The legendary early-aughts webcomic that inspired a wave of webcomic creators.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
The Otherknown
Lorian Merriman
Chandra is a 12-year-old accidental time traveler with a reluctant new dad, who happens to be a member of a feared galactic crime syndicate.
Countdown to Countdown
Velinxi
Iris Black is a self-proclaimed inventor with the curious ability to bring his drawings to life, and yearns to find a space where he can use his powers freely.
2 Slices
RJ Morel
After a case of mistaken identity, will awkward Daisuke find help from excitable Mamo, or will his love life be thrown completely off track?
Beeserker
TJ Cordes
This comic is about a robot powered by bees, but it's also about the kind of people who think filling a robot with bees is a good idea, and why they're wrong.
Fantomestein
Beka Duke
Desperate for companionship, Frankenstein's Monster pretends to be the Opera Ghost. A grave mistake.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Paint the Town Red
Windy, Winter Jay Kiakas
Winona runs a werewolf shelter with partner in crime, Odile in the Gothic city of Merlot. One day they take in an injured vampire, and soon unravels many of the dark secrets of Merlot.
Slightly Damned
Chu
Rhea Snaketail returns from the dead, befriending a Demon who falls in love with an Angel. The afterlife ain't what it used to be!
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I’m standing with Amber on this one. Much more comfortable not thinking of Dina as a sexual being.
Although I have to admit, a Slipshine with her playing dom to Joe’s sub would probably reduce the number of posts about how adorable she is to a more reasonable level.
Dina!! Fry & Laurie. Lovecraft. P G Wodehouse. Jeeves & Wooster. Sometimes almost half the reason I enjoy this webcomic is the comments section. (Not to fail to mention the Dina-as-dom comment elsewhere. ;-))
I’m English…neither in the UK, in Australia, or by people from same, have I heard it pronounced Woodhouse…from highschool to university level classes I’ve always heard it pronouced Wodehouse, as in whoa, woad, ode, load.
Only in the US, once jhave zi heard it pronounced Woodhouse…
Interesting. I had a very British English lit prof who introduced me to the author, and he certainly used the American pronunciation. I suppose he might have just been being polite to us poor colonials.
Think about it. If Dina can appear behind any door, then her enemies could only thwart her by not having any doors in their lairs. They would have to go in and out via windows.
The terms are kind of interchangeable – dating sims tend to have a bit more in the way of gameplay mechanics, visual novels are usually more choose-your-path text stuff. Either way, maybe not as silly an idea as it seems at first. There’s quite a bit of money in that part of the PC game industry, with relatively low production and development costs.
Won’t be laughing when Willis makes his first million in licensing off the idea…
The orignal artist is KYHU and although she did several variants and sketches around that (like this one) she got her accounts hacked and deleted in 2014. She later respawned as IAHFY but it seems that she didn’t returned over that topic.
I just finished IW!, and in my opinion, Dina here is way better than Dina from IW!. It’s weird, because she’s an exception – most of IW! characters changed for a bit worse in DoA…
(OK, Mike didn’t change at all. He’s Mike, and he’s eternal.)
Wait wait wait…she claimed to care so much about Dana but didn’t remember where she freaking dormed? Despite hanging out with her so many times? Yeah okay, really feeling Raidah’s sincerity here. /sarcasm
They may not have hung out in the dorms. Sarah likes to study and they were sorta her friends so I can see them avoiding the room to let her have her study time, much like Joyce and Becky do now.
That bothered me too. Though considering that she and the rest of Dana’s friends didn’t realize how bad she was getting, they might not have spent much time in her room.
My interpretation is that, probably every time she visited Dana there, she was either stoned or got stoned shortly thereafter and didn’t remember the experience very well. Which is not to say that Raidah is a major stoner, just that, for all her protestations of friendship, Dana was mostly that one person to get high with. (I’ve always interpreted Raidah & Co.’s hatred of Sarah as misplaced guilt over using Dana for getting high and not noticing how bad things were getting.)
I think I’ve finally figured out Dinas method of transportation. She enters one door and from there is able to exit out of any door in the world. She is teleporting using doors as portals.
Actually scratch that, if Dina is swept into a crowed she can absorb her essence into the people. A short time later she separates wherever the majority is.
hey maybe they will finally clear the air and make up… oh wait… I forgot to factor in the fact that that would actually reduce the awkward drama… but yeah today is not Sarah’s day…
why did that apear here T_T that was supposed to be its own comment… okay everybody pretend my last comment had something to do with the discussion… haha totally…
Um, well, Dr. Smart, eyes are the doors into the soul and Sarah and Raidah staring at each other is like facing two portals into each other and since this stare is one that causes an immense amount of awkward drama for everyone around them, and so even though it’s not a traditional door, Dina can manifest due to the heightened awkwardness factor.
(Ha! See! You were totally part of the discussion! )
i like to believe that dina has a network of secret tunnels throughout the university that allow her to appear from behind any door she chooses, which is clearly the work of a clever girl
Well, the door is open, and Dina pops up behind Jacob’s right shoulder…. just where she would be expected to appear if she had been behind the door all along.
Getting a room reassignment must be tricky at that school. There are a lot of problems that vanish instantly if you just move to a different dorm, and it just doesn’t happen.
I have a feeling the Room Assignments are based on grade unless you specify a different room when you apply for renewal, or whatever (which is how it works where I am). Sarah, not wanting to chance getting stuck with Raidah and co., just filled in her old room number, made something up as to why she wanted to be stuck with freshmen (I’m pretty sure she “knew” the college wouldn’t care about the real reason), and got her wish. It would also explain why Carla is the only other sophomore on this floor; being trans, she had a legitimate reason for not moving, as well as for getting the other single.
To me, it’s more likely that if you plan to be using on-campus housing for consecutive years, they just don’t bother to change your room assignment unless you request it. Incoming students are placed in vacant spots as they open each semester. If Raidah has always been on a different floor/wing/whatever, that would contribute to why she didn’t recognize the room until she was already inside.
That’s how it worked at most of the schools I attended. You could camp in the same dorm room until graduation if you wanted, although some dorms were explicitly for junior/senior undergrads and most people fled to one of those or off campus eventually. But you could also request room and even dorm switches pretty easily, especially if you had someone that was willing to literally swap rooms with you.
I’m p sure that’s how it works at most schools, but where I went there wasn’t enough space (bad building planning) so every year there was a friggen’ room raffle to decide who was afforded space on campus. Anyone who didn’t get in was outta luck and would either end up homeless or pay to live off campus. PA state schoolssss yeaaAHHH.
No kidding? Which school? One of mine was the State College campus of Penn State and they didn’t have space problems. Of course, that was 1984 – no idea what they’re like now.
No, Raidah, you are not going to pull your hateful crap in this room. This is Sarah’s and Joyce’s home, you weren’t even invited, you have no right to turn it into a hostile space!
Though I wonder if this will build until Joyce finally snaps and yells about how Sarah saved her from being raped. It’d be the first time she brings it up herself, the first time she says the words and it’d be a very good way to mend things with Sarah after what Joyce said earlier.
Wait, so the viewpoint pans to the left from panel 3 to panel 4, which can be seen by both the letters on the door being closer to the left edge of the screen, and more of Sarah’s badanna being shown. But Raidah’s full profile is still on the edge of the panel.
Doesn’t look like the camera angle changed, and the only person who’s moved is Jacob – he shifted over to make room for Dina to poke her head in. Everyone else is static.
The background’s definitely shifted – Raidah’s head is further away from the edge of the door, and the knob of the drawer above Sarah’s head is more visible.
Not quite. The background has expanded slightly, as evidenced by seeing more of the knob on the cupboard door above Sarah’s head on the left of the panel, and more of the decoration on the door on the right side. Sarah herself has not moved relative to the door frame, but if you look at the other four characters (Billie, Jacob, Raidah, and Becky) they all have moved slightly — Billie a little to the left; the other three to the right. That makes this a very slight zoom out as well as a POV shift to the left with Sarah on the left edge of the panel being the focal point, which gives the illusion that while Sarah remained in place the others have all changed position relative to her.
Y’know, I tend to feel like DUMBING OF AGE is an exercise in understanding other people, and we readers shouldn’t hate on characters who aren’t out-and-out villains like Mary or Ryan. Raidah doesn’t fall into that easy, morally unambiguous category. I can’t even deny there’s a grain of truth to her claim that “other people are just inconveniences” to Sarah. And yet something about her just drives me NUTS.
In broad terms, I think it’s the self-righteousness. I mean, of all the things she could’ve said today–
“Whoops, wrong party.”
“Sarah. I… didn’t realize you’d be at this.”
“Oh, my God, I should’ve remembered the room number.”
“Hey, bongo, planning on getting anyone else kicked out of your room?”
–she went with the option that makes it sound like Sarah isn’t even THERE. This isn’t just Dana’s FORMER room, it’s Sarah’s CURRENT room and has been for as long as Raidah’s known her, but clearly Dana in the past is soooo much more important than anything Sarah could do or be in the present. Because Raidah, unlike SOME people, STANDS BY HER FRIENDS!!! And that sounds nice and all, but it’s a simple, blinkered way of looking at the world. It sure doesn’t account for the fact that her current friends appear to be assholes, whom her leadership barely keeps in line: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/05-saturdays-all-right-for-slighting/challenged/
I reserve the right to change my mind if Raidah changes and/or reveals more dimensions, but right now, I think I honestly prefer Mary, if only because her brand of hypocrisy is easier for a bystander to spot.
Nuts. She’s in shock. Seeing Sarah made the connection on where she really is and she blurted it out without thinking. You’re reading deliberate insult into a startled response. Sarah has punched her in the face in the recent past, Raidah just inadvertently broke their shaky truce by invading her space, and she has no friends in that room other than her date – and if she overheard any of the exchange between Roz and Sarah a moment ago, she’s got to be wondering about Jacob as well.
I led by admitting that I’m not quite meeting my own standards of fairness where Raidah’s concerned. But I do think the things we blurt out without thinking can be revealing– Freudian slips, we sometimes call them. “This was Dana’s room,” not “This is your room,” says something to me about how she thinks of the situation.
If we’re playing the game of mental associations, I think it makes perfect sense that Raidah would think of the room more in connection to Dana, who was her friend, than Sarah, who isn’t. It doesn’t nessesarily mean that she thinks Sarah doesn’t have dominion over the room – just that Dana is forefront in her mind. When I visit my old schools/places of residence etc. I say things like “this is my old room” or “this is my friend’s room” not because I’m denying other people have the right to it now, but just because that’s how I view the room in relationship to myself.
But I don’t think you have to hold yourself to standards of fairness where these characters are concerned (the rl people you interact with are another story). And, so long as Sarah is relaying the story reliably, it’s hard for me to not see Raidah as horribly self-righteous and spiteful, while being too naive to address Dana’s situation seriously.
It’s easier for *a man or woman of above-average strength of character* to see from the outside. The sad thing is…I grew up around mild versions of Raidah’s kind, so her behavior is a bit familiar. I also agree that Mary is the lesser of the two evils solely because she can be seen through before it’s too late. Hate of a Surely Loner is a four-letter word many already wisely try to avoid. Self-Pity of Someone who can Kite back to the Safety of the Crowd is an odorless, silent killer many never see coming or even figure out that’s what got’em.
I of have to disagree with you on Mary, at least in the Dumbiverse. All of her appearances to date culminate in her actively wishing ill will on those that don’t share her beliefs. If that is not at its heart an evil way of thinking, I don’t know what is.
That’s kind of the point though: the obviousness makes her less dangerous, and easier to dismiss. Better to deal with the devil you know than the devil you don’t, I suppose.
Wasn’t it just said that the silver lining to Mary’s brand of malice was how easy it was to spot and recognize for the threat it is?
I also don’t think either Sarah’s or Raidah’s retelling of what happened is reliable. Not because anyone’s lying or anything like that. More so because it’s about Sarah validating her morbid martyrdom and Raidah validating her need for everything in her social world to be solely hers to define, rather than what happened to Dana…
Please cut her some slack? She’s going to a party on short notice with her date, when quite immediately and suddenly a person (who has attacked her in the past!) gets angry and glares at her.
Many of the sentences you listed imply that she’d think she was in the wrong but, she’s not really in the wrong here? Its just an accident that she’s there at all. And, the prior history between those two, neither feels like they’re in the wrong there either.
So, something pops out of her mouth because she’s suddenly in a hostile situation and didn’t expect to be. I’m super impressed that what pops out isn’t an aggressive attack on Sarah or an intentional escalation. Its just surprise and shock and disoriented.
Gonna have to second Fish’s valid point here. Although it’s entirely implied this far in, everything appears to signal that Raidah had nothing to do with Jacob bringing her to this party. Wondering if Jacob’s going to back to ref what comes next.
What will it take? Accidentally mentioning that he finds Ethan to be hot? Spotting Amazi-Girl in the window, and calling her ‘Amber’? Or will he notice the bloody sweater, and feel the overwhelming urge to ask about it?
I don’t know about that. Underwear isn’t on full public display normally, whereas with hot pants the display is kind of the point. Trying to define them as non-pants is like trying to call a miniskirt not a skirt.
Ah, but of the not-good days Sarah has had, this is easily third worst, and climbing. (In case you were wondering, the other two were the day she decided to call Dana in and the day Raidah made it clear they weren’t friends any more)
I feel like these reactions are a bit extreme. Last time these two met (as far as I can tell) was when Sarah apologized in the cafeteria for hitting Raidah at Target a couple weeks ago. Back then their dynamic was a deep but not intense dislike of eachother. Now their faces say “severe anger” and “shock/heartbreak” respectively, despite the fact that Sarah really does not have a good reason for hating Raidah, and Raidah should not be so torn up over finding herself in Dana’s room, who she is still in contact with and is completely fine (unless something tragic happened outside the panels of the main comic?).
Sarah just had the Dana Debacle hit over her head like a flail by the person she least suspected. Raidah was unsuspectingly brought back to a place with painful memories. I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch.
Is Raidah in contact with Dana? I don’t recall the strip where that was established. She was in bad shape when her father pulled her out of school. He might very well be keeping her well clear of the college friends that were partially enabling her drug problem, at least during her recovery.
Ah, found the strip. Raidah responded to Sarah saying Dana was in a better place by saying “Not according to Dana, last I checked.” Raises the question of when that was – as I said, they may have been cut off for a while now. If they last communicated at the start of her therapy, I’m sure Dana didn’t feel like this was a turn for the better.
Regardless, that just disproves the original contention that Raidah knows Dana is completely fine. Quite the opposite, in fact.
> despite the fact that Sarah really does not have a good reason for hating Raidah
Well, lets see…
– When Sarah brought up Dana’s problems, Raidah was a member of the group that kept insisting there was nothing wrong. If I were Sarah, I’d be at least a little miffed that I was telling someone something that they didn’t believe
– When Sarah mentioned that her own grades were slipping because of Dana, she got no sympathy from the same group
– in earlier strips, she was confronted by Raidah (who initiated things) making comments like “I hope you choke” and “bongo”
And that’s just the events that have been shown on strip.
Someone treats me like that, I’m certainly going to be hostile to them.
Interesting. The site keeps insisting I give it permission to lock onto my location. I won’t allow it.
When I attempt to post a comment, the column rolls so that posting is not possible, as soon as the first few words are typed.
This has happened 3 nights in a row.
So, I will just read.
(Too much trouble to go thru to post a comment here every night, under these circumstances)
I’ve only experienced the column rolling problem (if I understand you correctly), and usually when on a phone or tablet. Hitting ‘Enter’ at the end of your comment should force the dumb thing to scroll back so you can post. Annoying, but you can work around it.
I’ve had that problem on my desktop. My solution is to type out what I want and, to make sure there aren’t any typos, press the left key until the whole text box is visible. Once that’s done, the “Post Comment” button is in the open.
However, this practice also causes the entire comment thread to “roll”, and if I decide to not post, I delete everything, hit “Cancel reply”, then find another comment and hit “Reply” there. It usually rolls back on its own, and if it doesn’t, I rinse and repeat.
I have to break my word here, and post again.
Dina is just too freakin’ adorable not to say it. And probably the only person on campus who may abort what’s about to happen.
Having someone who hurt you as much as Raidah hurt Sarah show up uninvited to a party in your room with the guy you would have liked to date but didn’t manage to … easily explains Sarah’s reaction. It might not be rational, but then Sarah already had a really really bad day.
I might borrow Dina’s words once in a while…
Carla is trans? I missed that one. Does anyone have a link to the relevant comic?
College rooms expand into a subdimension for parties, so there is no problem with fitting more people in.
Not sure why you’re bringing up Carla, but yeah, she’s trans. Not stated directly in DoA, but it’s implied in some instances, sort of carries over from the Walkyverse, and I think it’s also been confirmed by Word of Willis.
I wish that you put your name and the date in the bottom right corner like a lot of other comics do… because then when I cut just that frame out to use in internet conversations as a joke it would credit you automatically.
Ha! Until I read the hovertext, it didn’t occur to me that she might NOT have shown up from behind the door. I just assumed she was behind the door and we didn’t realize.
Can’t wait to see what happens next! Damn you in the best way, Willis!
Dina. It would be great to see her hook up with sexually confused Danny because she is close to being an androgen and makes Danny not look gay. THAT AND SHE IS SO AWESOME!!! Could you imagine the first kiss… followed by facts about saliva, and comparisons of human to dinosaur reproduction?
Joyce brought up Dana and Sarah swallowed her anger in silence. Now that anger will come out. Raidah really hasn’t done anything to deserve what is about to happen, nothing with a bad intent. She will pay for Joyce’s accusation.
Raidah being upset about Dana leaving and misdirecting her anger at Sarah (since she didn’t know how badly Dana was taking things in private) is enough of a complete story to make sense by itself, but I can’t help but wonder if we’re being set up for a twist.
Like if Raidah knows something about the Dana situation that Sarah doesn’t. Maybe Dana has a troubled relationship with her father, so being at school is preferable to returning home even if she was suffering an emotional breakdown.
Or maybe it’s exactly what it looks like. After Willis pulled that untwist with Becky’s orientation, I’ll admit I’m not the best at predictions.
wow, lookit all those people acting completely reasonable given their situations. (no sarcasm. Its quite an art to make drama where everyone is acting completely reasonable).
It is super reasonable that Becky didn’t tell everyone that its an invite-only party. Conversations where happening, and it slipped her mind.
Its super reasonable that Jacob would bring a date to a party where he strongly suspects multiple girls with crushes on him that he does not want to date will be there. This is a nice sublte way of making sure that unwanted attention stops. Heck, he doesn’t even plan to be there very long; limited space is probably not an issue if he’s only there 10 minutes with his date. He doesn’t know the giant drama bomb.
It is super reasonable that Sarah would glare at Raidah. They have bad blood. It would probably be better if Sarah didn’t glare, but, she’s stressed and has had a bad day and was already trying to leave and now this person is in her escape path.
It is super reasonable that Raidah would respond with a glare when suddenly in a hostile environment.
I’m still not on Sarah’s side with regards to this whole Dana situation. At least not until we hear from Dana that Sarah made the right choice. Which I think means this arc has been handled well so far. I can totally understand why someone would hate the person who sent their friend away, maybe even deprived them of a college education. But I can also see that Sarah handled it as best she knew how (albeit probably not the best way possible.)
Is there really not a support group or counseling thing that Sarah might have reached out to instead, if that’s what she was worried about? Like, the People Are Inconveniences line still reads true, even if it’s unnecessarily mean.
I see your point, but I don’t necessarily think that Dana would be the best judge of what was right for her. I think it’s often the case with people who are spiraling out of control with depression and/or drugs that they vehemently oppose what’s actually the best course of action to help them get better.
That’s not to say that I necessarily think Sarah made the best choice. I’m not sure. We don’t know anything about Dana’s dad. We’ll have to wait and see if Willis gives us a window into her life right now.
And I don’t think the “deprived of a college education” is anyone’s fault but Dana’s own. She’s not entitled to her dad’s money to pay for her college, he doesn’t owe it to her, so he fully has the right to not pay for her college if he chooses. Which sucks in a lot of cases because some parents are just judgmental, prejudiced jerks (ex. cases of religious differences or homophobia), but even when I disagree with the parents’ views, they still have the right to decide what to do with their own money.
Sometimes that isn’t entirely true. Many families have a college education fund that gets contributions from grandparents, godparents, aunts, uncles, etc. Their share of that money can wind up being pried away from the parents, sometimes by pressure from the relatives, sometimes through legal action. I know at least two people who went through that, once when the parents tried to cut off their daughter after she abandoned their religion, and once when one set of grandparents took mortal offense at the parents’ actions and pulled their contributions out to spite them.
Rich, you have a valid point. I wasn’t considering cases where money has been put into some sort of trust that is legally the child’s (I think 529 plans are an example of that, but I’m not sure.) I must admit, I was making assumptions that since the dad is a lawyer and Dana was friends with other kids who are kids of lawyers that they were well-off and he was paying for things without outside financial contributions.
It will be really interesting to see if Willis gives us any info directly into Dana’s world at some point, or if she’ll always be absent from the comic.
I’m sure there’s counseling available, but it requires the person who needs it to want to go. I mean, maybe if Sarah had tried to get Dana to counseling Dana would have agreed, but the whole “putting up a perfect front to the outside world” thing argues against it. And Sarah couldn’t enlist Dana’s other friends to convince her, because they didn’t believe it was that bad. And in the meantime, Sarah was getting no sleep and her grades were plummeting.
Maybe there are other things Sarah could have done; we only got a brief overview of the situation from her POV. But it’s not as easy as “well, why didn’t Sarah just get her counseling?”
I still don’t think Sarah did anything wrong. Dana was in a terrible place herself, but Sarah didn’t immediately phone in Dana’s dad. She’s tried to talk to Raidah and the others, who ignored her instead of taking her seriously. She’s tried to help Dana get better while still at school, but it was not working, and it was beginning to drag her down, too. At that point, Sarah’s only other option was to protect herself, which she has the right to because when your actions are starting to hurt other people, other people have the right to react accordingly.
The part where she commented, “Ohh this is Dana’s room” is just feels like… /now/ that Dana’s gone, you’re all about her well-being and being defensive for her. Where were you when she was still around when you could have also taken Sarah’s comments into consideration and actually tried to work something out with Sarah so that Dana didn’t have to be pulled out of school?
I just hope Raidah can finally understand where Sarah’s coming from instead of clinging to her own idea of what “friends” is. So far, what I’ve seen with Raidah was just her doing the fun stuff when it comes to friends. It’s not a bad thing, but it would be if that is all that mattered to her.
I’m on Sarah’s side too with this. I fully agree with your first paragraph, Hikaru. For the second and third, I’m on the fence as to whether Raidah was just a fun-stuff friend. She may have honestly thought everything was okay and been open to helping if Dana had opened up to her. She did make a comment before that shows she’s still in touch with Dana, so she didn’t just drop her when she was no longer a convenient friend to party with. Or maybe not, I don’t feel we know enough about her character yet to know definitively. I feel it could go either way.
I’ve had friends before that I would have very willingly helped if I had known anything was wrong, but around the group, they always put on a happy face and if you asked how they were doing, they were masters at making you think everything was ok. Sometimes the only people that know anything is wrong are the people who are around them so much that they *can’t* hide from them (like a roommate in a dorm).
Yeah, true, there is that, Jen. If Raidah’s last contact with Dana is current, I think she’s trying to make an effort.
Still, if someone says that “Hey, I think there’s something wrong, we need to do something.” That to me is a red flag that maybe something is going on, even if the person involve says that everything’s okay because… the response of “Everything’s okay” is pretty generic and a pretty easy way to dodge serious issues. It gets to a point where we shouldn’t force our way into someone’s life and make them tell us what’s going on, but at the very least, I’d make an effort to let them know that, “Hey, come talk to me if you need to.” It’s a huge assumption, but there’s a chance that Dana would open up to Raidah moreso than she would to Sarah.
If not, then… I think that might confirm my opinion of Dana, which is that despite her huge network of friends that she made at school, she didn’t have anyone that she can really trust and confide to, which is actually really really unfortunate, but there are many people who are like that, too. They don’t have to tell anyone anything, and that’s fine… but when you’re under tremendous amount of stress, it really is important to have at least one person who you can have an active dialogue to talk about what’s wrong.
Going back through the Raidah strips and Sarah’s flashback, I’m not seeing evidence that Dana had a very large circle of friends, nor that they knew her all that well. We never see her with more than four others, one of whom is a boyfriend she broke up with during her death spiral. None of them were perceptive enough to see that she had a real problem. Unless they knew her from before college, they’d spent less than a year together. You can make some close friends in that time, but if Dana was hiding her drug and grief problems from all of them, how close were they, really? They didn’t even have a full freshman year together.
Also struck by the fact that Raidah (at least in Sarah’s memory) made by far the most effort to be friendly, which is kind of sad given the way things worked out. The others (Chanise and Charlotte) are almost cyphers outside of the mall shopping trip, where they were quite sufficiently awful to make me think they deserve to be dropped into a wood chipper – preferably while tied to Ryan and Blaine.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s not get too hasty here. I’m pretty sure they mostly follow Raidah’s lead, and Chan? seems to be more ignorant of PCness than anything else. Besides, do you know what would happen if you get caught? I’m pretty sure four counts of murder is the death penalty in some states, and you’d certainly get life imprisonment in the others. Not even Blaine and Ryan are worth that risk.
Pretty sure they’ll never convict me for murdering fictional characters. George RR Martin would be serving multiple life sentences already if than were the case.
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What tipped you off, Raidah, that year-old weed smell? or theAHH DINA WHY YOU SO ADORBS
It’s like one of Dina’s superpowers to do that.
Door teleportation is actually pretty powerful, arguably stronger than tree teleportation.
Maybe it’s both as doors are often made from wood.
Dina is Amazi-Girl. Officially confirmed!
If that’s the case, Dina sure knows how to change her appearance, not to mention chest size…
Dina is the next stage in human evolution, complete with laser eyes, teleportation, and shape changing abilities.
It’s ironic that Dina has more superpowers than her superhero roomie, isn’t it?
Also, am I legally required to squee for Claire gravatars over here, or does that only apply on the QC forums?
Legally required, sir.
Well, okay. Squee!
Wouldn’t that mean she’s banged Danny while suspended from a grappling hook?
I am willing to accept this, if only because it means Dina has begun her studies of intimacy.
I’m standing with Amber on this one. Much more comfortable not thinking of Dina as a sexual being.
Although I have to admit, a Slipshine with her playing dom to Joe’s sub would probably reduce the number of posts about how adorable she is to a more reasonable level.
…I’m not sure how you’d get THAT to happen.
Her studies of intimacy include reading Sunstone.
With that as a model, though, I’m not sure it would significantly reduce her adorability.
Nope, even more adorable
Let’s not kid ourselves, Dina could eat a live puppy on-panel and she’d still be adorable.
A true-to-character-personalities comic of Dina playing Dom to Joe’s Sub would be… incredibly improbable. But interesting.
Thanks for that visual…
ミ●﹏☉ミ
Open doors allow Dina to go anywhere – albeit by teleporting behind them rather than walking through them like boring people.
Dina must be related to Jeeves from the P.G. Woodhouse stories.
He did have a rather large family. Entirely possible.
Oh, and while it’s pronounced “Woodhouse” the actual spelling is Wodehouse. The Brits do love their shibboleths.
Shibboleths sound like the sort of horrors that Lovecraft would produce.
Quite a few of his critter names are shibboleths unto themselves. Nyarlathotep? Seriously, Howard?
Really have to get Reginald Pikedevant to do a Mythos version of his other shibboleth song someday.
Dina!! Fry & Laurie. Lovecraft. P G Wodehouse. Jeeves & Wooster. Sometimes almost half the reason I enjoy this webcomic is the comments section. (Not to fail to mention the Dina-as-dom comment elsewhere. ;-))
What about ciboulette ?
I’m English…neither in the UK, in Australia, or by people from same, have I heard it pronounced Woodhouse…from highschool to university level classes I’ve always heard it pronouced Wodehouse, as in whoa, woad, ode, load.
Only in the US, once jhave zi heard it pronounced Woodhouse…
Argh the typos!
Interesting. I had a very British English lit prof who introduced me to the author, and he certainly used the American pronunciation. I suppose he might have just been being polite to us poor colonials.
I’m also English, and have never heard any pronunciation except “Woodhouse”. You can hear how the man himself pronounced it here, at about 3:45.
Well, that settles that. He’s not going to mispronounce his own name, after all.
Would have felt real dumb if I’d been wrong about that all these years. Huge fan of Wodehouse’s work, but I’ve never heard him speak before.
Think about it. If Dina can appear behind any door, then her enemies could only thwart her by not having any doors in their lairs. They would have to go in and out via windows.
Dina’s perfect foe is…SAL!
One flaw in your argument- Dina has no enemies.
Anymore.
dina confirmed for chuck norris
Or alternatively, have only sliding doors (either spaceship-futuristic ones or old japanese ones)
One could call it a te-“la porte”.
…I think I may have reached too far for that one.
Nonsense we can handle that, you wood have to be much knottier before we became unhinged and tried to have you deported.
Adoorable
might have this pun thread under lock and key but I di-egress
Truly Dina is the Chiyo-chan of this comic!!!
I would have said Osaka myself.
I’m pretty sure Danny is the Osaka, which probably makes Billie the Tomo.
If Billie is the Tomo, is Ruth the Yomi?
Faz is Kimura, no question.
That wouldn’t work… her dad isn’t Norio Wakamoto.
Holy shit… because of Someone’s avatar right below, I just realized: Galasso is voiced by Norio Wakamoto.
It is perfect.
I am afraid.
Dammit, stop making me want a dumbing of age anime!
You know, DoA would probably make a decent visual novel. Better than Hatoful Boyfriend, anyway.
I got it, a dumbing of age dating sim.
The terms are kind of interchangeable – dating sims tend to have a bit more in the way of gameplay mechanics, visual novels are usually more choose-your-path text stuff. Either way, maybe not as silly an idea as it seems at first. There’s quite a bit of money in that part of the PC game industry, with relatively low production and development costs.
Won’t be laughing when Willis makes his first million in licensing off the idea…
What, you’re saying her hat is detachable? Nonsense!
Dina ate devil fruit and has the door-door powers.
That’s why she had the flotation device with her when she went to the lake
Dina make’s any awkward situation better. Even more if you picture her with Niki Yang (BMO)’s voice like I do.
Do you realize the comment chain from your comment takes up ~1/4 of the page? Good work.
Refresh! Refresh! Refresh!
*chirp chirp*
…Well, SHIT.
Dina makes everything better.
Unless accompanied by Soggies..
Even then, it’d be worse if there were Soggies and no Dina.
Dinas may win…
izzat korra
Yup but she isn’t exactly wearing her standard avatar uniform…
nice
I you want a better view…
You cheeky bastard,
maid rp is more of a fire nation thing
Is this a play on that “handmaidens and feudal lords” joke
Please tell me there’s an accompanying Feudal Lord Asami illustration
The orignal artist is KYHU and although she did several variants and sketches around that (like this one) she got her accounts hacked and deleted in 2014. She later respawned as IAHFY but it seems that she didn’t returned over that topic.
Not quite what I was hoping for (flowing regalia and shiny headdresses and stuff), but I will accept this.
It’s not a uniform, she just likes dressing like that.
A daily dose of Dina delights.
I just finished IW!, and in my opinion, Dina here is way better than Dina from IW!. It’s weird, because she’s an exception – most of IW! characters changed for a bit worse in DoA…
(OK, Mike didn’t change at all. He’s Mike, and he’s eternal.)
Because she did.
Newman
Jerry
Shrek
Norm!
KHAAAAN!
DINKLEBERG!
LIEEEEEEEEEEFEEEEEEEEEELD
Alright kids, today’s game is to pinpoint the moment where Jacob realizes he’s somehow made a colossal mistake!
Aaaaand… go!
Panel two.
panel 3
Third panel.
Panel one, right when he saw Sarah’s angry-eyes.
Panel 4 is when he was thinking ‘how fast can i pick up this girl and run? Or do i leave her behind to be ripped apart by the zombi-i mean sarah’
What he really needs is a distraction. Does the demonic duck from EGS make crossover appearances?
You could cut the awkward with a Popsicle stick.
So awkwardness has the density of chocolate mousse?
Or a Dina
Wait wait wait…she claimed to care so much about Dana but didn’t remember where she freaking dormed? Despite hanging out with her so many times? Yeah okay, really feeling Raidah’s sincerity here. /sarcasm
They may not have hung out in the dorms. Sarah likes to study and they were sorta her friends so I can see them avoiding the room to let her have her study time, much like Joyce and Becky do now.
She hasn’t been there in a year, I think she can be forgiven for not having all the dorms rooms completely memorized.
Especially since the door wasn’t covered in pink handcrafted frippery and artwork last year.
But… the door specifically said ‘Joyce and Sarah!’! I mean, it was open when they walked in… but still!
By the time they were inside to read the names, it was already too late.
That bothered me too. Though considering that she and the rest of Dana’s friends didn’t realize how bad she was getting, they might not have spent much time in her room.
My interpretation is that, probably every time she visited Dana there, she was either stoned or got stoned shortly thereafter and didn’t remember the experience very well. Which is not to say that Raidah is a major stoner, just that, for all her protestations of friendship, Dana was mostly that one person to get high with. (I’ve always interpreted Raidah & Co.’s hatred of Sarah as misplaced guilt over using Dana for getting high and not noticing how bad things were getting.)
Well, that confirms Raidah not knowing whose room she was going to.
Dina’s here now the party’s got started. Also duh it’s Dana’s room. Wake up Raidah.
Walking with Jacob narrowed her field of vision. Kept her eyes on his body and didn’t pay much attention to anything else.
I’m sure Jacob would be quite… distracting… to stand near…
I think I’ve finally figured out Dinas method of transportation. She enters one door and from there is able to exit out of any door in the world. She is teleporting using doors as portals.
Close, but you have to remember to factor in that whenever a large group of her peers gather Dina will manifest within them unnoticed.
It’s actually quite inconvenient. Once she was teleported out of a midterm one day when Joyce had an unusually large entourage.
Their bodies form an opening that could be called a door
Actually scratch that, if Dina is swept into a crowed she can absorb her essence into the people. A short time later she separates wherever the majority is.
Ever been told that “you make a better door than a window”?
hey maybe they will finally clear the air and make up… oh wait… I forgot to factor in the fact that that would actually reduce the awkward drama… but yeah today is not Sarah’s day…
why did that apear here T_T that was supposed to be its own comment… okay everybody pretend my last comment had something to do with the discussion… haha totally…
Um, well, Dr. Smart, eyes are the doors into the soul and Sarah and Raidah staring at each other is like facing two portals into each other and since this stare is one that causes an immense amount of awkward drama for everyone around them, and so even though it’s not a traditional door, Dina can manifest due to the heightened awkwardness factor.
(Ha! See! You were totally part of the discussion!
)
Aaaawwwkkkwwwaaaarrrrddd….
OMG DINA!!!
…never stop being adorable.
i like to believe that dina has a network of secret tunnels throughout the university that allow her to appear from behind any door she chooses, which is clearly the work of a clever girl
Need it be said that I thoroughly enjoy Dina?
It couldn’t hurt.
*serendipitous tumbleweed*
*weird cricket chripping in the background*
http://grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1011
Found that for you
Dina should organize a party game: teach everyone to impersonate dinasoars!!
Sarah gets to be the asteroid, ruining everyone else’s fun.
Appropriate gravatar is appropriate!
Well, they’ve already opened the door, so that’s step 1 of 3 complete.
Well, the door is open, and Dina pops up behind Jacob’s right shoulder…. just where she would be expected to appear if she had been behind the door all along.
So apparently Sarah is rooming in the same room she had last year. I’m sort of curious why— I feel like it would be a constant reminder of Danagate.
Getting a room reassignment must be tricky at that school. There are a lot of problems that vanish instantly if you just move to a different dorm, and it just doesn’t happen.
I have a feeling the Room Assignments are based on grade unless you specify a different room when you apply for renewal, or whatever (which is how it works where I am). Sarah, not wanting to chance getting stuck with Raidah and co., just filled in her old room number, made something up as to why she wanted to be stuck with freshmen (I’m pretty sure she “knew” the college wouldn’t care about the real reason), and got her wish. It would also explain why Carla is the only other sophomore on this floor; being trans, she had a legitimate reason for not moving, as well as for getting the other single.
To me, it’s more likely that if you plan to be using on-campus housing for consecutive years, they just don’t bother to change your room assignment unless you request it. Incoming students are placed in vacant spots as they open each semester. If Raidah has always been on a different floor/wing/whatever, that would contribute to why she didn’t recognize the room until she was already inside.
That’s how it worked at most of the schools I attended. You could camp in the same dorm room until graduation if you wanted, although some dorms were explicitly for junior/senior undergrads and most people fled to one of those or off campus eventually. But you could also request room and even dorm switches pretty easily, especially if you had someone that was willing to literally swap rooms with you.
I’m p sure that’s how it works at most schools, but where I went there wasn’t enough space (bad building planning) so every year there was a friggen’ room raffle to decide who was afforded space on campus. Anyone who didn’t get in was outta luck and would either end up homeless or pay to live off campus. PA state schoolssss yeaaAHHH.
No kidding? Which school? One of mine was the State College campus of Penn State and they didn’t have space problems. Of course, that was 1984 – no idea what they’re like now.
Pitt? Because yes that’s what it’s like at University of Pittsburgh
Aww you sweet thing.
No, Raidah, you are not going to pull your hateful crap in this room. This is Sarah’s and Joyce’s home, you weren’t even invited, you have no right to turn it into a hostile space!
Though I wonder if this will build until Joyce finally snaps and yells about how Sarah saved her from being raped. It’d be the first time she brings it up herself, the first time she says the words and it’d be a very good way to mend things with Sarah after what Joyce said earlier.
Yeah! Joyce already did all that of that first thing today!
WELP.
You know it!
Wait, so the viewpoint pans to the left from panel 3 to panel 4, which can be seen by both the letters on the door being closer to the left edge of the screen, and more of Sarah’s badanna being shown. But Raidah’s full profile is still on the edge of the panel.
Did she subconsciously take a step backwards?
Er, forwards.
Look at the background. Jacob and Raidah have shifted a little to the right. Or, the ‘camera’ angle changed.
Of course, we could also be reading too much into this.
it does kind of look like the camera shifted a little. maybe to allow space for dina in the latter panel
Doesn’t look like the camera angle changed, and the only person who’s moved is Jacob – he shifted over to make room for Dina to poke her head in. Everyone else is static.
The background’s definitely shifted – Raidah’s head is further away from the edge of the door, and the knob of the drawer above Sarah’s head is more visible.
I don’t know, the shadows on Billie, Becky, and Raidah’s faces make it look like the camera shifted a bit to the left.
The background’s shifted in on both sides, but the characters at the focal point haven’t changed… which makes it a dolly zoom to crush the space.
Yeah, that’s right, Willis is pulling Hitchcockian camera moves in this thing.
I think the fourth panel is also a bit wider than the third. I haven’t measured it, though, so it might just be an optical illusion.
It is, which is why I don’t think there’s been a lateral camera move.
Not quite. The background has expanded slightly, as evidenced by seeing more of the knob on the cupboard door above Sarah’s head on the left of the panel, and more of the decoration on the door on the right side. Sarah herself has not moved relative to the door frame, but if you look at the other four characters (Billie, Jacob, Raidah, and Becky) they all have moved slightly — Billie a little to the left; the other three to the right. That makes this a very slight zoom out as well as a POV shift to the left with Sarah on the left edge of the panel being the focal point, which gives the illusion that while Sarah remained in place the others have all changed position relative to her.
Well drawn, Willis.
Y’know, I tend to feel like DUMBING OF AGE is an exercise in understanding other people, and we readers shouldn’t hate on characters who aren’t out-and-out villains like Mary or Ryan. Raidah doesn’t fall into that easy, morally unambiguous category. I can’t even deny there’s a grain of truth to her claim that “other people are just inconveniences” to Sarah. And yet something about her just drives me NUTS.
In broad terms, I think it’s the self-righteousness. I mean, of all the things she could’ve said today–
“Whoops, wrong party.”
“Sarah. I… didn’t realize you’d be at this.”
“Oh, my God, I should’ve remembered the room number.”
“Hey, bongo, planning on getting anyone else kicked out of your room?”
–she went with the option that makes it sound like Sarah isn’t even THERE. This isn’t just Dana’s FORMER room, it’s Sarah’s CURRENT room and has been for as long as Raidah’s known her, but clearly Dana in the past is soooo much more important than anything Sarah could do or be in the present. Because Raidah, unlike SOME people, STANDS BY HER FRIENDS!!! And that sounds nice and all, but it’s a simple, blinkered way of looking at the world. It sure doesn’t account for the fact that her current friends appear to be assholes, whom her leadership barely keeps in line: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/05-saturdays-all-right-for-slighting/challenged/
I reserve the right to change my mind if Raidah changes and/or reveals more dimensions, but right now, I think I honestly prefer Mary, if only because her brand of hypocrisy is easier for a bystander to spot.
Man, you just cut+pasted this from the Patreon comments! It’s like you’re not even trying; plagiarizing yourself! ;p
Thank you for succinctly summarizing my thoughts on this matter far more effectively than I ever could have.
Nuts. She’s in shock. Seeing Sarah made the connection on where she really is and she blurted it out without thinking. You’re reading deliberate insult into a startled response. Sarah has punched her in the face in the recent past, Raidah just inadvertently broke their shaky truce by invading her space, and she has no friends in that room other than her date – and if she overheard any of the exchange between Roz and Sarah a moment ago, she’s got to be wondering about Jacob as well.
I led by admitting that I’m not quite meeting my own standards of fairness where Raidah’s concerned. But I do think the things we blurt out without thinking can be revealing– Freudian slips, we sometimes call them. “This was Dana’s room,” not “This is your room,” says something to me about how she thinks of the situation.
If we’re playing the game of mental associations, I think it makes perfect sense that Raidah would think of the room more in connection to Dana, who was her friend, than Sarah, who isn’t. It doesn’t nessesarily mean that she thinks Sarah doesn’t have dominion over the room – just that Dana is forefront in her mind. When I visit my old schools/places of residence etc. I say things like “this is my old room” or “this is my friend’s room” not because I’m denying other people have the right to it now, but just because that’s how I view the room in relationship to myself.
But I don’t think you have to hold yourself to standards of fairness where these characters are concerned (the rl people you interact with are another story). And, so long as Sarah is relaying the story reliably, it’s hard for me to not see Raidah as horribly self-righteous and spiteful, while being too naive to address Dana’s situation seriously.
It’s easier for *a man or woman of above-average strength of character* to see from the outside. The sad thing is…I grew up around mild versions of Raidah’s kind, so her behavior is a bit familiar. I also agree that Mary is the lesser of the two evils solely because she can be seen through before it’s too late. Hate of a Surely Loner is a four-letter word many already wisely try to avoid. Self-Pity of Someone who can Kite back to the Safety of the Crowd is an odorless, silent killer many never see coming or even figure out that’s what got’em.
I of have to disagree with you on Mary, at least in the Dumbiverse. All of her appearances to date culminate in her actively wishing ill will on those that don’t share her beliefs. If that is not at its heart an evil way of thinking, I don’t know what is.
Mary is obviously a worse person than Raidah.
That’s kind of the point though: the obviousness makes her less dangerous, and easier to dismiss. Better to deal with the devil you know than the devil you don’t, I suppose.
Wasn’t it just said that the silver lining to Mary’s brand of malice was how easy it was to spot and recognize for the threat it is?
I also don’t think either Sarah’s or Raidah’s retelling of what happened is reliable. Not because anyone’s lying or anything like that. More so because it’s about Sarah validating her morbid martyrdom and Raidah validating her need for everything in her social world to be solely hers to define, rather than what happened to Dana…
Please cut her some slack? She’s going to a party on short notice with her date, when quite immediately and suddenly a person (who has attacked her in the past!) gets angry and glares at her.
Many of the sentences you listed imply that she’d think she was in the wrong but, she’s not really in the wrong here? Its just an accident that she’s there at all. And, the prior history between those two, neither feels like they’re in the wrong there either.
So, something pops out of her mouth because she’s suddenly in a hostile situation and didn’t expect to be. I’m super impressed that what pops out isn’t an aggressive attack on Sarah or an intentional escalation. Its just surprise and shock and disoriented.
Gonna have to second Fish’s valid point here. Although it’s entirely implied this far in, everything appears to signal that Raidah had nothing to do with Jacob bringing her to this party. Wondering if Jacob’s going to back to ref what comes next.
Oh… Dina… sweetie…
This party is now a rumble.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOy6hqzfsAs
Nah, this is a rumble.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucTg6rZJCu4
Let’s get ready to rummmmblllleeeeeeeee
I was going to say you could cut the tension in there with a knife, but I suppose raptor claws work too.
Its moments pike these that really make ypu appreciate Dina’s special brand of adorable awkwardness.
…. *like
Danny has got to be feeling great right now. He’s at worst the third most awkward person in the room right now. Must feel very liberating.
Sometimes, it pays to be third best at something.
For as long as he says nothing ….
Danny Dans it up in 3…2…1…
He must reclaim his crown!
What will it take? Accidentally mentioning that he finds Ethan to be hot? Spotting Amazi-Girl in the window, and calling her ‘Amber’? Or will he notice the bloody sweater, and feel the overwhelming urge to ask about it?
Seriously, why has she not burned it by now?
hey guys whats up-ooooooh shit….well Dina glad to see your having fun, not even a phew minutes and this entire party turns into a disaster.
Bless you, Dina.
Dumb…Da…Dumb…Dumb…..Da…Da…Dumb…Dumb…Daaa……
Squee! Dina makes it all better.
There is no Dana there is only Zuul!
Oi! I made that joke the last time Dana was mentioned. That was my joke! MINE! MINE! ALL MIIIIIIINE!
Jerk.
The drama tag wasn’t just pulled.
It was hooked onto a chain and dragged through the streets via a motorcycle.
To be fair, DoA started out with the drama tag pulled out…
Dang, there’s already at least a dozen people in that tiny dorm room. They must be sitting on top of each other at this point.
Joyce, Sarah, Becky, Dorothy, Walky, Ethan, Danny, Roz, Jacob, Raidah, and Dina. That’s 11 by my count.
Some of them will be leaving shortly, I suspect.
Billie makes it 12.
Tsk, how could I forget Billie?
Oh right, I was counting people with pants.
Wait, you call what Becky wears pants? Thats more like … underwear. Okay, Hot pants has the word pants in it … but they aren’t.
I don’t know about that. Underwear isn’t on full public display normally, whereas with hot pants the display is kind of the point. Trying to define them as non-pants is like trying to call a miniskirt not a skirt.
Dina is my hero.
Dina is everyone’s hero!
Never change Dina… never change
Sarah’s not having a good day.
Sarah hasn’t had a good day in a while.
Ah, but of the not-good days Sarah has had, this is easily third worst, and climbing. (In case you were wondering, the other two were the day she decided to call Dana in and the day Raidah made it clear they weren’t friends any more)
Dina is the best
I feel like these reactions are a bit extreme. Last time these two met (as far as I can tell) was when Sarah apologized in the cafeteria for hitting Raidah at Target a couple weeks ago. Back then their dynamic was a deep but not intense dislike of eachother. Now their faces say “severe anger” and “shock/heartbreak” respectively, despite the fact that Sarah really does not have a good reason for hating Raidah, and Raidah should not be so torn up over finding herself in Dana’s room, who she is still in contact with and is completely fine (unless something tragic happened outside the panels of the main comic?).
Sarah just had the Dana Debacle hit over her head like a flail by the person she least suspected. Raidah was unsuspectingly brought back to a place with painful memories. I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch.
Being in Dana’s old room is a painful reminder to Raidah that Dana is no longer in college.
Is Raidah in contact with Dana? I don’t recall the strip where that was established. She was in bad shape when her father pulled her out of school. He might very well be keeping her well clear of the college friends that were partially enabling her drug problem, at least during her recovery.
I believes she mentioned in another strip that Dana was “not in a better place” in a way that implied they’d recently spoken or communicated.
Ah, found the strip. Raidah responded to Sarah saying Dana was in a better place by saying “Not according to Dana, last I checked.” Raises the question of when that was – as I said, they may have been cut off for a while now. If they last communicated at the start of her therapy, I’m sure Dana didn’t feel like this was a turn for the better.
Regardless, that just disproves the original contention that Raidah knows Dana is completely fine. Quite the opposite, in fact.
> despite the fact that Sarah really does not have a good reason for hating Raidah
Well, lets see…
– When Sarah brought up Dana’s problems, Raidah was a member of the group that kept insisting there was nothing wrong. If I were Sarah, I’d be at least a little miffed that I was telling someone something that they didn’t believe
– When Sarah mentioned that her own grades were slipping because of Dana, she got no sympathy from the same group
– in earlier strips, she was confronted by Raidah (who initiated things) making comments like “I hope you choke” and “bongo”
And that’s just the events that have been shown on strip.
Someone treats me like that, I’m certainly going to be hostile to them.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/fifteen/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/02-uphill-from-here/taken/
Brrrr, did it just get cold in here?
Interesting. The site keeps insisting I give it permission to lock onto my location. I won’t allow it.
When I attempt to post a comment, the column rolls so that posting is not possible, as soon as the first few words are typed.
This has happened 3 nights in a row.
So, I will just read.
(Too much trouble to go thru to post a comment here every night, under these circumstances)
I’ve only experienced the column rolling problem (if I understand you correctly), and usually when on a phone or tablet. Hitting ‘Enter’ at the end of your comment should force the dumb thing to scroll back so you can post. Annoying, but you can work around it.
I’ve had that problem on my desktop. My solution is to type out what I want and, to make sure there aren’t any typos, press the left key until the whole text box is visible. Once that’s done, the “Post Comment” button is in the open.
However, this practice also causes the entire comment thread to “roll”, and if I decide to not post, I delete everything, hit “Cancel reply”, then find another comment and hit “Reply” there. It usually rolls back on its own, and if it doesn’t, I rinse and repeat.
It begins . . .
*munches on popcorn*
I have to break my word here, and post again.
Dina is just too freakin’ adorable not to say it. And probably the only person on campus who may abort what’s about to happen.
Becky, the back of yo head is RIDICULOUS
Having someone who hurt you as much as Raidah hurt Sarah show up uninvited to a party in your room with the guy you would have liked to date but didn’t manage to … easily explains Sarah’s reaction. It might not be rational, but then Sarah already had a really really bad day.
I might borrow Dina’s words once in a while…
Carla is trans? I missed that one. Does anyone have a link to the relevant comic?
College rooms expand into a subdimension for parties, so there is no problem with fitting more people in.
That’s the thing. There hasn’t yet to be a comic that directly states Carla is trans. Willis states that she is on the tumblr, but there have <a href="http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/purpleandskates/" indirect references to this.
Not sure why you’re bringing up Carla, but yeah, she’s trans. Not stated directly in DoA, but it’s implied in some instances, sort of carries over from the Walkyverse, and I think it’s also been confirmed by Word of Willis.
I think it’s because I brought it up in Catullus’s thread.
There was the whole drawing a dong on her whiteboard is a hatecrime until she realised it happened to everyone.
I wish that you put your name and the date in the bottom right corner like a lot of other comics do… because then when I cut just that frame out to use in internet conversations as a joke it would credit you automatically.
At first I thought “What is Archie Andrews doing here?”, but then I realized it was Becky
Danny has always reminded me of Archie.
If ANYONE in the room might be interested in dating two girls at once…
…it’s probably Becky. Danny won’t even date multiple personalities at the same time.
EPIC RAP BATTLE OF WEBCOMIIIIIIIC!!!! Sara vs… Raidaaaaaah! BEGIN!
You could say that Joyce really invited the proverbial Trojan horse in.
And the lesson here is: In college, you can’t create a party that is safe from drama. The drama will find you. It’s college, after all.
DINA! I am now happy for the rest of the day.
Tomorrow, Super Dorm Fighter 2: Sarah vs. Raidah. FIGHT!
Ha! Until I read the hovertext, it didn’t occur to me that she might NOT have shown up from behind the door. I just assumed she was behind the door and we didn’t realize.
Can’t wait to see what happens next! Damn you in the best way, Willis!
Dina. It would be great to see her hook up with sexually confused Danny because she is close to being an androgen and makes Danny not look gay. THAT AND SHE IS SO AWESOME!!! Could you imagine the first kiss… followed by facts about saliva, and comparisons of human to dinosaur reproduction?
Problem: Danny is already in a relationship with a girl. An emotionally unstable girl, but a girl nonetheless.
Funny, Dina doesn’t bear any resemblance to an androgen. In my experience, it’s pretty hard to confuse a human being for a steroid hormone.
Joyce brought up Dana and Sarah swallowed her anger in silence. Now that anger will come out. Raidah really hasn’t done anything to deserve what is about to happen, nothing with a bad intent. She will pay for Joyce’s accusation.
Raidah being upset about Dana leaving and misdirecting her anger at Sarah (since she didn’t know how badly Dana was taking things in private) is enough of a complete story to make sense by itself, but I can’t help but wonder if we’re being set up for a twist.
Like if Raidah knows something about the Dana situation that Sarah doesn’t. Maybe Dana has a troubled relationship with her father, so being at school is preferable to returning home even if she was suffering an emotional breakdown.
Or maybe it’s exactly what it looks like. After Willis pulled that untwist with Becky’s orientation, I’ll admit I’m not the best at predictions.
Dina was worried that she’d be awkward and uncomfortable at a party. Don’t worry, Dina. These are your people.
wow, lookit all those people acting completely reasonable given their situations. (no sarcasm. Its quite an art to make drama where everyone is acting completely reasonable).
It is super reasonable that Becky didn’t tell everyone that its an invite-only party. Conversations where happening, and it slipped her mind.
Its super reasonable that Jacob would bring a date to a party where he strongly suspects multiple girls with crushes on him that he does not want to date will be there. This is a nice sublte way of making sure that unwanted attention stops. Heck, he doesn’t even plan to be there very long; limited space is probably not an issue if he’s only there 10 minutes with his date. He doesn’t know the giant drama bomb.
It is super reasonable that Sarah would glare at Raidah. They have bad blood. It would probably be better if Sarah didn’t glare, but, she’s stressed and has had a bad day and was already trying to leave and now this person is in her escape path.
It is super reasonable that Raidah would respond with a glare when suddenly in a hostile environment.
Nobody is being bad here.
Yet. We’ll see where it goes next strip. Certainly potential for disaster here.
I’m still not on Sarah’s side with regards to this whole Dana situation. At least not until we hear from Dana that Sarah made the right choice. Which I think means this arc has been handled well so far. I can totally understand why someone would hate the person who sent their friend away, maybe even deprived them of a college education. But I can also see that Sarah handled it as best she knew how (albeit probably not the best way possible.)
Is there really not a support group or counseling thing that Sarah might have reached out to instead, if that’s what she was worried about? Like, the People Are Inconveniences line still reads true, even if it’s unnecessarily mean.
I see your point, but I don’t necessarily think that Dana would be the best judge of what was right for her. I think it’s often the case with people who are spiraling out of control with depression and/or drugs that they vehemently oppose what’s actually the best course of action to help them get better.
That’s not to say that I necessarily think Sarah made the best choice. I’m not sure. We don’t know anything about Dana’s dad. We’ll have to wait and see if Willis gives us a window into her life right now.
And I don’t think the “deprived of a college education” is anyone’s fault but Dana’s own. She’s not entitled to her dad’s money to pay for her college, he doesn’t owe it to her, so he fully has the right to not pay for her college if he chooses. Which sucks in a lot of cases because some parents are just judgmental, prejudiced jerks (ex. cases of religious differences or homophobia), but even when I disagree with the parents’ views, they still have the right to decide what to do with their own money.
Sometimes that isn’t entirely true. Many families have a college education fund that gets contributions from grandparents, godparents, aunts, uncles, etc. Their share of that money can wind up being pried away from the parents, sometimes by pressure from the relatives, sometimes through legal action. I know at least two people who went through that, once when the parents tried to cut off their daughter after she abandoned their religion, and once when one set of grandparents took mortal offense at the parents’ actions and pulled their contributions out to spite them.
Rich, you have a valid point. I wasn’t considering cases where money has been put into some sort of trust that is legally the child’s (I think 529 plans are an example of that, but I’m not sure.) I must admit, I was making assumptions that since the dad is a lawyer and Dana was friends with other kids who are kids of lawyers that they were well-off and he was paying for things without outside financial contributions.
It will be really interesting to see if Willis gives us any info directly into Dana’s world at some point, or if she’ll always be absent from the comic.
I’m sure there’s counseling available, but it requires the person who needs it to want to go. I mean, maybe if Sarah had tried to get Dana to counseling Dana would have agreed, but the whole “putting up a perfect front to the outside world” thing argues against it. And Sarah couldn’t enlist Dana’s other friends to convince her, because they didn’t believe it was that bad. And in the meantime, Sarah was getting no sleep and her grades were plummeting.
Maybe there are other things Sarah could have done; we only got a brief overview of the situation from her POV. But it’s not as easy as “well, why didn’t Sarah just get her counseling?”
Leave it to little Dina to make everything better.
I still don’t think Sarah did anything wrong. Dana was in a terrible place herself, but Sarah didn’t immediately phone in Dana’s dad. She’s tried to talk to Raidah and the others, who ignored her instead of taking her seriously. She’s tried to help Dana get better while still at school, but it was not working, and it was beginning to drag her down, too. At that point, Sarah’s only other option was to protect herself, which she has the right to because when your actions are starting to hurt other people, other people have the right to react accordingly.
The part where she commented, “Ohh this is Dana’s room” is just feels like… /now/ that Dana’s gone, you’re all about her well-being and being defensive for her. Where were you when she was still around when you could have also taken Sarah’s comments into consideration and actually tried to work something out with Sarah so that Dana didn’t have to be pulled out of school?
I just hope Raidah can finally understand where Sarah’s coming from instead of clinging to her own idea of what “friends” is. So far, what I’ve seen with Raidah was just her doing the fun stuff when it comes to friends. It’s not a bad thing, but it would be if that is all that mattered to her.
Wow, my thoughts exactly. Good show Hiraku. Now then, just need my popcorn for tomorrow’s strip.
I’m on Sarah’s side too with this. I fully agree with your first paragraph, Hikaru. For the second and third, I’m on the fence as to whether Raidah was just a fun-stuff friend. She may have honestly thought everything was okay and been open to helping if Dana had opened up to her. She did make a comment before that shows she’s still in touch with Dana, so she didn’t just drop her when she was no longer a convenient friend to party with. Or maybe not, I don’t feel we know enough about her character yet to know definitively. I feel it could go either way.
I’ve had friends before that I would have very willingly helped if I had known anything was wrong, but around the group, they always put on a happy face and if you asked how they were doing, they were masters at making you think everything was ok. Sometimes the only people that know anything is wrong are the people who are around them so much that they *can’t* hide from them (like a roommate in a dorm).
Yeah, true, there is that, Jen. If Raidah’s last contact with Dana is current, I think she’s trying to make an effort.
Still, if someone says that “Hey, I think there’s something wrong, we need to do something.” That to me is a red flag that maybe something is going on, even if the person involve says that everything’s okay because… the response of “Everything’s okay” is pretty generic and a pretty easy way to dodge serious issues. It gets to a point where we shouldn’t force our way into someone’s life and make them tell us what’s going on, but at the very least, I’d make an effort to let them know that, “Hey, come talk to me if you need to.” It’s a huge assumption, but there’s a chance that Dana would open up to Raidah moreso than she would to Sarah.
If not, then… I think that might confirm my opinion of Dana, which is that despite her huge network of friends that she made at school, she didn’t have anyone that she can really trust and confide to, which is actually really really unfortunate, but there are many people who are like that, too. They don’t have to tell anyone anything, and that’s fine… but when you’re under tremendous amount of stress, it really is important to have at least one person who you can have an active dialogue to talk about what’s wrong.
Going back through the Raidah strips and Sarah’s flashback, I’m not seeing evidence that Dana had a very large circle of friends, nor that they knew her all that well. We never see her with more than four others, one of whom is a boyfriend she broke up with during her death spiral. None of them were perceptive enough to see that she had a real problem. Unless they knew her from before college, they’d spent less than a year together. You can make some close friends in that time, but if Dana was hiding her drug and grief problems from all of them, how close were they, really? They didn’t even have a full freshman year together.
Also struck by the fact that Raidah (at least in Sarah’s memory) made by far the most effort to be friendly, which is kind of sad given the way things worked out. The others (Chanise and Charlotte) are almost cyphers outside of the mall shopping trip, where they were quite sufficiently awful to make me think they deserve to be dropped into a wood chipper – preferably while tied to Ryan and Blaine.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s not get too hasty here. I’m pretty sure they mostly follow Raidah’s lead, and Chan? seems to be more ignorant of PCness than anything else. Besides, do you know what would happen if you get caught? I’m pretty sure four counts of murder is the death penalty in some states, and you’d certainly get life imprisonment in the others. Not even Blaine and Ryan are worth that risk.
Pretty sure they’ll never convict me for murdering fictional characters. George RR Martin would be serving multiple life sentences already if than were the case.
Oh, that poor Joyce face. She tries to do something nice and it blows up in her face.
….FAAAAACE
OH NO NOT THE FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!!!!!
FAAAAAAAAAAACE.
I… I didn’t mean to do that.
With my penis. D’OH!
Stop Danning it up! Dammit!
Man, I really identify with Dina a lot.
Oh, Jacob. What did you doooo?
I kinda imagine Dinas voice as Candy Chiu from Gravity falls.