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New game! BOLTED 
Barb O. Saur 
=O
THEY’RE GOING ALL THE WAY!
alt-text: imagine if I then used it as a grav =o
I would have been so hyped by that as a preview panel that if the actual strip were a letdown I would be psychologically incapable of recognizing it and would have simply hallucinated something sufficiently gay
trying to imagine a scenario in which that panel could’ve been a fakeout
“it is a shame becky and i broke up, but at least i will always have this life-sized standee of her bare legs to remember her by”
It wouldn’t have needed to be a fakeout. After four months of context-free anticipation, my brain would have iterated through thousands of possible scenarios. Each gayer and more convoluted than the last
we’ll have t osee
She’s an ace player in more than one way!
Dina hits the big time!!!!! 🦖
*plays “Francis Battle” by Naoko Mitome on Becky’s Phone*
When I saw those emojis in your comment my first thought was that you were posting your WORDLE outcome …
Twirling, twirling, into the future
The glorious future of hanky panky.
Twirl? While she’s got her panties around her ankles?
Yep, that seems like a great way for Becky to trip herself up and crash down naked at Dina’s feet…
I hope she doesn’t trip, but the awkwardness of twirling in such a state could be hot; Dina does not strike me as having BDSM tendencies but it’s conceivable she could get the “pants euphoria” (it’s like the vapors, only cool) from the humiliation aspect.
Based on her actions here and comment towards Joe she does come off as very much a top with a science fetish.
You may have a very limited idea of bdsm if you think it’s just humiliation.
Uh, I am in the BDSM, er, “family”; it is quite broad, of course, but in this specific case it seemed like there’s potential for Dina to get pantalones felicidades over humiliation.
Who knew you could do science without underwear?
A fair number of scientists sometimes write their research papers fresh out of the shower with barely any cloths on!
Don’t ask me how I know that.
Hey I get it. I some of my best thinking in the shower.
Oh! You’re a scientist too? Your particular field?
Its my dream! I’m still in college but will soon be on to grad school (or at least some menial lab job to build out my resume first). My major is in biology with a minor in Genomics. I am particularly intrigued by synthetic biology and neural genetics. What is your field?
Originally it was engineering, but relatively quickly I decided to switch to physics! I plan to work in some kind of tech company like 3M or something after I get my PHD.
Amidst many setbacks, I still keep at it at a steady pace. Right now I’m also learning to program so that’s fun too!
And sometimes pausing to put on pants is all it takes to forget a good idea.
Archimedes (apocryphally).
I do everything without underwear!
I knew there was a reason I related to you Yoto.
The Kinsey Institute is at IU, pretty sure they know
You didn’t wonder how many people have adhered the “underwearless” in their home office during pandemic…
Spinning that’ a good trick.
As cute as this is, I’m kinda concerned about what happens if/when Becky finds out that Dina might just not get turned on. Even if it’s not by her specifically… she might still take it as such.
Yeah. Equally concerning is if Dian does and they do something Becky regrets later.
I think we’re past the point where Becky is gonna regret stuff later, at least in any way that matters. There might be some “this was a big change for me and that’s a little scary” stuff–years of fundie programming don’t just vanish–but she seems as comfortable as is possible with this whole situation. If Becky and Dina do have sex at this juncture, it’ll be because Becky wants it: all she has to do to get it to stop is go “no, this isn’t just my brain being bad, I want to stop,” and it’ll stop.
I do think “none of this works and Becky takes it as a slight” is the bigger risk here, but equally, there is zero chance Dina’s gonna have a bad time, which will hopefully mitigate any worries Becky has about her own desirability somewhat.
I started to write this twice earlier, but got distracted by life, and now probably no one will read it, but fuck it.
Okay, so I think Becky is going about this wrong. Nudity is not a turn-on for everyone. My wife and I are very into sex, but while we like one another’s naked bodies, they aren’t really a turn on since neither of us really consider nudity (or sex) a taboo. Plus we’re just naked around one another a lot.
As such, even a highly sexual person might not find mere nudity to be arousing. Pleasing – which Dina says as much – but not arousing.
Personally, I find touching and being touched far more arousing.
Meanwhile, my wife is most aroused by stories – not sexy stories, but ones about adventure. Talking about a good book she’s read – or analyzing how a bad one could have been better – is what gets her going. Tabletop gaming does it for her too because she gets to participate in a story.
As such, if Becky wants to turn on Dina, I think she’d be better of doing so by reading a biology text book to her about how sexual stimulation effects the brain. That blends the sexual and the scientific in a way that I suspect would work well for Dina, seducing her with the idea of sexual brain chemistry. And, once she’s in that headspace, I think some mutual touching would probably work wonders.
Becky’s problem, IMO, is that she’s only thinking about how her own arousal works. And that arousal is based on a look-dont-touch upbringing that places far too much emphasis on covering the body – which is why that’s her fetish. Hence the hat thing and related Becky steam-outs.
Consider the setting Dina last got pants euphoria, the biology lab doing either a dissection or an experiment (I don’t remember and also don’t feel like an archive crawl)
Well, there’s one, but it’s more hypothetical and less catastrophizing.
Given how good the two of them are at communicating and being patient with each other, I’m not at all worried. Even if Dina never gets the pants euphoria I’m sure figure it out and have fun all the same :3
Yeah, even if Dina does have a fetish of some kind, knowing Emperor Willis, we’re gonna encounter it at the most RANDOM time
Dina discovers she is skoliosexual (attracted to the gender-indeterminate). Becky is too female for her, Joe is too male. She ends up with Walky. Or Malaya.
Oh no, Dina/Malaya (Dinaya? Maldina?) is the crack pairing I never knew I didn’t want.
I’m trying to picture how that relationship would work, and… other than suspecting it involves turning Dina into an expert in spite who is, above all, concerned about Fakeyness, I’m really coming up with nothing.
(Although admittedly, this is because while we’ve seen a little bit of Malaya’s emotional depths in interacts with Carla, we’ve mostly seen them from the outside.)
I thought we already encountered it. She is *literally aroused by uncovering mysteries, scientifically.* She got rapidly horny right away when her and Becky were gonna do science together, until Joe ruined it.
So, Dina may not have any explicit attraction to Becky’s body, as an object isolated from Becky’s person-concept in Dina’s mind. But I suspect, that *investigating Becky’s body, and its reactions, with Becky’s enthusiastic consent and request,* might be stimulating enough for her, with or without any pants euphoria.
I am confident that they will discover something that gets her turned on, but it will likely be some form of intellectual exercise/kink.
I’m kinda wondering if this is how it shakes out.
As far as I can tell, Becky’s endgoal (with sex or not) is that she be sexually attractive to Dina, and Dina doesn’t do sexual attraction in that overt/easily accessed way. Dina’s also made it clear that Becky’s in for sex, that Dina becomes so overpowered with lust that she forces herself onto Becky, is completely impossible.
If this turns out for the worse, I could see it being down to Becky feeling unwanted even though she’s stripped naked.
Maybe Becky could just pull out the dinosaur onesie again and it’d all work out.
for science !
(don’t trip over your pants)
This gives me the mental image of a thousand beltless nerds charging into battle. It made me chuckle. Thank you.
That’s why Urkel and the 11th Doctor wear suspenders.
She led the charge with little Jacob held aloft, crying, “Sansabelt!”
after everything that’s been happening in the world, i’m so glad tonight’s comic was this. i could really use some happy thoughts right now.
Happy gay girls doin’ nude science is exactly what I needed
Me too!!!!
And if that doesn’t work, maybe do some sexy poses naked? For science!.
Twerk naked for science, the experiment won’t work otherwise.
And this is the day Dina switched to premed.
I’m so proud of Becky for her brave commitment to the gay sciences
Well, you gave us a picture of a building way back as a preview, so there’s that
*plays Undressed by Kim Cesarion on the PA* It sure makes for a good movie poster, people always love a good “between the legs”
Plays “She Blinded Me With Science” on hacked Muzack
(TMI warning)
Man this is so weird to me, I was doing sexual things with partners long before I was comfortable with them actually seeing my naked body in full light. Nakedness somehow feels more vulnerable?
That’s true for many people. Sexual activity can be normalized but having your body viewed is different in a lot of ways. You can have confidence in your ability while lacking confidence in your body.
With how excited Dina got about turning Becky on it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s more turned on by being seen in a sexual light. I’m sure there’s a word for it but I don’t have it on me.
BECKY GOT BACK.
You got that right bruh!!!
*plays “Filthy/Gorgeous” by Sissor Sistors on Hacked Muzak*
That has yet to be established empirically.
Ooh, stripes.
Dinas smile <3
Yoto has just been served free content on a silver platter
ma chère yotomoe, it is with deepest pride
and greatest pleasure that we welcome you tonight
and now we invite you to relax
let us pull up a chair as the dumbing room proudly presents
your dina
Becky’s chest! Naked breast!
Put our Dina to the test
Tie your tube sock ’round your knob, cherie
And we’ll provide the rest
I love this comment section. You guys rule.
She’s a girl. She doesn’t have a knob.
It’s 2022, girls can have knobs. Also doors have had them for ages now, which was more the point of that line.
I accept this gift graciously.
…Hey. Hey Willis.
Did you MEAN to echo “She accepts all that she sees” from the precursors?
Willis??
if i had a nickel for every time “it’s the rain” got incorporated into a sex scene in dumbing of age, i’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice
(the first time is january 19, 2014. do not know why both this site and the patreon hate it when i use hyperlinks)
…I knew that line sounded familiar!
oh my god the first panel is so damn good I love dinas smile
God, this is an adorable strip (hah), and Dina liking all she sees is wonderful. Even without the “pants euphoria”. Lookitherface! She does like making Becky feel (and DO) things, though, so I’m crossing my fingers for actions having more of an effect than plain naked flesh. Twirl for science, Becks! You’ve done great at following commands!
IDK, it’s probs because I’m kinda comfy about non-sexual nudity too? Like there needs to me something more to the situation for the switch to get flipped – So this is very relatable. I’m giddily hoping Dina narrows down the variables and discovers her kink, but even more than that, I legit hope whatever happens ends well for both of them. As much as I haven’t been much of a Becky fan lately, and knowing how much this telenovela thrives on bad decisions :’3
I agree a lot with this–it feels relatable, & that’s why I hope that perhaps there’s a way for this to work out for them that isn’t based on pure on-sight lust. The reasons one develops pants euphoria are wide and varied & complicated.
I’m a demi/gray (and non-binary) lesbian and though I don’t consider myself like… physically attractive? Lots of circumstances (including feminism) have made me be like– it’s just a body. I can take off my top in a march. I can see boobs and go “oh, pretty!” with no lust. Dina here is echoing in a way I’d never seen represented so I’m in awe at her (and Willis) for this A++ exploration of the ace spectrum :3
Pants euphoria is def a strange beast. Situations, actions, and attitude are all things that on the right circumstances can get a sex-positive ace-spec person turned on. Intent! Intent matters SO MUCH. I’m proud of Becky for daring to go this far but she’s still putting this in a show-but-not-do light. Def curious on what next.
Nice composition
Well… Dina should have a blood test and look for hints of vitamin needs.
I mean, cereal for the three meals of every day? Malnourishment is suspect for low libido levels. Seriously. https://www.drelist.com/blog/malnutrition-sex-drive/ https://www.healthline.com/health/eating-disorder-anorexia-sex-drive
I appreciate your concern, but don’t you think it’s a little too early to call an armchair diagnosis of malnutrition of all things?
Have we not seen her eat things OTHER than cereal? If so, how often?
Once I can think of. She ate pizza. She might have eaten cake at Becky’s party at Robin’s place.
Shush. She’s eating fine, she’s just ace-spectrum.
maybe you should get some blood work done to see if malnourishment is making you aphobic
…that would mean “fearless”, though.
words can have multiple meanings and context clues exist
Thank you, i wanted to explain this but didn’t have to spoons
Some people just have a low sex drive. Combine that with being ace and Dina’s libido levels are perfectly normal.
I eat perfectly normal. my blood work is normal, for someone with my condition, still I have absolutely no interest in sex. It happens.
I’ve heard a fair few people pathologize asexuality before in all sorts of ways, but I’ve never heard that one before…
Incidentally I used to be malnourished bc undiagnosed coeliac, and I’m exactly as asexual now as I was then.
I’m malnourished as fuck and still have the noisiest libido of anyone I know. Sometimes people don’t perfectly sync up with the things you read online.
Yeah, I have a friend who’s a strict vegan plus some… let’s generously call them “very New Age nutritional beliefs” and honestly the last time I saw her I thought she looked on the border of being dangerously underweight. Yet she has a libido like you wouldn’t believe. Malnutrition CAN affect libido, yes, but it’s not always the sole factor involved.
I’m pretty sure it’s been established that Dina is asexual. What she eats probably doesn’t change that.
This would be the perfect time for Joyce to walk in, wanting to talk to Dina about Becky or wanting to talk to Becky assuming she would be in Dina’s room lol.
I would hope that by now Becky has finally learned to lock the door
Joyce walks in and goes “huh, neat.”
But then Dorothy walks by wearing shorts and she’s ecstatic.
I don’t think this strip will happen, but I just wanna say, you wrote an excellent strip here. I actually laughed out loud at the punchline panel, and it wasn’t even drawn.
It’d be funny (in a dark way) if Dina suddenly pulled a Malaya here. “Oh, look at that, I guess I’m actually straight.”
Nah, there aren’t enough data points currently available to draw that conclusion.
And that would be awful timing.
So this tweet I read last night said something roughly to the effect of “It’s only gallows humor if the person on the gallows makes the joke. If someone in the crowd cracks it, it’s just part of the execution.”
Gallows humour is funny when the people involved don’t actually exist.
Why, yes, it would be funny to me if Dina decided Joyce was now a more suitable romantic partner for her and then she, Joyce and Dorothy became a poly triad who had premarital sex while talking about how God is dumb. That’s actually hilarious.
… I mean by now it’s been made very clear that she’s *romantically*-attracted to Becky even if she’s might not be always *sexually*-attracted to her.
And Malaya wasn’t really “actually straight” at the end of the day anyways.
Very true. My mind just made a connection between Dina’s lack of “pants euphoria” here, and ShortPacked-Malaya’s response to her kiss with Leslie (and Leslie’s subsequent fury). While Dina’s lack of sexual attraction may bring some sort of tension into this storyline, I seriously doubt it’s going to play out anything like the Shortpacked story. I just thought it was interesting to point out the parallel. (Though arguably, Malaya was “romantically attracted” to Leslie as well.)
just gonna say that i love dina’s self-awareness through this arc. unpacking ace** spectra when i was a little bit older than this was really difficult and full of self-doubt/unlearning. you go, raptor queen.
**disclaimer that i’m demiro/grace so my experience doesn’t map 1:1 with dina’s but i still think it’s an important part of the convo of who gets sheltered from how much rain under this queer-ass umbrella and warms my dumb gay heart
Help me out. I can’t find “demiro/grace” on the trusty internet.
I assume those are abbreviations for “demiromantic” and “grey ace”, that is, people on the ace spectrum who CAN experience romantic and/or sexual attraction but only after a great deal of time or only under certain circumstances.
Demiromantic/grrey-ace, I believe.
whoops, i was worried immediately after posting this that i might be abbreviating+combining too much; demiromantic and grey asexual is correct! i don’t really form crushes until i’ve known someone for years and sex tends to be a solo act for me, but there are exceptions.
figuring this stuff out for myself with a partner at the time was unfortunately messier than it needed to be and i love that these two can have conversations around pleasure and desire while recognizing that they’re not the same for each other or for either of them.
Somehow I feel that Becky and Dina are definitely gonna have pre-marital hanky pinky and its gonna be a whole thing
Well, yeah. They’re gonna have it because *Becky* is fucking desperate for it, and she’s gonna ask Dina for it, give enthusiastic consent, have the sex, it will probably rock Becky’s world, and then Becky will wake up and have a full-blown ethical crisis and become an immediate annoyance/danger to herself and others, and ultimately blame Dina for it, as she edits the scenario retroactively in her head to make it about the irresistible pull of Satan, and Dina not helping her protect the integrity of her soul. It’s gonna be real annoying and destructive, because that’s pretty much how this strip works, much like young adults.
wow, panel 2 & 3 sound so familiar to me, ahaha. i like this! It looks great! where’s the pants euphoria?
Interesting ace rep. I’m a fan.
This is so so relatable. I NEED to get all the strips for this storyline together and share them with my girlfriend
I guess Becky needs to ‘provoke’ Dinah to get her turned on.
I honestly can’t think of a better way to spice up dry academic research, than having a horny lesbian lab partner ravage you intermittently because the science is just too damn sexy.
The experiment continue!
I’m looking forward to finding out more places where Becky has freckles, for science!
No, seriously: I’m a redhead and when I get to the public pool often my wife is amazed at the exponential growth of them.
The fact that anybody is insecure about having tons of freckles is so wild to me. Like, I know there’s an aspect of historical baggage and cultural stuff that probably goes into it, but *holy fuck* are freckles just utterly cute and beautiful on just everybody.
But would Dina feel pants euphoria if Becky were to repeat the process with Dr. Ellie Sattler cosplay?
Dumbing of Age: I do not, However, feel the Pants Euphoria
DoA Book 12: Twirl! For Science!
Anyone remember when they kissed in bed (“YOU WILL KISS ME!”) and Dina’s analytical thoughts got fused, leaving her in happy giggles? I suspect that will be something for their experiences. I’m not personally experienced with being any variety of ace, but as an interested onlooker, that’s kinda what I’m hoping for.
So I was archive browsing for no apparent reason, and Dina has told Becky to her face “I am uniquely impervious to visual trickery”. Does that count as an environmental factor that should have been factored into the testing of the current hypothesis? For Science, etc.
I need to see Becky naked, as well. Every experiment needs a control, I am volunteering for that.
https://xkcd.com/507/
I see skies of greeeeeeyyyyyy…
Who got the best calves? Becky? Or … Carla
I just learned about a hazard that a couple such as Becky and Dina might face:
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/procreate
Be sure to click on the big red button at the bottom for the zinger.
Does anyone recall…what exactly was Becky caught doing with the other extremely Christian girl that got her kicked out of her Christian college? It seems with this many inhibitions, it would have been hard to prove she was a lesbian.
They were making out in bed.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/definitely/
So, is she willing to make out in bed with Dina?
It wouldn’t be exactly the same circumstances, since at least one of them is naked this time. It’s a valid experiment, but the whole “naked on/in bed” part might throw Becky into a panic.
(What if that finally brings out Feral Dina? Maybe she gets off on the thrill of the hunt, whether her prey is knowledge or her SO.)
This is more about Dina not feeling sexual attraction, and the way that makes Becky feel unwanted.
Honest to God I literally forgot this happened in the canon of the strip and that Becky wasn’t a virgin, and given this exact context, and forgetting that trauma, I feel a little worse about how rough I’ve been at her about this one issue. I literally forgot there would be like, full-blown trauma PTSD from the past tied up in this, even beyond the wounds fundamentalism leaves on the mind and soul.
Um, Becky is a virgin. There’s not reason to think that went beyond clothed making out on the bed.
Sorta hitting me that Dina may well be the best ace rep I’ve ever seen in…anything? Ever?
Like obviously I ought to diversify my media consumption a bit but still. Like, christ. I feel incredibly seen, here, and my flavor of ace isn’t even the same as Dina’s.
I’m just really glad for that, and for your post, because my partner is also a different flavor of Ace than Dina, and I worry a lot about these kinds of things in media, because I’m so less prone to being easily able to understand those issues, and so I can’t ever tell precisely how good or bad certain kinds of representation are.
Dina is fantastic Ace rep because Willis has written her so precisely into situations where it’s clear that she just does not experience certain aspects of sexuality, at least not in the way most people do–and that simple difference and/or lack of feeling the thing, no matter the degree or flavor, makes things that allo folks barely even think about and take for granted incredibly confusing.
But just because it’s confusing and different and often times more difficult for ace folks to approach doesn’t mean they have zero desire to. It’s a way of existing that sort of forces you to look really deep and do exactly what Dina is doing, trying to figure out what things we experience, what we dont, under what conditions (or not), how frequently, to what degree, etc etc. Depending on what flavor of ace you are, the answers to these questions might end up very different–but you almost universally have to ask yourself at least SOME of them, at some point, the moment you notice that your experience is fundamentally different from seemingly the entire rest of the world, and you have to ask yourself “whats wrong with me?”
Questions that allo people almost never have to ask themselves or think about, despite the fact that quite frankly, all of the aspects of sexuality we have to pick apart apply to them, too. They just tend to experience all of it so consistently and at the same time and in the ‘expected’ way, it rarely occurs to them to question it.
So one is doing this for “science” and the other is talking to her invisible friend whom she thinks is watching the proceedings. Wow, these two lunatics really deserve each other.
They are a match made in Heaven or a sterile lab environment – depending on which one you ask.
There’s something oddly endearing and intimate about this, fair play DW.
The soundtrack for the Slipshine of this scene:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=C99ZPoKkGmg&list=RDAMVMC99ZPoKkGmg
The original release that everyone else covered
Nice, but I would DEFINITELY go with something like “The Starry Sky is Mysterious” by Takanori Arisawa!!!
I gotta say, i also wouldn’t necessarily get pants euphoria (what a fun term :D) from scientifically looking at somebody’s naked parts.
It’s soo much about the tension and anticipation in the air, and that usually doesn’t build up in arranged settings like this.
However, science is GOOD and you can aesthetically like what you see even without pants euphoria.