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Discussion (173) ¬
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adorablest kidnapping
sorta
The people outside the van tried to stop her from going in. They met the Velociraptor and the day is now saved.
Yay!
Tell me more about this van.
Dina’s looking out of frame in “gone too”, after the hall evacuated. Maybe she’s the only one who saw everyone else get nabbed, and just followed them there?
Yeah. They were transported to the secondary location in a minivan, but Dina was able to keep up.
She hitched a ride in the van, but nobody noticed.
Since she did not enter with a ‘whump!’.
DINA
My favorite dinosaur!
Joyce’s eyebrows in panel 4 and Sarah’s in panel 5 really make this for me.
Dorothy’s slight bemusement in panel 5 is what made it for me.
So noted, and added to the list.
Well shit, they have a rogue all of a sudden. But Ross knows her… we shall see.
So did Blaine try to recruit Beef into his evil squad?
Not successfully, it appears as of what we know now.
These two guys in the first panel are so anonymous they don’t even get shirts that say “Henchman #1” and “Henchman #2” like in the 60s Batman show.
They were anonymous when they helped Beef bully Danny, too: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/gay/
Ooh, maybe they’ll be like 21 and 24 in Venture Bros.
“They have that weird combination of disposable and unkillable!”
Let’s remember Beef was trying to bully Danny, and that Beef is a wildcard in Walkyverse.
Oh, certainly, he might show up later. Two disposable redshirt-level henches are not enough for this job.
Actually, as I recall. Danny was attempting to be bullied by Beef so that he would meet Amazigirl again and Beef was having none of it.
That was Tony.
They’re at Indiana University. EVERYONE there is a red-shirt!
(school colors, y’know)
I’m now 90% more confident that whole Mike assassination threat was just a bluff.
Mike who?
It never made the least bit of sense. Mike can identify Blaine. So if Mike survives, Blaine will go to prison for about two hundred years. So if Blaine could have killed Mike he would have, and if he can kill Mike he will.
Ross my be confident enough of God’s favour that he will do reckless things and trust in divine providence to end up as God wills. Blaine isn’t, and there’s no sign that the hires are either.
Amber can also identify Blaine, so he’s screwed even if he does off Mike.
It wasn’t his plan to let her go.
…did Blaine put out a craigslist asking for “Willing to hire to take down Amazi-Girl?” 😛
I mean, there were a lot of Ryan’s cronies now without a supervillain to latch onto, so.
+10 internet points @Regalli for calling Dina’s stealth involvment.
Mm, Internet points! Thank you!
Craiglist, where you can get evil clowns and meet the evil exes of your ex that just ditched you for being neglectful.
Pffft. That’s probably EXACTLY what he did!
The roll is still attatched, someone could pull on it to free her and then she can free everyone else, if they get a chance to do so without being caught
Oh Dina, you are adorable but your lack of awareness is a problem. But if she taped herself up maybe she can untape herself too? I know we are nowhere near the end of this storyline, but maybe Amazi-girl has an amazing plan? I’m being too optimistic aren’t I?
We still have exactly 11 weeks to go in this storyline, as of today.
Well she’s not 100% in accordance with the social setting, as her hands are taped in front and SHE STILL HAS THE ROLL OF DUCT-TAPE. While Amber is away distracting baddies with her release, the rest of them can now escape by Mac-A-Team-Gyver-ing an escape with the roll of duct tape. They’re in a basement, surely they have everything they need now.
Dina is exactly the person who would follow the kidnappers and then tape herself up in the basement once they leave. Oh, Dina.
i’d ask where did she come from but i already know the answer. it’s dina
From behind the door, duh
Dina is adorable and doesn’t deserve Toedad out for her blood.
To be fair Toedad is one of those people who him being out for your blood has little to do with deserving it.
Well we also already know how that turns out. Dina gets first blood and Toedad escapes. But… we still don’t know if he was intentionally quoting the film.
Dammit, Dina!
Also, are those Ryan’s bros from the DeSanto rally brawl in Panel 1?
Nope, they’re the first villians Amazi-Girl ever defeated, defending an heartbroken Danny.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/move/
And they didn’t get names or tags back then either.
Not the ones from the DeSanto brawl but they are Ryan’s buds iirc. They were the guys trying to break into victim’s houses.
Also, their buddy Beef was at the brawl at the de Santo rally.
Damnit Dina
“What are you boys doing” “We’re putting on the FOIL.”
We’re finally primed for world domination.
Phooey.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=urglg3WimHA
Oh, it is the thugs Amber and Sal beat up. I wanted Christian fanatics to be there. Thugs are boring and can die easily. Also, it would be funny if the day was saved by Dina or someone that isn’t Amber. Dina is a clever girl after all.
Also, is Julia Gray an expy of Empress Theresa?
It’s an expy of Joyce Brown.
I have heard enough of Empress Theresa to know I’d rather read about Julia Gray.
You don’t know they aren’t Christian.
I imagined Dina crying in an attempt to follow social cues and it made me sad.
Who the heck is that in this new Slipshine, I don’t recognize her at all
Also is she playing Animal Crossing while touching herself
Yet unnamed, but still very sexy. She’s probably playing Pokemon Swish
An entirely new character created just for that ad, so far.
Willis spitballed giving Billie a new hairstyle a few weeks ago; I think Slipshine Ad Lady’s would look good on her.
OMG Dina. Please get free and maul Becky’s father.
Last time she tried, it didn’t go so well. Unlike Jurassic Park velociraptors, she does not weigh very much – and unlike Amber, she does not have any self-defense training that we know of.
She does have a large claw now though
It didn’t go great, but Dina did mess Toedad up some and seemed to get away unscathed. So while it didn’t go /well/ I would still have liked to watch the action. And, unlike her prey, Dina demonstrates a strong capacity to learn.
5% of how much Joyce adores Dorothy is still a lot.
So is 3%.
I know Joyce is in a crisis, but she could have gotten them all killed
Joyce? How so?
She said she’d rather die than let Amber retrieve Becky, but she’s not the only one in danger so saying that is like sacrificing the lives of everyone else too cause Blaine would start killing or at least torturing hostages until they complied. Joyce wouldn’t even be first, since Blaine noted Ethan’s the key to breaking Amber.
Oh, of course, when they opened the door to let Amber out, Dina materialized behind it like those lazer things in Gantz
Holy spinosaurus!
Poor Ethan in the second panel..
I know, right?!! He looks utterly broken and traumatised, poor boy…
Yeah, we never see how Ethan ended up handling being taken hostage as a kid (unless I’m forgetting it) but I can imagine he didn’t think this would happen to him again. Though Ethan is probably more worried about Amber and Mike than himself.
Blaine stomped on his chest hard enough to frighten Amber.
Its weird that he’s gone from lying down from being thrown, to sitting up, to now lying down with his head apparently in Joyce’s lap. Now I know I wouldn’t move my head from Joyce’s lap, but his presence there is weirdly unexplained. Sure maybe emo trauma, but he seems to be pretty chill through this all.
Also, how did NONE of them break their arms (or anything else) falling like that?!
Somehow I knew Dina would just inexplicably show up at some point.
I love Dina so much.
I have to admit, it’s sometimes painful to see Asperger characters like Dina being just so confused by society like this, almost to the point of idiocy. This seems to me to go beyond not understanding society, but being so stupid as to not even recognize an obviously dangerous situation.
Sorry, I may be misunderstanding your tone — I am, after all, an autistic person, sometimes “to the point of idiocy” — but do you mean that Dina’s writing strikes you as unrealistic in your experience with autistic people/as one yourself, or that you simply don’t understand how anyone could struggle a great deal with what you take as “obvious”?
This is not sarcasm. This is a genuine question intended to steer my response to you away from any presumptions I might have about your comment. I hope that helps you better contextualize our interaction as a part of society!
I suppose I don’t understand how someone could seemingly be so oblivious as Dina is. I myself am autistic, and I have never had difficulties in society because I couldn’t understand people or social interactions.
People vary.
I once went nearly an entire semester without realizing that my classmates wanted me to explain what gender I am and were too uncomfortable (with the idea of being wrong, I think?) to ask. It just didn’t occur to me until they told me! Sometimes you open the Gundam blindbox of life but get three legs and a left arm.
Which is still far less than sneaking along with your kidnapped friends and tying yourself up to try and follow the social cues.
Yes, because I wouldn’t drop personal stories about my autism with any real severity in a light-hearted webcomic comment that immediately follows a description of myself as an idiot. (I was under the impression that it’d be extremely socially cruel to trigger strangers like that, so I won’t here, either.) That was not a post at all about this one scene alone — it was a response to Black, specifically, about autistic people struggling socially. Black said they as a person don’t struggle socially in major ways; I responded with a mild anecdote about how I do, to explicitly illustrate our differences as autistic people.
Nowhere in my post is an evaluation of either Willis as a writer or Dina as a character. I am also not casting judgement on you for however you feel about Willis and Dina yourself. Hope that clarifies the above for you.
What a lucky coincidence for you, honestly and without malice, but please don’t apply it to the rest of us, it’s a little gross.
While often exaggerated for humor I understand that much like Joyce’s religious weirdness a lot of Dina is based on the author himself.
I suspect it’s the “exaggerated for humor” part that can hurt. “Ha, ha. The autistic character is so clueless, she kidnapped herself because she thought it was just something her friends were doing.”
Your mileage may vary. I’m autistic and I found this strip to be hilarious.
Yeah, most of the time Dina still stays within the bounds of ‘yeah, I can see a person doing this’ and isn’t really the butt of the joke (or, like in the Walky-Dina password system strips, the joke is on more than one character so it evens out.) When it’s her superhuman stealth being the punchline, that also works because it’s, well, superhuman and half the joke is whoever’s there jumping three feet in shock. This one’s clearly sharp comic relief because we’re in a really ROUGH storyline without a B-plot, but since it’s all Dina, in a ‘Dina is socially awkward’ joke, it does feel a bit more like the ‘haha look at the autistic person who can’t social’ cliche than usual. (And even then, I can see it working – if it’s to establish Dina can also get out of the tape, for instance, then it’s adding a resource to our kids’ team – but in a world where The Big Bang Theory and its spinoff of ‘haha look at the funny autistic’ are so successful, it stings.)
Wait, DYW can appear from behind random doors?
Don’t turn around.
Huh. The “assistants” Blaine got were not Korean mob thugs or idiots from Ross’s church but toxic “bro’s” from the university. Ya got me Willis, I Did Not See That Coming.
This is totally in-character for Blaine, and I for one am relieved that he did not really went up any level in his competence for evil.
Oh i agree, it’s obvious in retrospect; just completely not what i was expecting therefore it was a nice surprise.
Re the police discussion from yesterday: About five years ago, a Black CEO (who I’d been friends with for years) told me about something that had just happened in San Francisco to the brother of a Black tech executive. I don’t remember all the details but I can’t forget the last thing the police officer said to the Black man: “That’s right n*****, run before I shoot you like the monkey you are.” The CEO told me that white people usually don’t hear this stuff because Black people don’t talk about it to white people – but it’s too common for him to be surprised.
Maybe 2 years ago I had a conversation with a Black man who was an in-person shopping researcher for a major tech company, helping them update their maps in California. I was curious about his job. One time he was walking around a store and the manager asked him if he needed anything, then asked again so he knew it was time to leave – he got outside and found six police officers with guns drawn waiting for him. I was upset at hearing this – and he apologized for telling me.
Of course American police aren’t only dangerous to dark-skinned people. Six years ago my wife and I (both white and middle-aged) were out for a stroll one evening in a safe neighborhood and spotted a possible crime in progress. She called it in and we continued walking. Half an hour later we walked back past the same spot, and a police officer stopped us. We spent ten minutes being questioned on the sidewalk by this armed man, whose body language was so tense that I expected him to pull out his gun at any moment.
So yes, I can easily believe that a real-life Sarah would rationally and reasonably think she was in greater danger from police responding to a hostage situation than from Blaine and Ross. Yes, American police really can be that dangerous and un-accountable. Yes, things really are that bad – bad enough that the people it happens to usually don’t talk about it to the people it doesn’t happen to.
If you don’t see it, you are lucky, privileged, or both.
On the other hand, Blaine, Ross, and the hires will go to prison for over a hundred years if she lives to identify them.
While cops who shoot her and Walky because they were “obviously” reaching for guns would go unpunished.
My point is that the bad dads and the hires have a very strong motive to kill their hostages.
That does assume the bad dads and the hires are capable of making a plan that operates in their best interest, and avoids things that would lead to a negative outcome.
All these guys aren’t acting rationally, so it’s hard to predict their motives. Even bad people like to think they’re logical and good at planning. Human beings are terrible at planning and risk assessment in general, let alone these guys.
That they’re not acting rationally doesn’t exactly increase my faith in just hoping they won’t hurt anyone.
Uh… Blaine has money, apparently. In the US that almost precludes him from prison time.
@Chris Phoenix Thank you so much for sharing. When I was hypothesizing before about Sarah’s rationale I was able to realize I was very likely doing so from a very priviledged position, but it’s always helpful to be reminded of how much. It really is rough in the USA. It’s one thing to “know” your perspective doesn’t match, but it’s always a shock to see /how/ different.
You and your friends, all teenagers, were kidnapped. One of you will be freed to make an errand for the kidnapper, with the explicit threat that if something happens your friends will be harmed, maybe killed. What would do you do? Call the police, of course! What can go wrong? Anyway, if something goes wrong, it will be your friends that get harmed, not you. And, as any TV screenwriter knows, cops are big damm heroes that will arrive in the nick of time to save the day. I simply don’t buy it, even before introducing racial bias, trigger-happy cops or anything like that.
Don’t call the cops because of the threats the kidnappers made is rational.
Don’t call the cops because you think you’re safer with the kidnappers than with the cops might be understandable from someone exposed to police brutality, but I have a hard seeing it as the right call. Unless you’re really convinced the kidnappers aren’t a threat.
The character that expressed the second reasoning has some grounds to believe in it.
@Chris Phoenix: I’ll admit I’m privileged, but I am pretty well aware of the dangers the police can pose. Neither of your examples surprise me at all.
But this isn’t a case like those where there was no threat before the police showed up. This is a mass kidnapping, by people who are threatening your lives and claim to have already put one of your friends in the hospital. Realistically, what’s the other option here? Just go along and hope they let you go unharmed? Hope your other teenage friends can pull off a rescue?
Granted, in this case, since this isn’t realistic and your friend is a super-hero, that probably is the best plan and would be regardless of police racism, but outside of comic book logic that would be nearly suicidal.
And kidnap victims relying on the mercy of their kidnappers doesn’t generally have good outcomes either.
Dina’s superpower is super effective, oh my god.
…Ya know, Dina’s appearances don’t even surprise me at this point, even in as batshit insane a situation as this.
Anyone else noticing that Amber, now Amazi-girl, is currently wearing the mask? The mask that proves to people who see her that she is Amazi-girl? It’s like Clark Kent without his glasses in this comic. I think Ross, as well as those stooges, knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Amber is Amazi-girl now. I’m kinda surprised she chose now to put them on. Oh yeah, and the mask is definitely one of the three things she needed.
She took Walky’s.
But How? She’s still tied up.
The mask is like Perry the Platypus’ hat.
Its just Amber.
Amazigirl! Did you see what happened to Amber?
Who are these two bozos with Ross? Guess we’ll find out soon.
Dina! *squee*
They are these guys:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/gay/
Homophobic campus bullies, committing six counts of a level 2 felony, good in Indiana for 10–30 years in prison per count.
How can you recognize them behind those masks?
We also recognized Amber behind you-know-who’s mask.
NightGuy! Stalks the night! Vanquishes evil dreams!
I wonder why Dina didn’t bring her mobile phone?
Blaine’s hires are less than impressive. So much for the army of mob killers and right-wing Christian fanatics who were going to massacre the hostages and hold off SWAT with a tempest of gunfire.
How do we know she didn’t? And those might not be all the stooges.
Because if she had brought a mobile phone the story would very quickly be resolved.
How? If calling the cops is too dangerous, how are they going to resolve it with a phone.
Stab and slash their kidnappers, of course.
As much as I am enjoying this arc, it seems to have left reality in its dust.
I can buy jerk thugs wanting to beat up on a “sissy boy” freshman and easy to believe that they’d jump at the chance to beat AG, but their casually aiding and abetting multiple felonies?
It’s hard enough to believe Ross would go along with this and he’s a knuckle-dragging authoritarian-follower bonehead.
You’d like to think that boys who are smart enough to get into college would think, gosh, kidnapping, that’s a crime too far.
If everything goes according to the stated plan, all the hostages get released. And give detailed descriptions to the police. Because surely these idiots didn’t sign on to be accessories to mass murder?
They might as well have done, because in Indiana kidnapping a person with the intent to use them as a hostage or shield is a Level 2 felony, which means that these bozos are up for 60–180 years in prison (advisory sentence 105 years). They are all going to die in prison unless they escape being identified (or do a deal with a DA to testify against a mob boss).
And that means that the hostages ought to be very, very worried about the fact that every incentive until SWAT surrounds the building is for the kidnappers to kill them.
It also means that Blaine had better pray that Asher’s Gramps doesn’t hear about this until Blaine is safe in custody.
Hahaha, “Safe” in custody. Riiiight. He’s going to die in prison for this if he doesn’t die outside of it first.
Let’s assume Gramps gets pissed off at Blaine and enacts a little justice of his own. Blaine is now wanted by the cops and the Gramps Mafia.
Blaine’s not safe free in the streets; that’s where the rest of the family members are.
He’s safer in custody, because once he’s apprehended the system is supposed to keep him safe until his trial and (assuming he’s found guilty) sentencing. Now, once he’s in general population he’ll be in more danger, since it’s likely Gramps has a few contacts on the inside.
The hostages are loose ends. Blaine needs to assure their silence, or he’s screwed. He’ll probably try to get it with threats, empty or not.
“Safe in custody” because it’s the first step on the road to witness protection.
Jesus, that is entirely too many levels of Felony.
I mean, the redhead’s the kind of guy who wanted to break into women’s houses when they came forward about Ryan being a raping bastard. I have zero issue believing he – or people who are friends with him – would go along with this purely for a crack at AG. Blaine wants to hurt AG and scare Amber out of school. Ross wants Becky. These two are aligned (for now) and so Blaine plans to kidnap people who matter to Amber and Becky. They tell these kids it’ll hurt AG and I can easily see it.
Yeah, once they (or at least the one) started backing up Gashface while he was hospitalized for trying to knife someone and threatening women for coming forward, vengeance kidnapping seems less wild.
In the ‘Ross and Blaine’s teamup represents fundamentalist Christians allying themselves with people who are wildly against their principles but let them hurt the people they want’ metaphor someone brings up downthread, I feel safe saying these dudes are 4chan and its ilk.
How they’d probably justify/excuse it to themselves:
“Bra, it’s not ‘kidnapping’, why so serious? We’re just going to use force to take them to a location of our choosing against their will, bind them, and force them to remain there while we cause various degrees of harm upon them according to our whims! Y’know, like, a prank or something. Maybe we rough up that AG wannabe a bit, teach her a lesson. It’s like light hazing, tops. We do worse to new pledges in our frat, no big deal! Take them home afterwards, it’s like it never happened. All in good fun!”
“It’s just a prank, bro!”
I don’t believe this strip intends to be realistic to the detail. More that is just riffing on some themes, like Ross following Blaine seems hard to believe sometimes, but so are some of the unholy alliances of christian groups in the real world, and so on. But in this case you have Blaine & Ross that went beyond the line many strips ago and a couple of thugs that likely do not know the full implications of what they are doing and collaborate on the assumption of impunity. They have their faces covered, no victim knows them (except the masked vigilante, not the best witness), it’s dark, and the victims are nobodies . If you could not hire goons for this, then I’m sure crime rates would be much lower in the real world.
She. WHAT.
I do like Dorothy’s little half-smile in panel 5. Dina has reminded her that not only has her life become stranger than she imagines, it’s become stranger than she can imagine!
You know what, I’m just glad beef isn’t in the group of kidnappers.
5 percent of perfection is still a big deal.
I’m very impressed with Dorothy. She keeps her cool, shifts the situation in their favor and explains to Joyce.
and now they have a dina! My half-jokes about her raptor-clawing toedad are not that far from coming true.
I swear that girl is secretly a Ninja.
She seems to be aware that she can follow people without being noticed.
Did Dina just kidnap herself?
I think she’s in the clear legally.
Imagine getting charged and found guilty of kidnapping yourself though.
I’m thinking of Irma La Douce (?spelling?), in which Jack Lemon’s character was suspected of and perhaps charges with murdering himself in a jealous rage.
I’d love to see Blaine try to explain that one in court.
escape ? untape em and run in all directions
Time to ask the real questions- Will Walky get an automatic A on his midterm for being kidnapped, thus further enabling his math slacking? Supposing they get out of this alive by class time, are they expected to try and take their midterms?
I am having tonal problems with the comic lately. I am not sure how much is meant to be taking serious and to what degree. The goofy tone is a bit charring :/
If you believe the hovertext, maybe 3%.
Maybe that was an autocorrect fuck up, but I’m, uh, pretty sure you meant “jarring” there. Charring is another thing.
Totally autocorrect ^^’
And my second favorite Aspie appears. My first being myself.
Dotty, I love you dearly but playing 4D-chess against the braintrust that is Balpeen&Toedad is a waste of your talants. The rate they are going, they will start licking powerplugs any minute now.
Am I misinterpreting this? I had understood that being tied up and thrown together in a sweaty pile with people of the opposite gender was a ‘sexy’ thing, but this does not seem like s sexual situation. Please inform me if I am transgressing.
*starts trying to push her legs between her arms*
Dorothy: Dina, what are you doing?
Dina: Everyone else’s hands *nggh* are tied *rrh* behind their backs. *ghnn* Give me a second…
@everyone saying “five percent of infinity is still infinite!” I think you got it backwards. Joyce says “five percent less” so she means that the Dorothy Approval Rating on the Joyce Index will fall and settle at 95% of its pre-kidnapping-shenanigans level. Maybe 98%.
Let’s hope that Amber idea will work. And that Dina can free everyone.
So… Walky’s mask was one. What are the other two things Amazgirl needed?
A ninja and a roll of duct tape.
Panel One: “I signed up for this just for a shot at ‘er.”
OK, other THAN Craigslist as was mentioned earlier, how does one advertise for a goon squad? And working from the timefuck that *is* the DoA clock, how long did it take to organize this one?
Uber Minions? Stooges’R’Us?
ThugRecruiter
Legitimate Business Associates.
Since those goons were apparently linked to the roving gangs that Sal and AG beat up while they were trying to assault women accusing Ryan of rapes, it might be evidence that Blaine did get in touch with Ryan and his bros.
Would the cops even believe Dina if she were to told her what’s happening
I must say, between letting amazi-girl go, hiring the Ryan-bros (also known as the people who mistook Walky in pajamas for amazi-girl), letting Dina slipping in and in general being themselves, my main take home from this story is that Ross and Blaine are very good at being smart, have a watertight plan, and everything will surely go their way.
Yes sir. No problem with their plan at all…
I thot Dina’s actions were spot on until I read the comments. #nerdforbrains
And now for the character with the second most powerful abilities in this comic.
(Most powerful is Carla. Money can’t buy happiness, but it can get you everything else).
Also, I’d like to point out how incredible it is that she went undetected with a literal spotlight on her.
Maybe she’s saying she taped herself up because everyone else is, and she knows it’ll be suspicious if one of the hostages is mysteriously unbound? The kidnappers are fucking stupid, so it could be a while before they realise Dina’s not supposed to be there in the first place, maybe longer to notice she stole their tape and used it incorrectly. Dina’s not an idiot, and she’s been devious in defense of her friends before.
As much as I’m open to silliness, I kind of hope this gets back to reality soon. The refusal to call the police kind of seriously hurt things here because if that’s not an option then the only thing they can do is kill Blaine and Ross.