Doll-faced entreats
I spent a lot of time thinking about who Dean’s favourite YouTuber would be. Someone full of the sunny optimism he lacks, who spends a lot of time cleaning up decrepit soldering. A bright young thing! Fortunately the algorithm had already shown me the answer. I am sure someone will work out who she is in the comments.


Sayaka’s Digital Attic – Bob the Builder for techies!
There are a lot of players in the “watch me solder this old tech” market. It gets a surprising number of viewers and seems to have real staying power. You’d think a person could watch someone fix a Commodore 64 only so many times, except “so many” has yet to be reached.
Dean, please remember to Cher, like, and subscribe!
I was sure this was John making up a combination of Adrian’s Digital Basement and someone like Kari Lawler, but as I see Sayaka exists and the algorithm had simply decided I was not worthy to be told.
Sayaka! I never thought I’d see her referenced in any comic, much less this one. What’s next? Action Retro? Veronica Explains? Maybe Big Clive?
Clive should just show up one day in the comic, with some janky gadget off alibaba and a pint of whisky.
Extensive research (1 google search) has revealed to me Deans favourite youtuber is probably sayaka’s digital attic: https://www.youtube.com/%40Sayakas_Digital_Attic&ved=2ahUKEwi14LLGlNCSAxUig_0HHTLfId0QFnoECBkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2TSoGJpYjr2NOqIsxODebU
Aah no, I should have refreshed, I’ve been beaten to it.
Let’s see if this link works: https://www.youtube.com/@Sayakas_Digital_Attic
Not to be too cynical about it, but that channel seems to appeal to male viewers of bare midriffs of perky young women who can elegantly and smoothly caress a soldering iron on a C64 motherboard
What I’m suggesting is that Dean isn’t watching that channel for the soldering
In my experience, people often have more than one reason for the things they do.
If all he wanted was to look at midriffs (and more) there are plenty quicker and easier ways to do that… the exposed midriff doesn’t hurt, but there’s personality and special interest and parasocial relationship in there as well.
Dean I’m talking about here of course, Dean.
Of course you are.
Bare midriffs and soldering boards, that’s technically two reasons. Which came first, who can say?
Dean teaches high school? Well, some of his personality makes more sense now.
Just imagine what he’ll be like after twenty years in the job!
I’m more worried thinking about what his students will be after his devastating impact in their lives.
Man, watching Dean sink back into his Bad Machinery de facto villain status is just devastating to watch.
Indeed, though I believe you mean Giant Days.
Yes I did, thanks.
So Dean would listen to Claire if she was into fixing electronic items (with an accent) but not when she’s into fixing people (including Dean)?
Why is it no surprise that a man who would rather deal with digital equipment became a teacher…
Perhaps Claire could win Dean’s forgiveness by sourcing and fully restoring a Cray-1 supercomputer while he watches?
I don’t know about the pace of the UK legal system, but if this was the US, The Solvers could have a good few months before they’d have to face the first strains of the music.
In the slightly different version of the world that Bad Machinery is set in, I am certain their UK’s legal system will move at the speed of plot. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. In a world where time-travelling lawyers exist, I am satisfied to leave it in John A’s hands to tweak or not tweak the plot’s speed to reflect the world we are set in.
Charles Dickens wasn’t too happy with the pace of the UK legal system when he wrote Bleak House in the 1800s.
Dean is still the worst
THE MOST WORST
He is but he’s right to be hurt. Not right to sue but to feel bad his only friends lied to him and nearly got him killed
..yeah.
And getting Dean back into villain mode may just be Beate’s unwitting triumph.
You can be a massive dilhole and entirely correct at the same time, Dean is proof of this
the worst kind of correct
I believe the Germans call it “Waltersobchakheit.”
She’s fixing an Amstrad isn’t she?
Of course!
“Broken Amstrad CPC 464 – Can I Fix it?” shot with a Zambian camera for that full A-to-Z experience.
Dean the merciless is immune to Claire’s sad and remorseful eyes. He wants destruction! It’s sad to see how a traumatic event erased all of his progress as a person, but it makes sense. Can’t wait for Lottie’s reaction.
You know… Remember when Dean explained to Glenn why he’s so into bees? “Yes, their wrath IS majestic.” As immune he is to Claire’s adorableness, I’ll bet if he saw her set a fire- a real, not held back at all, genuinely destructive Claire fire- he’d melt. He couldn’t refuse her anything after that. And she’d be stuck with him following her around in awe and worshiping her for the rest of her life. Which would be pretty awful for her. Never mind, bad idea.
The topknot and the floral dressing gown are fine in isolation, but together they make Dean look like he’s in some sort of Japanese cosplay. Perhaps he fancies himself a noble samurai warrior
Dean has always been something of a Nipponophile.
“Through the ages, this has been the hair style of the samurai, the emperor, the philosopher.”
– Nice Pete
Big talk for a man who’s one parking ticket from the electric chair.
look, he just wants to be able to simultaneously threaten people with letting his hair down and and whatever might be implied by anachronistic businessman phrases like ‘open the kimono’
Huh. Here I would have thought he’d be a big fan of the lady who bought the house for $97,000 with everything in it.
Dean’s still featured amongst the main cast, so I’m hoping this period of antagonism is short-lived. I’m sure Lottie can drag him back, kick and scream though he might.
Antagonists can be part of the main cast. I mean, Tom was part of the main cast of Steeple, and he was generally antagonistic toward all the other main cast members except (usually) Brian.
How would Tom and Dean get on though, is the question you’ve just given me. Maybe well in some ways… similar taste in dressing gowns and similar high opinions of themselves, considering themselves to be men of distinction – but very different in other ways. Dean practising a certain form of ascetic self-restraint, Tom an unrepentant hedonist.
I think the ways Tom and Dean are alike would make them mortal enemies, more than the ways they’re different.
I would assume that Dean fancies himself a materialist rationalist. They’d be spitting venom at each other in seconds.
Dean’s curmudgeonry is about on par with mine. As such he’s gonna require a nonexistent channel with the amorphous qualities only an unwritten future seen down a time tunnel can bring. As such I’m gonna say the Digital Attic isn’t as likely as his own efforts to commission a bespoke AI-made rendering of a fix-it channel conceivably hosted by Arduino versus Evil’s daughter some decades hence. The opportunity to view a commonwealth citizen as an able servant of some war against disorder and entropy – especially one with a fondness for the bygone imperial mechanical knowhow of yore seems apt, and the preference for at-most feigned difficulties with the queen’s english and the means of displeasing the french simply by speaking with a quebecois accent all add up to a likely positive result (and you don’t wind up infringing on copyright). But that’s only a guess.
This would be the same “irresponsible operation” that solved Dean’s problem? And all those others?
Success does not preclude irresponsibility. Indeed, it sometimes causes it.
And sometimes is caused by it.
It’s tres bizarre watching Olympic Ice Hockey and hearing:
“JACK HUGHES, JACK HUGHES, JACK HUGHES!”
It’s tres bizarre watching Olympic Ice Hockey and hearing:
“JACK HUGHES, JACK HUGHES, JACK HUGHES!”
Dean, you shitheel, that’s distinction without difference.
I feel like Dean should just start wearing yellow cross-gartered stockings