. Is there a way to get email notifications when you get a response to your comment, or is subscribing to the comments RSS the only way you ever know when new comments appear?
1) Post
2) Come back to the site later
3) Hit “CTRL + F” and enter your handle
4) Scroll through and see if anyone has followed up
That’s what I do now. Seems woefully inefficient! I wish Willis would install Disqus or something. 🙁
Someone’s gotta walk the dinosaur!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgiDcJi534Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83nFiPoSuzU
Your link was being blocked for copyright reasons, Willoughby, so I FIFY.
it’s quiet up town
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/sticks/
Can we have a big version of the second to last panel of this comic?
That is adorable.
I’m just so glad I’m not the only one who still thinks “A little too Raph.”
Clever girl