The ridiculous flags reminded me of those shortspacked. They resonated in like four different ways, so I thought, let’s just turn that dial all the way up.
Eh, it’s a 50/50 for me, especially since Joyce specifically expressed how exhausted she is. I think there was once a strip talking about how thick or thin the walls were so maybe that could add some context here.
Maybe, but this is a Joyce who is very, very, very much done with hearing the mouth-noises coming from the other side of the door and doesn’t want to process anything other than her pillow.
Sarah’s not backing off because that’s how she’s trying to get Dorothy to back off, but she’s not backing off either so they’re stuck in a feedback loop.
I feel like both Sarah and Dorothy are being annoying flavors of ableist in this strip
Regarding Dorothy: not everything an autistic person does is related to their autism (Joyce hasn’t even got a diagnosis yet so it’s hypothetical autism at this point)
Regarding Sarah: Armchair diagnosis is not cool, more so if the person you are armchair diagnosing had already expressed annoyance at you doing so
On another note I wonder if Joyce is able to hear Carla shout that right outside her door
Also, remember that Sarah’s most recent and salient personal and social development regarding Joyce, was “damn some of the advice I am giving you, is not working for you, and so I can’t condone that thing you just did, but maybe I am not being helpful by trying to be so hands-on and over-bearingly sisterly, and need to back off.” She isn’t gonna just come out and say that to Dorothy, but she literally just learned that lesson for herself at the end of the prior storyline.
Here that kind of makes sense, but she started with the “you’re probably autistic too” thing in their last appearance, so that’s hard to frame as getting Dorothy to back off.
What do you expect? This ableism is ALL too common, and I’ll say, a form of bigotry that’s allowed to disguise itself so easily as “compassion” and “science” is all too problematic!
It’s crap exactly like what Dorothy is doing that’s why I tend to keep my own autism to myself, I got enough “compassionate ableism” from teachers in school
If I ever identify comfortably as “””autistic””” here, and at the same time safely navigate the world out there, it feels like I’d be speaking two different languages:
One “English” to be used here and only here, where the zeitgeist is common sense to see “autism” as instrinsically being allowed to be fluid have nobody make hurtful assumptions about it for any individual
And another “English” to use in a world at large where “autism” is risk for becoming a target on my back again after I worked so hard to remove it — a language to navigate a world-wide kingdom of predators. 😨
I’m lucky enough that the “compassionate” sort of ableism was all I got growing up but it’s still enough that Dorothy’s response to Joyce maybe being autistic bothers me more then I expected it would
Dorothy and Sarah (and honestly probably Joyce) not understanding autism and saying a bunch of stupid shit about it is something I’ve already accepted and made peace with.
P.S. I was going to say something about Carla being able to hear them, but then I got distracted when I realized that “Re:” (like what you put in email subject lines) stands for “Regarding”. That never clicked for me before. Anyway, I forgot what I was going to say, so, have a nice day, I guess!
That’s the thing I think people really, really, really are missing, about how shitty Joyce’s friends response to this has been: Dorothy probably just lapped Joyce’s autism knowledge by a full measure in the last 5 minutes on her phone, but everyone is acting as if, because this is about Joyce, that she should have processed it and have nuanced opinions about this revelation unto her self. It’s not just absurd, it’s fucking rude, and the opposite of how a supportive friend supports a friend through something like this. Literally all Joyce needed to hear, was “well you’re still You, you’re Joyce, you’re our friend and we love you.” DONE. CANNOT TOP THAT. It’s both what Joyce wanted, and what she needed, to feel less alienated and more secure. Instead, Dorothy is unintentionally pushing her away, by over-loading her with her own discomfort, and prying into her personal, emotional space, way too fast and hard.
Which, if Dorothy knew fucking anything about people with autism, hoo boy, would she think that Dorothy is a fucking smooth brain, right now. Unfortunately, Dorothy knows nothing useful about this situation, which is the one paradigm that Dorothy has no hope of spotting or accepting for herself.
I mostly agree with you in principle, but “this won’t change how we feel about you” is, in fact, the first response Dorothy had, and it didn’t seem to go over all that well…
Well, when you read what Joyce said…is she really wrong? I know I initially read it as “uh, guys, I was expecting some resistance, here!” but as the text has followed, Joyce could have just as easily have been asserting “guys, I really, really think y’all might start treating me differently, because I know you from you being my friends this past year.”
Dorothy said what she said, because it was The Right Thing To Say In That Scenario, so Dorothy successfully AAA Full Combo’d that social interaction. Unfortunately, what she said was true about her feelings clearly didn’t hold up to even minutes of reality, as she immediately started trying to suss out all of the ways she was supposed to Treat Joyce Differently, so she could keep AAAing that friendship; a completely normal and healthy social urge to possess.
Meanwhile, Sarah’s response was completely genuine, because she was already treating Joyce in a not-an-asshole-if-they-are-autistic way because it’s her default… she clearly ACTUALLY KNOWS THINGS about it. Unlike.
I think you’re wrong here- Dorothy using her smartphone to mother Joyce is something she 100% did prior to this revelation. She did so with the eye doctor, tried to for the OB/GYN problems, etc. The specific content has changed, but Dorothy is treating Joyce exactly the same as she did before.
Armchair-diagnosing an armchair-diagnoser is too fun to be resisted. I’m with Sarah in this (don’t forget Sarah is unsufferable anyways, she has nothing to lose).
Armchair diagnosing, sometimes I think it’s okay to tell someone you see signs… that can lead to damage reduction but you have to be in sort of a comfortable situation, and you back up and you don’t make it a running joke if you’re not a member of the club and their social circle, and they’re cool with it!
Right? After claiming she won’t think of Joyce differently, she’s immediately putting autistic labels to everything Joyce does. It’s especially ridiculous because Joyce has rarely shown to gey tired of socializing. Even if well meaning I really want Joyce to call Dorothy out very soon.
considering joyce also found out that she possibly has this condition i don’t think she’d really know the term ‘masking’ unless teh doctor briefly went over it with her (although i suppose you can get it from context clues but still)
I thought it was already established in the comic that Dorothy will fail as a politician because she cannot reach the required hypocrisy levels. She’s being blind, not hypocritical.
Dorothy’s problem in politics isn’t going to be an inability to hyprocrit, it’s going to be that, despite her assertions, she sucks at people’ing, and people’ing is literally the one thing you need to succeed in politics.
It amazes me that a horrible human being like Kissinger is somehow still alive despite being 99 years old, while far better people have already died at much younger ages.
i mean, even if dorothy’s trying to help, isn’t asking if she’s masking kinda rude? like, “are you tired from being so fake all day?” kinda teenage girl high schooler thing but i guess that’s different
And assuming she didn’t pass out the second she lied down feels like joyce would definitely hear carla
I don’t think the question itself is rude, but in this context yes because she has no understanding of it and kind of almost weaponised the word (weaponised it for friendship but still) against someone who also doesn’t have any understanding of it because she was literally just suggested to look into it.
Plus, like, as a masker, I’d say that Joyce has been the least mask-y anyone in history has been (in comic time’s today). Just straight up “I’m in horrible pain, I’m emotional, stop talking to me and leave me alone”.
On the one hand, Sarah is kind of pushing it with the armchair diagnosing — saying “hey, these things you do might line up with this, maybe look into it?” is one thing, pushing the matter after it’s already been made clear it makes the person in question uncomfortable is another.
On the other hand, “I can’t be autistic because I’m different than this other autistic person” is not the winning argument Dorothy thinks it is. Dina and Joyce are radically different people, after all.
On the third mutant hand I just grew out of my chest, Carla’s sense of comedic timing is incredible.
I mean, Sarah is only “pushing the matter” because Dorothy is being weird and assholish about this. And quite frankly, with how “omg no i cannot be autistic i am not AWFUL AT EVERYTHING FOREVER LIKE ALL AUTISTIC PEOPLE ARE” Dorothy’s reaction has been, I would not blame Sarah for continuing to prod her about it for the sake of it either. Bigots aren’t entitled to politeness.
I mean, yeah, what Dorothy’s doing is asshole-ish, and if I have to be dragged into the comment section’s game of “Who’s The Wrong-est Person Of The Day” I’d point to her, but I feel like that could be better approached by just… telling her she’s being a weird asshole about this whole Friendship Via Google thing instead of this weird passive-aggressive turnaboutism.
Like, this could literally just be my own autism coming into play here, but I cannot understand why someone would choose this weird a form of vague indirect passive-aggression instead of just straight up skipping the bullshit and saying “hey, autistic people aren’t just a checklist of behaviors and symptoms off of Google and it’s kind of gross to immediately start treating Joyce as such just because she got a referral.”
But hey, maybe that directness is in the buffer somewhere, IDK.
I would say it’s because Sarah has not yet identified the problem as “Dorothy is treating Joyce as a checklist of behaviors and symptoms off of Google”. She can just tell Dorothy is being annoying, and the only connection her brain has made yet is “this girl is so totally autistic herself and she’s acting increasingly insufferable in insisting she’s not”.
I’ll laugh if Joyce doesn’t bring it up at all, and in a couple storylines when someone slips up or something she’ll just say “yeah I know, I heard Carla yell about it a couple days ago, good for Becky and Dina”
My impression of her finding out is pretty much the same level of excitement as her response to Jennifer’s suggesting she go see a doctor. “That’s nice. Going back to sleep now.”
I think everyone else is expecting it to be a bigger deal to Joyce than it will be. I expect she’ll be more frustrated she still has religious reflexes for her own thoughts, and that it’s unfair that Becky’s beliefs can be inconsistent in a convenient manner.
If Joyce is going to be upset at any part of it, she will be upset at Becky’s hypocrisy. Becky always talks a big game about her religion, but their whole life, Joyce actually was a true-believing near-textual-literalist fundamentalist, whereas Becky was always the one who didn’t take her religion as seriously as she was “supposed to.”
Becky thought that the covenant and community, itself, was the meaningful part of worship, and as what “God” actually was; you must remain Christian to have that sense of community, because being Christian means they can’t abandon you. Joyce actually felt that Actual God was Actual Real, and the whole point was to actually do the religious, Bible stuff, because that’s what Actual Real God wanted, and it was his approval of you which allowed you to access your community.
These two views of religion are very incompatible; so, I could see Joyce legitimately having a grumpy issue with Becky willing to literally be an out-and-proud sin-having lesbian, sexing with her hot science girlfriend out of wedlock, but still having the absurd audacity to claim she is Totally Christian, despite the fact that the religion horribly traumatized both her and Joyce, and Becky not only has no plans to deal with her own trauma, but wants to drag Joyce back into the fold of Christianity which hurt them both so deeply and thoroughly, despite Joyce telling her that accepting her atheism was like self-inflicted torture…and besides, from Joyce’s old view, Becky’s practice of Christianity is totally facile, and Becky doesn’t take it seriously at all, beyond being unwilling to abandon the label, to which Joyce no longer ascribes any real meaning.
The big problem with all this is, Joyce and Dina are likely to be in agreement about this, if it comes to a head. They both see Becky’s very real pain in this, but Becky is gonna turn around and re-traumatize Joyce, just for her own deep fear of abandonment to be satiated by “fixing” Joyce’s atheism. That’s the part that is likely to drive several women in Becky’s life, fucking berserk at her actions.
Eh, Carla is 2 different varieties of queer while living in Indiana. At least if she’s being an ass, it’ll be getting punched for something she’s earned.
Oh, absolutely, but bigots were never known for planning ahead. I’m fairly sure Carla has been through some shit, and being as excessive as she is is her reaction to that.
Which is the long standing theory for why Carla is such a performative asshole – it hurts less to have people dislike her for her performance than because she’s trans.
Mary got a pie in the face, a comedic staple since forever. Amber decked her physically and emotionally abusive father. Neither of these are equal to punching someone for being annoying.
In addition to Proxiehunter’s great points, I’ll also point out that they were discussing what would happen to someone like Carla in real life as if punching someone for being obnoxious in real life was okay (or like Carla would deserve physical violence for a bad attitude).
What happens in the comic, and the audience’s reaction to it, is kinda irrelevant to the conversation they were having.
I have been more annoying than Carla and never gotten punched. Most people don’t do that. Heck I used to have violence problems as a kid and most people never fought back.
Are you suggesting that we’re gonna find out in DoA book 19 that Dorothy and Joyce have been the same person the whole time, then a bunch of buildings blow up like at the end of Fight Club?
Fun fact: in the book the bombs didn’t go off because Tyler didn’t make them properly. Also the nameless protagonist fails to kill himself and winds up in a mental hospital (though he thinks he’s succeeded and gone to Heaven).
Willis did a very nice Slipshine of Joyce and Dorothy diddling each other, at some point. If that’s just Movie Magic® or mirrors, I’m gonna be so disillusioned.
1. Oh, so Sarah’s just giving Dorothy a taste of her own medicine here. Like, ‘if you don’t like constantly being prodded about these exact topics, why don’t you realize Joyce doesn’t like it either?’.
It would be an EASIER pick, because Carla’s a raging asshole, and those only have a shot at being amusing if you only get exposed to them in small doses.
Sarah’s actually coming off as less dickish to me than she was just before and I’m not sure why, since she’s doing the exact same thing, armchair diagnosing. Maybe it’s because it’s reading now more like she’s snarkily showing Dorothy how she was coming across with the “masking” Wikipedia comment.
Yeah, Sarah is literally mirrorinng Dorothy’s behavior back at her. Plus, it’s increasingly obvious that unlike Dorothy, Sarah actually knows what these words mean and has known it for longer than 5 minutes. It’s not armchair diagnosing if you do actually know a significant amount on the topic, like to the tune of someone who ALSO ACTUALLY IS THE THING… like I’d like you to look me in the eyes and tell me Sarah is neurotypical…
Messing around with pages 2 and 3 now. Since I changed the shirt to the tanktop there’s a bit more butt poking out and it’s giving me trouble. Also I’ve definitely made her a bit more busty than canon…but…
Coming along great, love the linework! You pack such expressiveness into your illustrations while keeping things to a minimum. IMO that’s really difficult to do well & this feels really pro to me.
To be fair to Carla she doesn’t know who most people are and wasn’t there for the context.
Also I still do not think Dorothy is autistic Sarah basis for saying Dorothy is autisitc in terns her need to be organized and that she has some social awkwardness. Once again being hyper organized and driven to research is not necessarily an autistic trait and minor social awkwarness doesnt mean Dotty is autistic it can be just as harmful to diagnosie someone with a condition they dont have. Dorothy could be neurodivergent in terms OCD but we shouldnt assume she is based on Sarah’s commentary.
I’m with the bulk of the comments in believing that Sarah is deliberately prodding Dorothy this way, to try to demonstrate to Dorothy that she’s being an absolutely disgusting bongo to Joyce by treating her this way. She is, in fact, mirroring Dorothy’s own behavior back at her.
Also, a good point to remember when you’re contrasting OCD and ASD, is that OCD and ASD are both common misdiagnoses of one another, and OCD is frequently co-morbid with ADHD and ASD, as well. Lots of kids who are ASD get diagnosed as OCD first, or vice versa, and coping with being neurodivergent can easily cause the presentation of OCD-like behaviors and symptoms, as an over-correct for ones own deficits not being acknowledged and accommodated.
So, if Dorothy is autistic, most doctors would probably diagnose her with OCD, anyway, because she’s an adult woman, and 99.999% of doctors wouldn’t attempt to evaluate an adult for autism if you put a billion dollar prize on it. But, they’d also be reticent to diagnose her with OCD, even if she has it, because it makes her “high-functioning” and therefore, it can’t quite be a “disorder,” now, can it?
The shambles of mental health care in our world is fucking so exhausting.
Whether or not Dorothy is autistic, a question of “are you sure you’re not” is not overstepping when coming from someone who’s autistic themselves, which I’m from context like 99% sure Sarah is and knows she is. Look at her reaction to Joyce’s possible diagnosis, that’s an autistic welcoming a new flock member right there.
Like, yeah Sarah is not being tactful about this, but Dorothy is being 100% worse, and very much could use some correction and education on the topic.
We don’t even know if Joyce is yet! She’s only got a referral not a diagnosis!
I’m a little surprised about this Dorothy dialogue— you’d think as mom friend she’d attribute Joyce’s tiredness to having a LOT to go through that day. (Even if it’s actually the uterus.). I will attribute it to being 19.
I mean the comment section has been calling out Joyce as autistic for a WHILE. IIRC people just backed off bc Willis said it was his own traits he put in her and we kinda gave him space about that.
Okay, everyone, it’s been like 3 days, can we all just accept that, yes, Sarah and Dorothy are both kinda being assholes right now and stop trying to litigate which of them is the bigger asshole?
Well, it’s easy to use as a weapon, because it instantly paints the target as a very specific type of Bad Person and puts them in the defensive. And societally, we’ve for some reason decided that “defending yourself” and “being guilty/the aggressor” are the same thing, so it’s a powerful tool to have in your belt. Especially when you’re deliberately co-opting terms designed to help people and using them in bad faith to shut others down, which is basically all A Certain Type Of Liberal wants to do, because they’re empty inside and need to make it everyone else’s problem.
Yeah I’m sad that some people in Europe are importing this way of thinking from the US.
I remember a couple of years ago I read two people arguing on Facebook and one of them was so full of the other person’s shit that ended up insulting her, I think calling her stupid or something worse like retarded, and her response was calling him an ableist. Girl, he’s insulting you, do you really think he cares about that? lol You don’t insult people with nice words. The problem lies elsewhere, not in his use of one specific insult.
If we don’t keep rioting what am I going to do with all these torches and pitchforks…you’re just trying to put hardworking angry mob suppliers out of business 🙁
Who cares which ones being a “bigger” jerk? That’s silly. It’s more important to decide which one’s being the funnier jerk, and I gotta give that to Sarah.
Or I would, if Carla hadn’t shown up with perfect comedic timing.
See, I’m just cool with someone being an asshole to Dorothy about this. Joyce will get to be an asshole to Dorothy about it when she’s less exhausted, but it’s nice for Sarah to pinch hit for a while, while Joyce is indisposed. Dorothy absolutely deserves what she is getting, its her own behavior mirrored back at her, and she’s totally blind to it.
I always like when a character is being a complete melt and another character is just following along and doing exactly the same thing back at them. It’s good comedy.
I try not to frame interpersonal behavior as “productive/unproductive”, because what’s productive? Doing enough friendship paperwork? Hauling sufficient sensitivity ore back from the socialisation mines? Making sure you keep the meter running when you stop at a red light in your interaxi*? I might be getting carried away with these tortured wordplays, but hopefully the point hasn’t been buried.
I think they are using productive vs unproductive more like constructive vs destructive. Like it isn’t very productive to your goal is to create understanding to irritate someone and put them on the defensive.
True. I’d say her weird spreadsheet (or list or whatever it was, I’m not checking right now) qualifies, from back during her bizarre “I wanna be RA and this is definitely up for a vote right now” period. Seriously, what the hell was up with that and why was she so convinced it was aligned with reality?
Autism diagnosis aside, I think Dorothy still hasn’t fully grasped that Joyce has gone through some pretty significant personality shifts, and that Joyce gradually becoming less dependent on her to get by.
Also I think Sarah’s gripe with Dorothy has more to do with her making projects out of her friends when they are distressed.
Agreed. Why would it be worrisome to Dorothy that Joyce does NOT freak out at saying the word “uterus”? Expecting Joyce to have the same old hangups all the time is just trying to fit her back into the box.
Dorothy truly is the over protective mom who always remembers you at your most vulnerable/naive but writes of attempts at growth and change as “phases”. I don’t think she as even really accepted that Joyce isn’t religious anymore.
Honest question: what *would* be a good reaction in a situation like this, when your friend is ‘something’ that you don’t know very much about?
For contrast, I have heard a lot of queer people say that it’s annoying to ‘have to educate ignorant people’ when those could just Google it. Which I get, having to answer the same questions over and over must be bothersome.
And on the other hand, Dorothy gets this kind of backlash for googling Autism. Yeah she’s being obnoxious based on like one thing she read probably, but the basic impulse to look it up rather than having Joyce do all the explaining work isn’t really a bad one, is it?
It’s not her doing research that’s the issue I have, its her immediately trying to tie something as universal as “being tired” to being autistic, especially since Joyce hasn’t even gotten the diagnosis yet so arguably she’s as guilty as Sarah when it comes to armchair diagnosing
Kinda reminds me of that “trans broken arm syndrome” phenomenon, where numbskull doctors will assign “being trans” as the reason for any and all medical difficulties, with a broken arm being an extreme example for illustration.
Your insurer sounds like a prat. Then again, they’re an insurer, so I guess being a useless parasite and doing everything they can not to provide the service you pay for, it kinda comes with the territory.
Hey now, certainly us parasites can’t all be bad 😆
But yeah it just seems like its one social pyramid scheme after another with humans and their societies, at least since the neolithic era, go fucking figure
If I ever get into machine learning, I’ll make it very clear that we should definitely stop automating bigotry like this and disguising it as “science”
Bad news, machine learning is trained from human datasets, and therefore imports our bigotry and biases. It’s one of the many problems with things like facial identification and crime tracking/prediction.
Or, like, chatbots that get fed the wrong parts of the internet, they also turn out super racist and sexist.
You folks been following this story in the news about the software engineer placed on administrative leave from Google for “breaking confidentiality” after saying that its AI natural language processing program had awakened to sentience?
Funny you should mention “sentience”, I actually took a class on the philosophy of Cognition and A.I. — and I’ll say “sentience” is HARDLY the clean and cut concept most humans think it is 😮
We keep moving the sentience goalpost every time a computer reaches the one we’ve set…pretty soon we’re going to realize it wasn’t even a real thing to begin with.
(there is an SMBC comic about exactly this, but there’s no good way to search SMBC so I often can’t find the comic I’m looking for out of 20 years of them. Instead I found a related but not the same comic: https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2867#comic )
Joyce is justifiably tired of talking about it too. She’s ready to have some time with Dorothy to watch cartoons or something fun.
Trans broken arm syndrome, yikes, like the doctor just can’t stop obsessing over this one thing. In a similar vein, women often get diagnosed as depressed or anxious when they have real physical illnesses that need addressing, but so many doctors can’t see past their ingrained sexism. It all comes together when you realize America hates everyone but straight, white, males — doctors have to deprogram that like everyone else.
Another one that’s super “fun” is when a person weighing more than 130 lbs has a problem and every doctor just says “Have you tried not being a Fatty McFatterson”? as a sort of checkmate. It’s laziness and bigotry, that’s what it all boils down to in my eyes. They spend years and years getting their fancy degrees and certifications, and then expect to just coast by on some papers on their office wall without ever actually having to work.
The thing Dorothy is doing wrong, is reducing her whole person, down to her new diagnosis, and retroactively preparing to change her entire inter-personal style with Joyce, to accommodate a bunch of symptoms she saw in a pamphlet as the New Joyce who she must Handle Correctly For Joyce’s Own Good. It’s fucking dehumanizing.
Like, if in the future, Joyce gets a diagnosis, and realizes some troubles she has in one area or another, feel more justified now, or she otherwise feels differently about setting a boundary, or asking for an accommodation about something specific, she is a grown woman who can ask her friends to do that for her. But even if Joyce gets diagnosed as the most autistic adult to ever get to that age in human history, the twenty years she spent being herself don’t change. Joyce is still Joyce. So, when you have Dorothy’s attitude, you are doing several things, all of them shitty:
– You’re devaluing Joyce’s whole established self, her whole personality, and reducing it to a collection of problems that she has; the person you know, is now a list of “autism symptoms, then what’s leftover counts as personality.” Nobody deserves to have that much of their self pathologized externally, especially by a friend.
– You’re likely prescribing unwarranted meaning to anything and everything Joyce does, or doesn’t do, at a level of scrutiny that is downright invasive, and once again, dehumanizing. “Is your general physical state because you are constantly masking your latent autism” is a pretty weird and over-bearing question to ask a person who found out they might be neurodivergent, like, six hours ago; Joyce doesn’t have a damn answer to that question yet, but Dorothy wants it, because calibrating her Friend Conduct to make sure that Dorothy isn’t culpable for doing anything wrong in the future, is incredibly selfish, and is not Joyce’s responsibility, especially right now.
– You’re inherently being massively condescending to Joyce, who from her perspective, was up until several hours ago Definitely A Normal Average Person, and you are already dangling “treating her like a helpless child for the rest of her life” over her head, even if only subtextually. It’s just shitty to autistic people, in general. She’s gotten this far, so have people like Dina; Joyce is a grown adult woman, if one who is sheltered and under-prepared, she is still an independent person. Treat her like the friend you’ve known her to be for years, now, not some new weird alien entity.
At the end of the day, even if we now know she is autistic, nothing about Joyce as a person, has actually changed. What she clearly wants and needs, given that she has obviously complicated and alienating feelings about the premise of her potential neurodivergence, is the assurance her friends won’t see her and treat her differently. But, Dorothy is so obsessed with seeing everybody’s problems as her direct responsibility to solve, she regularly forgets to see them as people, first; it’s why most of the non-cast lack any real connection with her. She’s drawn to people who are willing to put up with her need to optimize and fix them; people who don’t feel at least kind of broken, can tell right away that Dorothy can sometimes be fake as fuck, even if in the most well-meaning ways.
It’s all so brutal, because not only is Sarah only grinding this against Dorothy’s nose, because Dorothy is doing exactly this to Joyce without realizing it or acknowledging it, but Dorothy’s utter indignant fury that something might be “wrong” with her, exposes her shitty attitude towards the very people she tries hardest to help, so clearly. Who knows how many people are going to blow up at who, here? They’re all going to be more justified than Dorothy, and we all know damned well she copes very poorly with actually being wrong.
Others have already explained it well but yeah: research good, trying to lead the convo about the person’s new dx bad.
It’s good that she’s educating herself about her friend’s potential diagnosis but she needs to back off a bit, give Joyce space to process (or ask HER what she needs rather than assuming based on her quick research) and basically spend a little more time listening, less time trying to fix things. And I know the latter is VERY much a major trait for Dorothy (and I get it, I used to be that way and still sometimes am) so this is probably quite the challenge for her.
It’s a common impulse when you find out someone has a new challenge to deal with or new information to process to want to try to “fix” it but with stuff like mental and physical health, often a person’s need to try to “fix” the problem ends up coming off/turning into more them trying to make themselves more comfortable with your diagnosis than actually really helping you. They feel awkward, they don’t know what to do, so they try way too hard to be helpful but that’s about them and their feelings of awkwardness, not actually the person it’s being directed at.
tl;dr right now she needs to step back and let Joyce take the lead, listen, learn, and then reflect on if there’s anything she can change in her own behavior that might help, but leave it to Joyce to tell her (or ask Joyce) what she specifically needs as far as advice/help and not start attributing EVERYTHING about Joyce’s behavior to her potential autism.
It’s not easy, it takes practice and time for sure, and there’s usually conflict along the way, when an established friendship is suddenly facing one person dealing with a new major diagnosis like this.
Take an hour to google it *extensively*. And then not act as an expert and maybe ask friends who you know are also autistic (like Dina, not unlikely Amber). Ask Sarah who spends more face time with Joyce (and also is likely autistic, not that Dorothy’d realize that). And then google some more.
The first step is honestly spending enough time googling it that you don’t take it as offensive when someone suggests you might be the thing. That’s one reaction that’s definitely shitty, bigoted behavior.
My reply will focus on your question “What would be a good way to handle it?”
In pretty much any situation like this the best response imo is to take the person’s lead on it. Obviously Joyce is not in the space to think about it at the moment, and a lot of people need time to reflect on it themselves.
Showing empathy and support is important, asking how they feel about it, and showing compassion for whatever they say ( “It sounds like you’re unsure/confused/sceptical/anxious about the referral” ) and showing that you are both willing to support them in the way they need AND that you’ll respect their boundaries ( “If you want to talk about it, I’d be happy to listen so you can sort out your thoughts, but if you’d like some time then I’ll respect that”).
Practical help is good too, not even directly connected to the issue, like, knowing that Joyce doesn’t have the spoons to deal with a lot at the moment Dotty could offer to bring her food and supplies or to take notes in class and let the teachers know she’s unwell so she can recover.
Research is absolutely great, like others have said, but not to be used against Joyce. Dorothy should be googling “how do I support someone going through xyz”. Something that I do when I know someone is exploring their neurotype or are supporting someone else is that I offer to send them resources, like youtube or podcasts. If they don’t want it, I don’t push it. If Joyce thought it was helpful, she could also offer to find out what sort of information the Dr will want from her and help to put it together so that Joyce isn’t on the spot.
Long-story short, the best thing to do is to listen, empathise and respect that this is an extremely personal journey and that it’s up to Joyce what support she needs.
I would have thought she’d have better google skills. IRL when you google because you’re trying to support someone dealing with a diagnosis of any kind you are sure to come across a page that says, “Things not to say to someone with X.” It’s like she just googled “what is autism” and not “how to support someone with autism.” Though who knows, maybe she hit one of those cult websites I hear about, but even I know that autism speaks is bad news.
Looking again at panel 4, Dorothy doesn’t see the irony that what she accuses Sarah of is basically what she’s been doing uh. Was probably looking the supposed usual symptoms on her phone too.
Well, this throws a whole different light on Dorothy’s relationship to Becky- she doesn’t let the irritation shine through with her the way she is with Sarah. Of course, Sarah was never a project of Dorothy’s, as well.
Yeah, Becky needs support, so therefore, you must have perfect clinical affect with her, at all times. Sarah Has Her Shit Together, and thus she is Dorothy’s peer, and thus Sarah does not require coddling or kids gloves.
You know, unlike Becky, and Joyce, and Dina. Once someone is marginalized, you must treat them with perpetual, hyper-competent support, at any cost; everybody “normal” can get fucked, until they’ve been specifically wronged. It’s the standard behavior of the well-meaning-but-superior College Progressive. Learning to treat everybody as if they deserve care and respect, that takes some practice.
I am liking Sarah’s snark here. Seems like she’s basically doing to Dorothy what Dorothy is doing to Joyce and I am all for this
Never liked being looked at as a subject for research or something (…Which is funny as I was used as a subject for research by my child psych to write a paper on autism)
The phrase “armchair diagnosis” is coming up a lot, especially with regard to Sarah. I’m not 300% sure that’s what she’s actually doing. I think she’s just mimicking Dorothy’s behavior out of annoyance. The only thing she’s missing is a “That’s you. That’s what you sound like.” I really don’t think she’s actually assigning any traits to Dorothy in any serious or important way. It’s not actually a problem.
Sarah is, ultimately, trying to help Joyce, too. But, surprise surprise, she is also not great socially!
You know, maybe it’s not just that some of the cast is likely neurodivergent. Maybe teens and twenty-somethings are just uniformly terrible at this stuff?
Eh, or the fact that ND people tend to attract other ND people because they understand each other better. I’ve seen that postulated a few times and it would certainly explain my friend group!
About a decade ago I was talking to my mother about an article I read which describe a young autistic boy as not playing with his toys, only lining them up.
And my mother, startled, said “Huh? But that’s how children play!”
Because all the children she had ever really spent time with – herself, her brother, all her cousins, eventually her daughters and grandchildren – played with toys that way.
It has taken nearly half my life to hammer it into my mother’s head that nearly everybody she knows is neurodiverse in some way. And at every step – somebody getting a new diagnosis, somebody pointing out that “everybody” most certainly does not do this one thing she thinks is totally normal – she’s balked. “But, if THAT is an ADHD/autism/whatever thing, surely you’re not suggesting the whole world is really whatever!?” No, Mommy. Not the whole world. Just all your friends and family.
My mother has systematically removed every single NT person from her life, just as fast as she could. She won’t associate with them any longer than she has to, and if she DOES have to she comes out of it complaining about how weird, and stupid, and boring they are. I’m reasonably certain this is how she met my father – she was actually engaged to another man at the time, but, well, that man was extremely NT and my father was extremely not, and so she decided to change grooms before the wedding. (He was fine. He married somebody else within the year, and she and my mother exchanged Christmas cards until both their husbands died.)
There’s a moral to this anecdote, and the moral is this: people like to spend time with people who are more like them. It’s not surprising that if there are two autistics and one guy with certain ADHD in a group of friends, probably all the other people they associate with show some strong neurodivergent traits.
There’s lots of other people in this dorm. We just hardly ever see them. Probably all those other people we almost never see are totally NT, 100%. But our main cast doesn’t hang around with them and vice versa, because birds of a feather and all that.
Yeah I’m trying to think and I really don’t know if ANY of my friends are NT. At least not my closest friends. My husband, oddly, might be? I guess I needed ONE NT person in my life to help me navigate all the parts of life I struggle with. XD
Then again who knows, he’s highly introverted and sometimes excessively unemotional (arguing with him is like arguing with a robot or Spock).
Amber, Dina, Sarah, Joyce and Dorothy are likely all autistic.
Walky is very, very not not-ADHD.
Ethan has an approximately 99.(9)% probability of being autistic.
IDK what Sal’s and Carla’s deals are but they have Very Vibes.
…and so on.
Yeah no main character in this strip is neurotypical.
(Maybe Billie and Ruth, but only if you count “depression” as neurotypical, which I wouldn’t)
IIRC, there is a small but definite overlap between being trans and being autistic. This is probably because brains are complex, but of course the bigots have their own ridiculous explanation that involves insulting both autistic AND trans people.
(There’s also a small but real correlation between being lefthanded and being trans, probably for the same reason, but somehow the bigots and concern trolls never suggest that lefthanders just aren’t capable of knowing their own minds, or are somehow being misled into thinking they’re trans when they’re not. I WONDER WHAT THAT REASON MIGHT BE.)
Legit, I have people in my friends group that talk about their interactions with doctor-diagnosed and self-diagnosed neurodiverse people and use words and phrases that suggest they aren’t including themselves in that grouping, and I’m just sitting here like “it’d be rude to tell them, I think, but…someone’s gotta tell them right?”
Neurodiversity is absolutely like stand powers. We attract each other inherently. I’m not sure what the exact mechanism is, but I’d be hard pressed to believe any of the people I regularly talk with are neurotypical at all.
Yes, but Dorothy hasn’t scheduled her weekly self-reflection for this time block, she’s going to have to get to being self-critical about this in 3-4 business days…4-5, now that she needs to possibly clear that block for studying and reviewing her “How To Be There For Your New Autistic Friend” materials.
Yeah as someone who is super irritated by backseat medical advice (being a person with chronic illness), Sarah’s behavior here isn’t actually bugging me, I think precisely because it’s sort of satirizing Dorothy’s behavior.
Also, Sarah obviously actually knows what masking is. Unlike Dorothy. One of the two people present knows what they’re talking about, and Dorothy is not that person.
I mean, that’s a pretty broad statement I wouldn’t say always applies. I’m just saying in this very specific context I would be less bothered by Sarah’s behavior directed at Dorothy here than Dorothy’s directed at Joyce because Dorothy is being simultaneously annoyingly “over-helpful” and a bit ableist by getting so irked at the implication that she too might be ND.
Whereas Sarah is kind of needling her in a “Look you’ve got some quirks too” sort of way that to me doesn’t so much come off as armchair diagnosing but rather “stop treating it like such a foreign concept/something bad and give Joyce a break because it could just as easily be you.”
But I dunno that’s just my personal take. I have no idea if that’s what Willis intended.
Yeah I’m pretty sure Sarah is also autistic and it didn’t occur to her contextually that “you have some autistic looking traits yourself, maybe you’re too?” can come across as an… insult?? until Dorothy brought that baggage into the situation.
And then Sarah just instantly lost willingness to coddle Dorothy’s internalized ableism… because her responses and reactions here ARE THAT!!!
Is Sarah being tactful here? No! Is she obligated to be tactful when someone is being bigoted in her direction? SUPER NO
It’s not an armchair diagnosis if you’re the thing yourself and recognizing/suggesting samesies. Like, you might be wrong, but it’s a completely different thing?
The problem with armchair diagnosis is that it comes from a place of ignorance about the condition in question. Like what Dorothy is doing right now with Joyce’s fatigue, it comes across as extremely condescending. It has that undertone of “I have spent five minutes on this and can now solve the problem for everyone else forever, presumably because they were doing it all wrong all along”.
When you ARE actually an expert on the condition… because you have a kid with the condition and have educated yourself enough to know how the symptoms present in adults… or because you HAVE the condition… the game is completely different. You DO actually have insight the other person doesn’t have, because they did not have access to the information you did.
Like… nobody is calling out the gynecologist for “armchair diagnosing” Joyce because it’s clear in context that giving her a referral was a measured, proportioned and reasonable response coming from a place of knowledge about the thing.
In the same way, what Sarah is doing isn’t coming off as armchair diagnosing to me. Even if she’s wrong, all she’s doing is making suggestions based on reasonable evidence.
I can definitely see that today, but it’s a bit more difficult to apply to the earlier strip where she suggested Dorothy was autistic. Dorothy wasn’t doing anything to mimic yet – Sarah wasn’t mimicking her googling of autism.
First off, Dorothy being neurodivergent is kinda obvious to anybody with eyes and any understanding of neurodiversity. The only question is what type/s she is. Autism spectrum disorder is one, but there’s also things like ADHD, OCD, dyslexia, dyscalcula, dyspraxia, dysgraphia, hyperlexia, tourette’s syndrome, synesthesia,…
It’s actually quite… well… diverse! There’s also a lot of comorbidity where a lot of people have more than one, making the unique cocktail that makes up our brains. Like also recognizes like and just like LGBTQ+ people, we are drawn to one another rather we have a label yet or not!
I was actually a lot like Dorothy in school. The over analyzing. The 110% achiever. List making. Always wanting to help others… turns out I had ADHD, OCD (not obsessive cleaning person), and generalized anxiety. My ADHD is actually where I got my hyperfocus and my perfect grades came from rejection sensitivity (How To ADHD did a great video on it). Analysis Paralysis is why I froze up sometimes making decisions. I’m also a laser-focused BEAST in a crisis because I both lived with that anxiety/fear every day that cause most people to freeze up and had probably already thought out what I would do if caught in a situation that’s at least applicable (before you doubt, just know I have brainstormed plans for everything from every possible natural disaster to how to prove my identity to people I know now if I ever accidentally traveled back in time to become a younger version of myself). My greatest weakness informs my greatest strength and visa versa.
I was gonna say not ADHD because Dorothy’s ability to actually accomplish a TON of stuff baffles me as someone with ADHD, but then it occurred to me school/trying to achieve a career in politics is a major interest so yeah I could see her academic success being a hyper-focus thing.
Also her excessive organization reads VERY much like someone not realizing they have ADHD and developing their own coping methods unawares because it’s what they need to do to stay on top of things (I had many a meticulously color-coded planner in school). And I pulled it off operating like that for years and succeeding in my career before my stamina finally snapped and my executive function broke completely. I think I just forget sometimes that people with ADHD CAN do really well in subjects I sucked at (math, history, politics) if they happen to enjoy them. My interests have always been art, natural science/bio, and sci-fi/fantasy media so those are what I tend to hyper-focus on at the exclusion of all else.
Also, I sympathize. I also have anxiety, and am also a worrier/over-analyzer. I’m GREAT in an actual crisis when I don’t have time to think, only react, but as soon as I have time to think and prepare I become an anxious indecisive mess.
I might also be doing this thing now where now that I’m diagnosed I’m just seeing it everywhere. Last week I was saying Walky seems like he has ADHD, though if they both have it, just goes to show how differently it can manifest in different people but perhaps is a factor in why they clicked so well despite their differences (ND people tend to cluster together, so many of my friends have ADHD too).
Exactly! Most of my friends have ADHD and despite everything we have in common, we also express it in very different ways. I also have two friends with ASD (including my best friend) and while they are undeniably on the spectrum, how it’s expressed, their strengths/weaknesses, and their personalities couldn’t be more different. I often get too comfortable talking with my friend group and then end up feeling very self conscious when I talk to a neuro typical person and they find me weird or can’t follow my thought process or don’t “get” why I do certain things (like needing a fidget while I listen to them TO listen to them).
Learning more about myself and how my brain works (analysis paralysis, executive disfunction, anecdotal communication, hyperfixation, rejection sensitivity,…) has helped me a lot. Things like
1. Fidgets of multiple types (everything from improvised ones like silicone scrub pads to creating jewelry with beads that my brain liked from Michael’s to actual fidgets designed for it like the magnet ones, a nee-doh, and a chewer) placed everywhere so I both have them handy and enough variety to get the one I need at the moment
2. Making lists and setting multiple alarms
3. Replacing drawers and the like with a cubby system (with boxes and trays to put stuff in), bookshelves, and a hanging thing for shoes (for panties and socks) and a big see through med box. Basically if we can’t see it, we forget it exists!
4. Therapy and learning coping techniques
5. Built in breaks
6. Keeping water jugs and a glass by my bed and chair so I won’t forget to drink
7. Feeding my cat the same time I take my meds so I can’t ignore the alarm
8. Combining multiple tasks into a single task so I don’t get task switching fatigue and simplifying tasks when I can
9. Having a set food/snack to eat (regardless of quality) for those days I freeze up (my food fixation varies with last time it being hummus and corn chips)
10. Learning to ask for simple platonic physical contact to help oxytocin levels and overall mood
11. Using music to make showering and cleaning less draining
…and so on. Knowing that and why I do what I do has made me be able to see the same patterns in other people too which is both a way to pass on what I’ve learned and just neat honestly. I’m not surprised you do it too.
Nice things to hyperfocus on. I tend to like medical, biology, geology, science fiction hypotheticals, science, math (don’t get me waxing poetic about snowflakes!), psychology, mythology, gaming, how random things get made (like dice or backstrap weaving), the origins of stuff (like the history of dice or origin of creole), and animals, but there’s plenty more. One of my friends is really REALLY into history, mythology, and biology. Another is obsessed with art (making and looking at) and costume design. It makes for a really fun conversation when so many similar but different people get together and start bouncing ideas off each other. It’s the best kind of chaotic and I always look forward to their info dumps because it’s awesome to see them so happy and in their element (even when I’m lost XD ).
*Waves at proof of ADHD in the form of 3am ramblings*
Oops! O_O
Welp! Hope I don’t regret that in the morning. Yeet!
the outta sight outta mind trait is truly terrifying at times. I made a comment to a friend of mine once that got the response “uh, your brother?” and all I could reply with was “oh right, I have a brother”
Especially your part about loving infodumps and tip #8, combining multiple tasks into one to avoid task-switching fatigue, REALLY brilliant idea, reminds me of something the creator of Mario said, can’t remember tho, 😅 Neuro-fluid!!!
your interests sound awesome to me too, thanks for sharing!!!
I’m glad! It’s always awesome when I share a few of my favorite tips and tricks and someone else is like THIS! So thanks for letting me know my numbered list wasn’t as silly to share as I thought once I saw how long the post was O_O
Honestly, info dumps are fucking amazing. You just have to be respectful and accommodating of both sides. Doing things like avoiding triggers, asking the listener if they are mentally/situational in a place to listen right then (and the listener being honest but also making it clear it’s not a no but a not right now), discussing and respecting boundries (like not on x day or no more than a certain number of links per day), provide accommodation (like fidgets, offering to do it via text, using tone tags or emoji, or letting the listener know you still benefit even if they only half listen/multi task), and so on. I wouldn’t talk to my arachnophobic friend about bugs or NOT warn my friend with misophonia if something I sent them might trigger it. I’ve got one friend that LOVES walls of links (especially if it’s an animatic) while another will freeze up and not look at anything if it’s over 3. I’m fine with my best friend playing a game or coloring a mandala with limited input while I info dump or try to work out a problem out loud. They know if I have a fidget that I’m listening and that sometimes text is just easier for me to process. Communicating and being honest about our anxieties has actually made a lot of things MUCH easier. There’s none of that feeling of getting on somebody’s nerves. I don’t end up feeling drained and/or frustrated after spending an obscene amount of time typing something up only for it to go ignored and every link unclicked while my friend silently feels overwhelmed and shame/guilt. Things we need to focus, stimming, how out brains react to certain things, and how we communicate is all explained so it’s cut WAY back on misunderstandings. It’s really nice.
Thank you!!! All the other little kids wanted to be things like astronauts or generic scientists or vets. Meanwhile, I was like GEOLOGIST! XD
I was gonna say not ADHD because Dorothy’s ability to actually accomplish a TON of stuff baffles me as someone with ADHD
Fun fact, my niece who is soooooo ADHD is actually the most organized and accomplished person in our house. We’ve all got our executive function issues, but somehow she managed to figure them out before high school. I’m still not sure how she manages it, but it’s to the point where when we went to the neuropsych it was only to get confirmation of her dyslexia – we actually didn’t think the ADHD was an issue.
Turns out it is VERY much an issue, she just compensates for it REALLY WELL.
I’m pretty sure Sarah is just also autistic and increasingly aggrieved with Dorothy’s shitty reactions. “Hey maybe YOU’RE autistic” is at most friendly level teasing, from the perspective of an autistic person, and an aggressively negative reaction referencing ableist tropes (“we are different people” fucking really Dorothy???) is VERY offputting.
Think a gay person saying “are you sure you’re not gay” to a friend, and the friend getting angry in response. Like, just, wow, that was not where the conversation was supposed to be going.
It’s not fucking bigoted to tell someone that you think they might be like you!!!
She thinks she’s gonna be a left-wing politician, of course she’s afraid of standing out in any perceivable way. In 20 years, she’s gonna be caving to Republican interests at every turn and wondering why Saying Diversity Words isn’t getting her votes.
I’d actually say it’s the belief that Dorothy already thinks she’s got some mountains to climb as the first atheist Presidential candidate other than Bernie Sanders.
Neuroatypical AND atheist? Hopefully, we’re beyond woman by then.
Throw in the fact she’s terrible at networking and even Dorothy may realize she’s got no chance.
I mean, “terrible at networking” and “neuroatypical” seem to be linked, and realizing one might well help remedy the other. If Dorothy realizes networking is actually a counterintuitive activity for her and she has to activley put effort into figuring it out for the neurotype she isn’t, she might well be more successful than otherwise.
Yeah I actually really like where this is going. I mean I don’t like ableism. But a story about someone who generally considers herself fairly progressive and educated on marginalization having to realize and confront her own ableism? Yes plz, a story that we really need in times like these that does not get told enough sadly.
I’m gonna assume “attempts” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence because otherwise I am extremely jealous of Dorothy’s focus and energy. To be THAT motivated and obsessive about her goals yet still somehow get a full night’s sleep? ;__;
Then again I guess she’s a college student. I VAGUELY remember what youthful energy is like. And, granted, she is also fictional.
Yeah I used to sacrifice sleep, and still often do but I pay for it now. I used to be FINE on 6 hours a night and even the occasional 4 hour night but I think I used up my entire remaining lifetime supply of poor sleep resilience in the first year after my daughter was born, because now I feel like death if I get less than 8.
I wake up between 1 AM and 3 AM for work, I try to get between 4 and 6 hours. Sometimes I’ll fall into a depressive rut of “get up, go to work, go home, eat, sleet, repeat” and end up crashing around 5 PM. Not fun.
Good thing I’m about Sarah-level asocial, because that’s not exactly conducive to a healthy social life…
That sounds like when I was on 12 hour shifts 3 days a week, it took most of the other 4 days to recover, not to mention that I was working the nightshift and expected to function during the day when I wasn’t working.
Supposedly we get some bats on west coast US sometimes, but I never see em myself. Mostly squirrels, seagulls, opossums sometimes at night, stray cats, wild turkeys, vultures Canadian geese and ducks on some abandoned fields, and hawks too sometimes. 😄
I won’t way which state, but ill offer a hint. Here’s some music that comes from a game, whose name is shared with a dangerous yet beautiful mountain that resides here:
I’m really sad that the house spiders have flown north for the Winter. Now all I got are the possums and bush turkeys cos the dog scared away the butcher birds 🙁
I don’t wanna throw other armchair diagnoses here, but since we are not talking about real people…
Frankly, based on their respective lives and interactions with other people in the comic, I’d have assumed that Dorothy were the neurodivergent one, not Joyce.
Non-neurotypical people flock together. Amber, Dina, Joyce, Dorothy and Sarah all get along because there is a level on which they see each other’s quirks as perfectly reasonable and not hard to accomodate, in a way most of the rest of the world doesn’t.
Joyce and Dorothy are just the two of them who hadn’t realized that about themselves.
Ahh the “I just learned about your condition 5 minutes ago and am already over helping!” friend…they mean well but can be exhausting and are often not actually helping.
I for one admire Willis’s dedication to his characters wearing patterned clothes, the stripes on Carla’s outfit, the gradient on Sarahs… So pretty. I love how Willis colors things.
Same! Any time someone has pink plaid on (Joyce had pink and green plaid once I think?) I love it. So pretty.
Plaid is one of those things that is veeery tedious to color but well worth the end result if you do it right. And I actually find the process really soothing in its tedium.
So, Willis, are you trying to tell us something about armchair-diagnosing webcomic characters? Sorry I have to ask, but I’m usually as thick as Dorothy.
Also I’m gonna say that the reason I personally find Dorothy more annoying than Sarah is because most of what Joyce is interacting with. Sarah’s comments are rude but she’s also not following Joyce in their room and giving space, whereas Dorothy is pestering over something she barely understands
(I haven’t seen any indication that Dorothy has interacted with an autistic in the series that would indicate she was told about some lived experience, though that still wouldn’t make her an expert)
I’m over hear just wondering how Dina’s gonna react to these misconceptions 😵💫
If Dina intellectually kicking Dorothy’s and Sarah’s ass is necessary for Joyce to get the space she deserves, so be it. Joyce has already been denied the room for her growing pains re: atheism, and now she needs that room, that safe space more than ever 🥺
Yea, definitely thinking of that. I’m loving how much we’re seeing of Dina, feels like she’s able to be more of a fully fleshed out character instead of just an expected type. Like I’m always a little weary of asexual autistic characters but she got a wonderful exploration of that that didn’t deny her relationship to sex
Golly I hope Joyce gets some space, and maybe some supportive community, probably online like most of us but it would be nice to have in person. I’d like that myself(in terms of specifically neurodivergence)
Yeah, now I just wish that the equivalent of this wonderful, accepting, accessible community existed for Joyce. 😞
She’s already been through so much growing pain, I feel like I just want to reach my hand (tentacle?) out to her and say,
“Joyce, come with me. I know of a place, a safe space, where you can be who you want to be. There is a place, in cyberspace, where you can join in the fun.” 🥲
I’m honestly getting the impression Sarah is autistic herself, might or might not be officially diagnosed but has long known this about herself, is comfortable with it and doesn’t see it as a negative.
This is also why she’s putting 0 effort into respecting Dorothy’s internalized ableism. The sheer degree to which Dorothy is instantly defensive is actually kind of offensive to all autistic people she knows? Like, Sarah’s speculation about her neurotype might or might not be accurate BUT IT SURE AS HELL ISN’T AN INSULT. Think “are you sure you’re not gay” from a gay person. Even if you’re straight AN INSULT IT IS NOT AND TREATING IT AS ONE IS YOU INSULTING THEM ACTUALLY.
Sarah definitely knows more about what “masking” is than Dorothy.
First of all? I don’t think Sarah is being ableist.
I mean, she’s not saying that Dorothy is incompetent for something because she’s autistic, that’s literally the opposite of the poitn she was making, she was speculating that Dorothy might not need so much googling because she can relate in the first place.
(And replying to Dorothy’s “masking” here is not armchair diagnosis, it’s defending Joyce and giving Dorothy a reality check on how she’s coming off)
AUTISTIC IS NOT AN INSULT. Sarah was not insulting Dorothy!!! And she backed off until Dorothy started being an ass to Joyce about it.
Which, in turn – I don’t really blame Dorothy here cause actually… I really do think Sarah is right and she’s autistic? She’s doing her best and it’s coming across tone deaf because she’s got wires all crossed in her head from masking for all her life and trying to fake a neurotype without even realizing what she was doing. She’s trying really hard and being overenthusiastic and that’s not a fucking crime.
She does need to dial that shit down and actually do some detailed research though…
Incidentally I also think Sarah’s on the spectrum and that’s WHY she’s so relaxed about this whole thing and clocks people as birds of a feather without so much as a pause.
(I don’t think that’s why she’s rude though. She’s rude because it’s her personal choice of a way of going through life. I mean, she probably made that choice because of how much of an asshole the world is to autistic people, but the decision to not put effort into trying to decipher the invisible social rules for being nice is a conscious and deliberate one. And I support her tbh)
Dorothy is getting so annoyed by Sarah’s speculation because she’s… uh… has some REALLY ableist attitudes. “We are not the same person” really Dorothy??? And Dina and Joyce are??? It’s just… really visible that she knows nothing about autism and has some ableist shit stuck in her head.
I hope she figures her shit out, because this is depressing.
Although not nearly as depressing as the comment section insisting that Sarah is ableist for insinuating Dorothy is autistic. Is she being tactful about it? No! Did she mean it in any way negatively? Not that I can see! “Your brain is spreadsheets” is literally a neutral observation when you’re autistic and don’t think it’s a bad thing? (Which it’s not)
Not to be That Guy*, but I think you might be misinterpreting a few things about people’s attitudes. I’ve thought that today’s comments have been remarkably civil and levelheaded about all this, and I haven’t actually noticed any insinuations that being autistic is bad or even that Sarah is implying it. Maybe there’s a little bit more use of the term “armchair diagnosis” than I’d personally prefer, but I’m already on record as disliking it when a lot of people repeat one specific word/phrase and seemingly refuse to use another one (like “asshole”), so that might just be me nitpicking. I’m not saying you’re inherently wrong about anything, but I do think you’re over-reading a couple of things and getting a strange conclusion about people’s intentions.
Okay, yeah, I meant “this comment section” more like for the whole comic. Kind of came in fuming from the comment section where Sarah said Dorothy might be autistic and half the comment section was like “WOW THAT INSULT IS OUT OF NOWHERE AND WAY OVER THE LINE”
Joyce says it’s her uterus. I thought it was her falopian tubes, because of this occurring every other month. So one of her tubes is playing up. But really, what do I know.
Heh, it’s been happening a lot. But not to worry, nothing happens unless a comment receives 5 flags. Even then it gets permanently unflagged if Willis has to approve it. But he’s at the mercy of the comment report plugin for the overall functionality of it.
Carla has the perfect wrong timing!!! Also, Sarah’s sarcastic gaze at Dorothy… totally justified and pure gold! But I’m with Dorothy here. Forced analysis made by friends are really annoying. Sarah needs to look at herself.
You know…I never had people armchair me after I told them I was autistic.
But, did have a lot of denial I could be autistic. I think that was much better as I could point out thing I knew were overstimming and masking and get them to adjust. So learning with them.
If I had someone armchair me, I think I’d have exploded at them. I do research on my own medical issues – I don’t need every else doing it too. I’m capable. It’s already bad enough getting “don’t be sad” about my depression… getting it about my autism rofl…so done.
I imagine having any sort of relationship with Sheldon Cooper is mostly just exhausting. I’ve watched a lot of that show and he’s never been my favorite character. It’s the voice. I can’t handle prolonged exposure to Jim Parsons’s’s perpetually-midpubescent voice.
Welcome to my world. Which is also the world of every neurodivergent who has go put up with that overgeneralizing crap that had the nerve to make itself look like “science” 🙄
Oh, boy. The infantilization and constant probing that comes with a fresh diagnosis. My favorite. Because obviously the Joyce who walked out of the exam room is a completely different person from the Joyce everyone knew that had the doctor’s appointment in the first place, now that she (probably) has a shiny new label.
/s
(In case it’s not obvious, I’m not a fan of how Dorothy’s taking this new information. Lotta bad memories…)
I’m going to offer a different interpretation of Dorothy here with regards to her irritation with Sarah.
First: she’s definitely being annoying and condescending to Joyce, and while I wish she’d knock it off, I also think it’s the worst she’s going to get.
That aside, I feel like Dorothy is not so much offended at the idea that she could be neurodivergent because it’s bad as much as she feels irritated because she’s already thought about it and come to the conclusion that she doesn’t fall under that label. Dorothy is a self-aware person. She’s also very online. I can absolutely see her sitting down and taking an online diagnostic test, and then considering the results. That’s not to say that she could be wrong, but I feel like Dorothy is the kind of person who *would* ask “well, am I X?” and come to an honest conclusion of “No”.
Backing your idea up, we’ve already been told Dorothy did exactly that regarding religion, so it’s not out of the realm of reason to figure she might have done the same with her own brain.
To delve a little deeper into my personal life, right around when I was Dorothy’s age, I had to sit down and seriously consider if I might be attracted to men. I had found myself appreciating how good some male actors looked on TV and wanted to consider “does that mean I want to smooch other dudes?” I’m not sure if I specifically knew the term “internalized homophobia” at the time, but I definitely considered how society perceived gayness at the time (2009-ish) when I did so.
But, ultimately, I came to the conclusion that no, I’m not sexually attracted to men. It’s not a knee-jerk reaction because society says that’s bad and I’m scared of what might happen, it’s that I genuinely don’t have that desire. I’m very glad I did so- it’s made me much more comfortable expressing appreciation for attractive men when I know it’s purely an aesthetic thing, and it’s also allowed me to have no trouble going to hot springs and the like where I and other dudes are naked.
So the parallel I’m drawing is that I think Dorothy may be saying “no, I’m not neurodivergent like that”* not because she’s being ableist and refusing to consider the possibility, but because she *already has* considered it and determined that the label doesn’t fit her.
*Though I do feel she may share my Generalized Anxiety Disorder, but that may be me projecting a fair bit
Possible but that seems less likely to me because of how limited her assumptions on autism seem to be: ie looking up stuff on her phone and asking Joyce if she’s tired because she’s masking and her “I can understand people” remark. Makes me feel like she has a vague awareness of what autism is but hasn’t looked into it too deeply before now (that are you masking but is very “I just googled your condition and now I am educated look how helpful I am being!” vibes). But I think had she suspected herself of having it previously and then concluded she didn’t based on analysis/research, she’d seem less “new” to these ideas.
I’m amused by the fact that Dorothy is getting annoyed at Sarah for her armchair diagnosis, while simultaneously doing the same thing to Joyce. Yes, ONE DOCTOR said Joyce should seek a diagnostic. The jury’s still out. Dorothy is already asking about masking. Whittling at Joyce’s faceted peg, be it square, pentagonal, or otherwise, to make it fit into the round hole of her perception of what is Autism.
I wonder if a more explicit call-out is coming in a comic or two.
I just realized we’ve been missing a perfect opportunity to reference a classic Doors song.
“People are Strange
When you’re a stranger
Faces look ugly
When you’re alone
Women seem wicked
When you’re unwanted
Streets are uneven
When you’re down
When you’re strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you’re strange
No one remembers your name
When you’re strange
When you’re strange
When you’re STraaaa ange”
Possibility that Jim Morrison was ND back before it was an accepted diagnosis rears its ugly head, or he could have been like me moved from place to place without landing long enough to establish strong connections. Morrison and I were both military brats, him in the late ’50s early ’60s, and me in the mid ’60s to early ’70s. I wonder how much of my mental problems were because of being ND, and how much were from having a nightmare childhood/adolescence?
I feel like Sarah is doing this because she’s defending Joyce in her own weird antisocial way. Is it a good way to go about it? No, but she’s only got the tools she has.
To all the people insisting that Sarah is simply defending Joyce, I have three questions
1) What, textually, defends that premise? Because I don’t see it. Sarah has a long history of being mean to people for no reason at all. Why assume that this is different? Especially when the needling began when the only thing Dorothy had said was “This isn’t going to change the way we feel about you”?
2) What makes it defensible to deal with interpersonal conflict by being mean to your friends to “make a point” or “teach them a lesson” instead of, I don’t know, talking to them about their behavior like a friend would.
3) What has Dorothy actually done besides say “This isn’t going to change the way we feel about you”, google autism when Joyce wasn’t looking, and ask one admittedly inappropriate question about masking? It isn’t at all unreasonable to anticipate where Dorothy’s behavior is going based on prior behavior, but she hasn’t actually DONE anything like the behavior Sarah is supposedly reflecting back at her.
I have to agree. I also think, to be honest, that it’s out of character to be this specific form of shitty. Like, Sarah’s always been on the “everyone sucks” train, thinking the worst of people- that they’re selfish and manipulative. She’s never given me an indication that she’d be ableist this way.
But she’s not defending Joyce, she’s needling Dorothy because Dorothy is “Ms. Perfect” and Sarah doesn’t like that she more or less has her life together.
You made a numerical list, so I’ll just go in order.
To answer Question 1, Sarah’s often been protective of Joyce in aggressive, sometimes unhelpful ways. Why does it need to be spelled out that she’s behaving within normally established parameters, for people to think that’s what she’s doing?
As for 2, I don’t think it really needs to be “defensible” for people to think it’s happening, especially in an environment that’s at least partially built around tearing into characters for perceived misbehavior. Like, who cares if there’s a reason for it to be okay? It’s flawed framing and not a good starting point.
For 3, as you said, Sarah is often mean for no reason. Why should she need a stronger prompt from Dorothy if she’s never needed one before? This also seems like bad framing. I don’t think anyone is saying Sarah’s not #Misbehaving with this, but it’s still happening, so what’s the use in asking us for justification?
This feels like you started at a conclusion and worked backwards from there. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.
Why, yes. Yes you are wrong. So let’s see if I can’t try again and get you to address the points I brought up.
There is no textual support that I can see for Sarah defending Joyce. Sure, Sarah has done so before, but that doesn’t mean she’s doing that here. Jennifer has had sex in the shower before, but not all instances of Jennifer taking a shower are for sex. In this case, there’s no reason to assume this behavior is defensive. Considering that this antagonism began before Dorothy did anything to defend Joyce from and that her antagonism does nothing to actually defend Joyce anyway, it’s just a bad explanation for her behavior without some kind of textual support. Maybe your support for that position is just that it seems plausible to you and you don’t have any other support. Cool. Good for you. Great analysis. Forgive me if I don’t find that in the least bit compelling.
I’m still curious what exactly Dorothy did. So far, the only thing I see is one ignorant question. Otherwise, her behavior is well within the boundaries of their relationship thus far. Will she and Joyce have to renegotiate boundaries in the light of this new information? Probably, yeah. But I don’t think we can fault Dorothy too much for not knowing yet what those boundaries are going to be when Joyce probably doesn’t know yet.
There certainly have been a number of comments to the effect of “I don’t think Sarah is being ableist, she’s just defending Joyce” or “Sarah may be being rude, but she’s not as bad as Dorothy because she’s just defending Joyce.” So yeah, I do think justification is warranted. Especially when much of that has been framed as Sarah “doing the exact same thing to Dorothy as Dorothy is doing to Joyce”. I think it’s worth asking what part of Dorothy’s single ignorant question is exactly the same as Sarah following Dorothy around with an unwanted and unrequested autism diagnosis and deliberately othering language “your brain is a spreadsheet” and “you’ve read enough books about us” (“us” here implying “people” of which Dorothy is not one).
Frankly, Dorothy is misguided. Sarah is just an asshole.
See, you started off with a weird remark there. “Let’s see if I can’t try again and get you to address the points I brought up.” As if I hadn’t already done exactly that, just not to your satisfaction. It’s weirdly combative, is all.
And then there’s the “Cool. Good for you. Great analysis.” bit, which is oddly terse and frankly comes off as condescending. I’m trying to engage you in good faith, and even admitted that I could be plain wrong, but you seem intent on framing this the same way one would frame a confrontation.
Basically, I don’t think we’re gonna see eye-to-eye on this and I’d rather not carry on with the vibe you’re putting out, so that’s just gonna have to be It. We simply don’t agree.
The pandemic has rotted by brain and I’ve spent way too much time watching political twitch streamers. I had to remind myself that normal people don’t used the term “debate pervert” and switch to something else
Personally, I find the entire concept of turning conversations into formal debates a little… well, exhausting. Especially when it’s clearly only one party who wants that.
It’s so pointless and honestly like, rude? The goal is never to actually change someone’s mind or whatever, it’s just to either chastise or look smarter than the other person. Totally getting those vibes from this person here, they sound like they’re just talking down to everyone who likes the theory and trying to come off morally superior.
She’s doing literally the thing Dorothy is doing to Joyce, to Dorothy. It’s a lazy, immature, condescending way to point out somebody’s asshole behavior. But damn if it isn’t hilarious.
Like… she’s not insulting Dorothy. She’s not being mean to her. She’s being tactless and insufferable, in a classic Sarah fashion, but she is not Mike. Her goal here is to help Dorothy and Joyce, and point first of that goal is to point out that Dorothy is likely neurodivergent herself and thus should approach helping Joyce from the point of empathy and personal experience, not from the point of googling a list of symptoms.
Like, the reason we think Sarah is defending Joyce and not attacking Dorothy is that she’s… not attacking Dorothy.
My contention is that she absolutely is attacking Dorothy; not because she’s saying Dorothy might be autistic, but because of the way she’s doing it. She’s incoming harmful stereotypes about autism and using othering and dehumanizing language. The quip about her brain being a spreadsheet is invoking the stereotype of comparing autistic people to computers or robots. The quip about “you’ve read enough books about us” implies Dorothy is not one ofus, but one ofthem. And when “us” is “people”, the implication is dehumanizing to Dorothy.
Further, Dorothy has already made clear that Sarah’s amateur diagnosis is unwelcome, but Sarah persists. And that, to me, makes her behavior seem not simply “tactless”, but actively malicious.
Now, I feel like I should clarify that I understand why autistic people in the comments are bothered by Dorothy’s behavior. It absolutely is a target spot-on example of benevolent ableism. People start attributing everything you do or think it feel to autism and that’s bullshit. “Oh, you don’t like peas? Is that an autism thing? Is it a texture problem because of your autism?” As though you’re not allowed to just not like peas. It’s pathologising your very existence. It’s a shitty thing to do. But the thing that frustrates and hurts me is that I cannot understand how people can look at both of these behaviors and say “Dorothy trying to understand her friend’s support needs and fucking up in a hurtful way is the same thing as Sarah telling Dorothy that she’s autistic because she has a weird robot brain” or trying to active benevolent intentions to those kinds of remarks.
It’s interesting but I wonder if Sarah is getting some amusement out of Dorothy and needling her because Dorothy’s reaction to Joyce reminds her a little too much of how a certain someone else treated Dina in the mall way back. Like Dorothy is more coming from a place of genuine caring for at her that probably preformative but, still.
alright lets be real, all but maybe two characters have some form of neurodivergency lmao.
also another bonding moment with sarah (I too diagnose my undiagnosed friends and mildly poke fun at them for it. they don’t deny it tho so maybe thats the difference lol)
also i’ve mentioned this before about how all these kids think they have it figured out when they really don’t. I think we’re about to see dorothy is one of the bigger offenders of this. Yes, she has a lot figured out (instead of just pretending like a lot of the others) but shes not letting herself learn new things or change her mind
Interestingly enough it’s a close parallel to how Joyce behaved in what she wanted to do and her reaction to many new things that would have shaken her convictions at the time.
As unwanted as Carla’s interruption is. I’m glad that this will hopefully force the issues between Becky and Joyce specifically and Joyce and everyone who has been tiptoing around her and certain issues in general. Not gonna lie That shit is getting old.
this is the most annoyed by the characters of this comic i have ever been in my entire life lmao. never have i seen teenagers so out of touch with reality
It’s okay when Dorothy does it because she’s a reasonably attractive, well-meaning blonde white girl. When Sarah does it, something something [racist rhetoric]. Idk, Dorothy’s sexy and all but she gets away with a lot.
I dunno. I’m autistic, but I can respect a good troll and rightly or wrongly Sarah’s been absolutely burning people alive today.
Dorothy, conversely, has been bugging the hell out of me since the whole Joyce/Becky trouble started and the current ‘IS THIS WHY YOU AREN’T WHAT I WANT YOU TO BE?’ like she’s just solved a Myst puzzle is only the latest cherry on top.
The most ironic part is that, if Dorothy actually DID understand neurodivergence, she could actually use her being neurodivergent as evidence in FAVOR of her and Joyce being “totally different people”.
Because alongside each other, all neurodivergent brains actually display even more diversity among themselves than the entirely of all brains in the human species.
But Dorothy wouldn’t know that by doing a surface-read google search, and her acting like a 12-year-old who just discovered the word “communist” is just icing on the insidious ableism cake.
re: “is this why you aren’t what I want you to be” THIS RIGHT HERE.
This is one of the biggest reasons why not only I dropped the “””autism””” label that was like a target on my back, but why I really despise the concept of “mental disorder” in general, or at least what it’s become today.
You cannot create a concept of “incorrect” mental functioning without creating alongside it a concept of “correct” mental functioning.
Considering how diverse our functioning needs are as many individuals living in many many different kinds of situations around the world, it really makes no sense to define “disorder” out side of what prevents us from attaining our most basic survival needs as humans.
It stands to reason that for the concept of mental disorder to have expanded as far as it has today, and especially with how Dorothy is using it, is nothing more than an exercise in power.
I think people are being a little hard on Dorothy but I COMPLETELY agree with what you said about mental “disorders”. My brain works differently, not worse, than other people’s brains. I will take medication if I need it to solve a problem in my life, not because this medication works well for others with the same “disorder”. Guess what, they’re not me.
I mean, it depends on the disorder. ADHD and autism, sure, very valid argument that those are cases of different not worse. Persistent depressive disorder and social anxiety disorders (going ten years strong, whoo!) I’m perfectly happy saying are dysfunctions. My ADHD is ruining my life because of how the world is built around me, but my depression making me want to no do the living thing anymore, or my anxiety paralyzing me to the point that i can’t even reach out for help, are definite problems with my brain. That’s a disorder.
(For the record my drugs are going great and the temptations to take a sewer slide are gone now but my point stands)
Gonna say I know Sarah is making a point about Dorothy being overbearing but she might have a point. I wasn’t great at making friends but I got good grades in college and had ambition for politics and was eventually crushed by not really fitting in—and I didn’t really realize how different I was until grad school even though I’d always been a big outsider since I was a child–I just always thought one day I’d figure out the world
Sarah too, though—she’s my favorite character and I totally understand losing it and flipping out on a bully and punching them, and not understanding how I could be in the wrong for enforcing rules and doing what I need to do to ensure my own success
Not saying all of these characters are autistic, and definitely not saying it’s a bad thing if they are, just it would make sense
Hey, I’m on the spectrum myself. The stuff Dorothy is doing is very insulting to me and many others on the spectrum. She’s infantalizing Joyce. At least in my case, that’s why I like what Sarah is doing – Slapping in Dorothy’s face why what she’s doing is asshole behaviour
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is it a brick joke if it fails to land 🥁
This still falls under Rule Of Funny because if the failure to land, or at least land as expected.
Trope subversion!
Carla’s timing is impecable.
This is not the best brick joke ever, but it *is* in the running.
I expected you to say “This is not the best brick joke ever. No…this is just a tribute”, or something like that. xD
I think the best brick joke ever still goes to 8-Bit Theater for the gag about four white mages killing chaos.
Good times.
Isn’t Four White Mages some kind of video game?
You beat me to it, and you are completely right.
And then a murder happened.
Carla kills Rachel for giving her faulty information.
But what were the details? So many potential killers, so many potential motives, so many potential victims.
Wait wouldn’t Joyce have still be able to hear that through the door?
Through dorm room walls? 100%.
That was my first thought, too
(oh crap I accidentally hit “flag” instead of “reply”. This new button is confusing. Sorry)
Yeah, I’ve done that twice myself, is this new, it feels new…
It was added within the past couple days
Very new, just days old.
It’s ok, it’s Flag Day. https://imgur.com/a/DhQ6kr5
Is that… Flagse?
Please tell me that flag actually exists and someone wasn’t just taking the piss when they made it, and only Sonic was added in post.
And of course you realize I have to link this now:
https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/prostrate
I also changed the stars to blue-wall-of-silence punisher skulls. But the rest is real.
How do you remember that, it was 9 years ago?
How do you ever expunge weird Sonic the Hedgehog fan art from your memory?
(Please tell me how. This is a curse.)
ADHD, mostly
The ridiculous flags reminded me of those shortspacked. They resonated in like four different ways, so I thought, let’s just turn that dial all the way up.
I’ve seen the prototype of that flag, minus Sonic, in my neighborhood. Yeah I live in a “bad” neighborhood.
Eh, it’s a 50/50 for me, especially since Joyce specifically expressed how exhausted she is. I think there was once a strip talking about how thick or thin the walls were so maybe that could add some context here.
It was Billie mentioning how thick the walls were, or she and Ruth would have been caught sooner.
Well rather than the walls, they’re talking in front of her door
Could go either way, depending on how Willis wants to run it. Perfectly reasonable if she hears, perfectly reasonable if she doesn’t.
The longer this conversation goes on outside her door, the more likely it is that Joyce will hear, by both in-comic logic and real-world logic.
Maybe, but this is a Joyce who is very, very, very much done with hearing the mouth-noises coming from the other side of the door and doesn’t want to process anything other than her pillow.
Well Carla’s a non-funny asshole now, I guess?
*hillarious and perfect you mean
“Funny”?
“now”?
Whatever are you talking about? The conversation can only go uphill from here.
Carla has always been an unfunny asshole, even in Shortpacked.
I mean there was some unintentional comedic timing in today’s strip.
Both Dotty and Sarah are being kinda insufferable… well, maybe not that much. Cranky ?
They’re both being pretty insufferable about this.
Sarah is only being insufferable in that she is completely correct.
Particularly in not backing off Dorothy’s case about this while she is actively being shitty.
It is very possible to be insufferable even if you have a pretty good point.
I mean yeah and Sarah is doing that also. However I also think she has a point IN being insufferable about it.
Sarah’s not backing off because that’s how she’s trying to get Dorothy to back off, but she’s not backing off either so they’re stuck in a feedback loop.
Feels like Sarah’s dropping hints to Dorothy what she sounds like.
too subtle hints it seems.
Yeah, I didn’t catch them well initially 😀 (to my defense, DoA updates at 6AM for me)
At some point I’m just going to have to come up with a ranking of the Top 20 Funniest Carla Strips.
She may be a pain in the rear, but she also a pain in the sides.
Reminder that when Jennifer was detoxing Joyce was immediately looking up withdrawal symptoms…
cOmPleTeLy DiFfeReNT pEoPLe
(see above how Dorothy being neurodivergent would actually support the case for her being different)
Joyce was however not running after her asking if every single thing she did was a withdrawal symptom, was she?
(I don’t remember, maybe she did? If she did it was an off-color stupid and annoying thing to do, in a very Joyce hard-to-get-angry-at way)
I feel like both Sarah and Dorothy are being annoying flavors of ableist in this strip
Regarding Dorothy: not everything an autistic person does is related to their autism (Joyce hasn’t even got a diagnosis yet so it’s hypothetical autism at this point)
Regarding Sarah: Armchair diagnosis is not cool, more so if the person you are armchair diagnosing had already expressed annoyance at you doing so
On another note I wonder if Joyce is able to hear Carla shout that right outside her door
Sarah seems to only be doing it after Dorothy’s being too pushy at Joyce, so this might just be a way of getting her to back off.
Not that two wrongs make a right, but she’s not as bad as Dorothy, at least for now.
I suspect all this is going to build up to Joyce going off on her friends for stuff like this
Sarah’s philosophy on a lot of things appears to be “two wrongs don’t make a right, but three lefts certainly do.”
Also, remember that Sarah’s most recent and salient personal and social development regarding Joyce, was “damn some of the advice I am giving you, is not working for you, and so I can’t condone that thing you just did, but maybe I am not being helpful by trying to be so hands-on and over-bearingly sisterly, and need to back off.” She isn’t gonna just come out and say that to Dorothy, but she literally just learned that lesson for herself at the end of the prior storyline.
Here that kind of makes sense, but she started with the “you’re probably autistic too” thing in their last appearance, so that’s hard to frame as getting Dorothy to back off.
COSIGNED.
What do you expect? This ableism is ALL too common, and I’ll say, a form of bigotry that’s allowed to disguise itself so easily as “compassion” and “science” is all too problematic!
It’s crap exactly like what Dorothy is doing that’s why I tend to keep my own autism to myself, I got enough “compassionate ableism” from teachers in school
So sorry to hear that. 😔
If I ever identify comfortably as “””autistic””” here, and at the same time safely navigate the world out there, it feels like I’d be speaking two different languages:
One “English” to be used here and only here, where the zeitgeist is common sense to see “autism” as instrinsically being allowed to be fluid have nobody make hurtful assumptions about it for any individual
And another “English” to use in a world at large where “autism” is risk for becoming a target on my back again after I worked so hard to remove it — a language to navigate a world-wide kingdom of predators. 😨
*plays “Kingdom of Predators* from Hunter x Hunter on hacked muzak*
I’m lucky enough that the “compassionate” sort of ableism was all I got growing up but it’s still enough that Dorothy’s response to Joyce maybe being autistic bothers me more then I expected it would
Reading this again I realize how messed up it is that I consider myself lucky that I “only” experienced ableism pretending to be kindness
Dorothy and Sarah (and honestly probably Joyce) not understanding autism and saying a bunch of stupid shit about it is something I’ve already accepted and made peace with.
P.S. I was going to say something about Carla being able to hear them, but then I got distracted when I realized that “Re:” (like what you put in email subject lines) stands for “Regarding”. That never clicked for me before. Anyway, I forgot what I was going to say, so, have a nice day, I guess!
That’s the thing I think people really, really, really are missing, about how shitty Joyce’s friends response to this has been: Dorothy probably just lapped Joyce’s autism knowledge by a full measure in the last 5 minutes on her phone, but everyone is acting as if, because this is about Joyce, that she should have processed it and have nuanced opinions about this revelation unto her self. It’s not just absurd, it’s fucking rude, and the opposite of how a supportive friend supports a friend through something like this. Literally all Joyce needed to hear, was “well you’re still You, you’re Joyce, you’re our friend and we love you.” DONE. CANNOT TOP THAT. It’s both what Joyce wanted, and what she needed, to feel less alienated and more secure. Instead, Dorothy is unintentionally pushing her away, by over-loading her with her own discomfort, and prying into her personal, emotional space, way too fast and hard.
Which, if Dorothy knew fucking anything about people with autism, hoo boy, would she think that Dorothy is a fucking smooth brain, right now. Unfortunately, Dorothy knows nothing useful about this situation, which is the one paradigm that Dorothy has no hope of spotting or accepting for herself.
I mostly agree with you in principle, but “this won’t change how we feel about you” is, in fact, the first response Dorothy had, and it didn’t seem to go over all that well…
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/told/
Well, when you read what Joyce said…is she really wrong? I know I initially read it as “uh, guys, I was expecting some resistance, here!” but as the text has followed, Joyce could have just as easily have been asserting “guys, I really, really think y’all might start treating me differently, because I know you from you being my friends this past year.”
Dorothy said what she said, because it was The Right Thing To Say In That Scenario, so Dorothy successfully AAA Full Combo’d that social interaction. Unfortunately, what she said was true about her feelings clearly didn’t hold up to even minutes of reality, as she immediately started trying to suss out all of the ways she was supposed to Treat Joyce Differently, so she could keep AAAing that friendship; a completely normal and healthy social urge to possess.
Meanwhile, Sarah’s response was completely genuine, because she was already treating Joyce in a not-an-asshole-if-they-are-autistic way because it’s her default… she clearly ACTUALLY KNOWS THINGS about it. Unlike.
I think you’re wrong here- Dorothy using her smartphone to mother Joyce is something she 100% did prior to this revelation. She did so with the eye doctor, tried to for the OB/GYN problems, etc. The specific content has changed, but Dorothy is treating Joyce exactly the same as she did before.
Yeah, agreed that Dorothy is all about Saying the Right Thing (TM) which, as we can see here, does not always lead to actually saying the right thing.
Armchair-diagnosing an armchair-diagnoser is too fun to be resisted. I’m with Sarah in this (don’t forget Sarah is unsufferable anyways, she has nothing to lose).
Armchair diagnosing, sometimes I think it’s okay to tell someone you see signs… that can lead to damage reduction but you have to be in sort of a comfortable situation, and you back up and you don’t make it a running joke if you’re not a member of the club and their social circle, and they’re cool with it!
So like, does Dorothy fail to recognize that Sara is doing exactly the same thing she(Dorothy)’s doing to Joyce?
Like, shit, at the very least HIDE the phone.
Right? After claiming she won’t think of Joyce differently, she’s immediately putting autistic labels to everything Joyce does. It’s especially ridiculous because Joyce has rarely shown to gey tired of socializing. Even if well meaning I really want Joyce to call Dorothy out very soon.
considering joyce also found out that she possibly has this condition i don’t think she’d really know the term ‘masking’ unless teh doctor briefly went over it with her (although i suppose you can get it from context clues but still)
What do you expect? She’s growing to be a politician, of course she’s gonna be hypocritical to at least an above-average degree.
I thought it was already established in the comic that Dorothy will fail as a politician because she cannot reach the required hypocrisy levels. She’s being blind, not hypocritical.
Dorothy’s problem in politics isn’t going to be an inability to hyprocrit, it’s going to be that, despite her assertions, she sucks at people’ing, and people’ing is literally the one thing you need to succeed in politics.
Dorothy is 100% a Hillary Clinton Stand-In when it comes to Politics.
Knowledgeable, experienced, eminently qualified.
Personality of wet cardboard.
This is a slander upon wet cardboard, who has the basic decency to not be friends with Henry Kissinger.
It amazes me that a horrible human being like Kissinger is somehow still alive despite being 99 years old, while far better people have already died at much younger ages.
“Too mean to die”.
“Only the good die young.”
It’s to give him a chance to realise the error of his ways before it’s too late.
(encapsulated in the aphorisms quoted by Uly and Opus)
i mean, even if dorothy’s trying to help, isn’t asking if she’s masking kinda rude? like, “are you tired from being so fake all day?” kinda teenage girl high schooler thing but i guess that’s different
And assuming she didn’t pass out the second she lied down feels like joyce would definitely hear carla
also, “waiting til she’s outta site to google” seems like it’d be kinda moot(?) if she’s just holding her phone up right in front of her
I don’t think the question itself is rude, but in this context yes because she has no understanding of it and kind of almost weaponised the word (weaponised it for friendship but still) against someone who also doesn’t have any understanding of it because she was literally just suggested to look into it.
Plus, like, as a masker, I’d say that Joyce has been the least mask-y anyone in history has been (in comic time’s today). Just straight up “I’m in horrible pain, I’m emotional, stop talking to me and leave me alone”.
The Justifiable Mayhem light just came on.
On the one hand, Sarah is kind of pushing it with the armchair diagnosing — saying “hey, these things you do might line up with this, maybe look into it?” is one thing, pushing the matter after it’s already been made clear it makes the person in question uncomfortable is another.
On the other hand, “I can’t be autistic because I’m different than this other autistic person” is not the winning argument Dorothy thinks it is. Dina and Joyce are radically different people, after all.
On the third mutant hand I just grew out of my chest, Carla’s sense of comedic timing is incredible.
I mean, Sarah is only “pushing the matter” because Dorothy is being weird and assholish about this. And quite frankly, with how “omg no i cannot be autistic i am not AWFUL AT EVERYTHING FOREVER LIKE ALL AUTISTIC PEOPLE ARE” Dorothy’s reaction has been, I would not blame Sarah for continuing to prod her about it for the sake of it either. Bigots aren’t entitled to politeness.
I mean, yeah, what Dorothy’s doing is asshole-ish, and if I have to be dragged into the comment section’s game of “Who’s The Wrong-est Person Of The Day” I’d point to her, but I feel like that could be better approached by just… telling her she’s being a weird asshole about this whole Friendship Via Google thing instead of this weird passive-aggressive turnaboutism.
Like, this could literally just be my own autism coming into play here, but I cannot understand why someone would choose this weird a form of vague indirect passive-aggression instead of just straight up skipping the bullshit and saying “hey, autistic people aren’t just a checklist of behaviors and symptoms off of Google and it’s kind of gross to immediately start treating Joyce as such just because she got a referral.”
But hey, maybe that directness is in the buffer somewhere, IDK.
I would say it’s because Sarah has not yet identified the problem as “Dorothy is treating Joyce as a checklist of behaviors and symptoms off of Google”. She can just tell Dorothy is being annoying, and the only connection her brain has made yet is “this girl is so totally autistic herself and she’s acting increasingly insufferable in insisting she’s not”.
Can’t wait to see when Joyce comes back into the hall, because she heard Carla.
I wonder, will she feel like shit and decide to deal with it later, or will she suddenly have the energy to seek out Becky and talk to her about it?
It kinda feels like she wouldn’t really care. Like even if she wasn’t tired and sleepy, she was already telling them to go for it months ago.
I’ll laugh if Joyce doesn’t bring it up at all, and in a couple storylines when someone slips up or something she’ll just say “yeah I know, I heard Carla yell about it a couple days ago, good for Becky and Dina”
I’m guessing Joyce doesn’t give two flying figs.
My impression of her finding out is pretty much the same level of excitement as her response to Jennifer’s suggesting she go see a doctor. “That’s nice. Going back to sleep now.”
I think everyone else is expecting it to be a bigger deal to Joyce than it will be. I expect she’ll be more frustrated she still has religious reflexes for her own thoughts, and that it’s unfair that Becky’s beliefs can be inconsistent in a convenient manner.
If Joyce is going to be upset at any part of it, she will be upset at Becky’s hypocrisy. Becky always talks a big game about her religion, but their whole life, Joyce actually was a true-believing near-textual-literalist fundamentalist, whereas Becky was always the one who didn’t take her religion as seriously as she was “supposed to.”
Becky thought that the covenant and community, itself, was the meaningful part of worship, and as what “God” actually was; you must remain Christian to have that sense of community, because being Christian means they can’t abandon you. Joyce actually felt that Actual God was Actual Real, and the whole point was to actually do the religious, Bible stuff, because that’s what Actual Real God wanted, and it was his approval of you which allowed you to access your community.
These two views of religion are very incompatible; so, I could see Joyce legitimately having a grumpy issue with Becky willing to literally be an out-and-proud sin-having lesbian, sexing with her hot science girlfriend out of wedlock, but still having the absurd audacity to claim she is Totally Christian, despite the fact that the religion horribly traumatized both her and Joyce, and Becky not only has no plans to deal with her own trauma, but wants to drag Joyce back into the fold of Christianity which hurt them both so deeply and thoroughly, despite Joyce telling her that accepting her atheism was like self-inflicted torture…and besides, from Joyce’s old view, Becky’s practice of Christianity is totally facile, and Becky doesn’t take it seriously at all, beyond being unwilling to abandon the label, to which Joyce no longer ascribes any real meaning.
The big problem with all this is, Joyce and Dina are likely to be in agreement about this, if it comes to a head. They both see Becky’s very real pain in this, but Becky is gonna turn around and re-traumatize Joyce, just for her own deep fear of abandonment to be satiated by “fixing” Joyce’s atheism. That’s the part that is likely to drive several women in Becky’s life, fucking berserk at her actions.
you do know in real life someone like Carla would get punched once or twice right?
Eh, Carla is 2 different varieties of queer while living in Indiana. At least if she’s being an ass, it’ll be getting punched for something she’s earned.
In real life, assaulting the beloved child of a billionaire isn’t the winning strategy you might think.
Oh, absolutely, but bigots were never known for planning ahead. I’m fairly sure Carla has been through some shit, and being as excessive as she is is her reaction to that.
Which is the long standing theory for why Carla is such a performative asshole – it hurts less to have people dislike her for her performance than because she’s trans.
You do know in real life it’s not OK to punch people for being annoying or obnoxious, right? Because it sounds like maybe you don’t.
Everyone cheers when Mary got pied, when Amber punched her dad, etc.
DoA does bend the rules a little bit for cathartic reasons.
Mary got a pie in the face, a comedic staple since forever. Amber decked her physically and emotionally abusive father. Neither of these are equal to punching someone for being annoying.
In addition to Proxiehunter’s great points, I’ll also point out that they were discussing what would happen to someone like Carla in real life as if punching someone for being obnoxious in real life was okay (or like Carla would deserve physical violence for a bad attitude).
What happens in the comic, and the audience’s reaction to it, is kinda irrelevant to the conversation they were having.
While DOA does bend the rules. I don’t remember Blane being punched by Amber anytime when it wasn’t at least sorta legally appropriate.
Eh, screw what’s “legally appropriate”. Laws don’t dictate morality, and often actively punish people who defend themselves.
Sorry I accidentally flagged you.
Suggesting that violence would happen to a transwoman in real life isn’t the flex you think it is.
And hopefully would press assault charges.
Okay, but did you have something useful to add, or was the weird violent rhetoric the entire point? She’s a cartoon, settle down there Sparky.
I have been more annoying than Carla and never gotten punched. Most people don’t do that. Heck I used to have violence problems as a kid and most people never fought back.
No I’d be her bff
I mean really, have you ever seen Dorothy and Joyce in the same place at the same time. Really think about it.
We see them both in the same place in panel 2, but honestly I’ve seen the same done easily with mirrors so this theory isn’t yet debunked.
Now that you mention it, I’m really suspicious of Joyce’s mirror collection.
Are you suggesting that we’re gonna find out in DoA book 19 that Dorothy and Joyce have been the same person the whole time, then a bunch of buildings blow up like at the end of Fight Club?
Is this before or after the big reveal of Mike’s secret identity?
Somehow both.
Fun fact: in the book the bombs didn’t go off because Tyler didn’t make them properly. Also the nameless protagonist fails to kill himself and winds up in a mental hospital (though he thinks he’s succeeded and gone to Heaven).
“Dude, I can see the line where your two shots were composited together.”
Willis did a very nice Slipshine of Joyce and Dorothy diddling each other, at some point. If that’s just Movie Magic® or mirrors, I’m gonna be so disillusioned.
Are you sure? I thought he only did canonical sex scenes
It was a single page pinup, for April fool’s i think
1. Oh, so Sarah’s just giving Dorothy a taste of her own medicine here. Like, ‘if you don’t like constantly being prodded about these exact topics, why don’t you realize Joyce doesn’t like it either?’.
2. Carla continues to be the best doa character
Second best, she’s not Dina, but no shame in being beaten by the best.
I’m sure it’d be a tough pick had she had the same amount of screen time as dina
It would be an EASIER pick, because Carla’s a raging asshole, and those only have a shot at being amusing if you only get exposed to them in small doses.
If Carla got more page time, we’d likely see a lot more beneath the asshole mask.
Carla has the best timing.
Sarah’s actually coming off as less dickish to me than she was just before and I’m not sure why, since she’s doing the exact same thing, armchair diagnosing. Maybe it’s because it’s reading now more like she’s snarkily showing Dorothy how she was coming across with the “masking” Wikipedia comment.
Yeah, Sarah is literally mirrorinng Dorothy’s behavior back at her. Plus, it’s increasingly obvious that unlike Dorothy, Sarah actually knows what these words mean and has known it for longer than 5 minutes. It’s not armchair diagnosing if you do actually know a significant amount on the topic, like to the tune of someone who ALSO ACTUALLY IS THE THING… like I’d like you to look me in the eyes and tell me Sarah is neurotypical…
Okay, yeah. Both Dorothy and Sarah are being terrible. Carla too, but that’s expected.
Dorothy is. Sarah is just justifiably increasingly pissed at Dorothy’s shitty bigoted ignorance.
https://imgur.com/a/iNfz6VI (questionably NSFW)
Messing around with pages 2 and 3 now. Since I changed the shirt to the tanktop there’s a bit more butt poking out and it’s giving me trouble. Also I’ve definitely made her a bit more busty than canon…but…
But (butt)…
Maybe starting from her ample references will help?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/different-2/
Dang, maybe I’m NOT making it big enough. I honestly wondered if I should make it bigger but decided against it but that might be the problem.
That was kind of what I thought but I don’t really art so I wasn’t going to say!
Jennifer has ALL the curves. All of them.
Coming along great, love the linework! You pack such expressiveness into your illustrations while keeping things to a minimum. IMO that’s really difficult to do well & this feels really pro to me.
Joyce is relatable. That was my plan for today.
And oh geez, Carla. XD
Hope you feel better soon.
Thank you. I’ll be fine in a couple days.
To be fair to Carla she doesn’t know who most people are and wasn’t there for the context.
Also I still do not think Dorothy is autistic Sarah basis for saying Dorothy is autisitc in terns her need to be organized and that she has some social awkwardness. Once again being hyper organized and driven to research is not necessarily an autistic trait and minor social awkwarness doesnt mean Dotty is autistic it can be just as harmful to diagnosie someone with a condition they dont have. Dorothy could be neurodivergent in terms OCD but we shouldnt assume she is based on Sarah’s commentary.
I to tire of Sarah’s armchair diagnosis.
Carla SHOULD know who these two people are by now, though. Also gleefully yelling something she was asked not to do is still asshole behaviour.
Jason asked her not to do it. Being an asshole to Jason is relatable.
I’m with the bulk of the comments in believing that Sarah is deliberately prodding Dorothy this way, to try to demonstrate to Dorothy that she’s being an absolutely disgusting bongo to Joyce by treating her this way. She is, in fact, mirroring Dorothy’s own behavior back at her.
Also, a good point to remember when you’re contrasting OCD and ASD, is that OCD and ASD are both common misdiagnoses of one another, and OCD is frequently co-morbid with ADHD and ASD, as well. Lots of kids who are ASD get diagnosed as OCD first, or vice versa, and coping with being neurodivergent can easily cause the presentation of OCD-like behaviors and symptoms, as an over-correct for ones own deficits not being acknowledged and accommodated.
So, if Dorothy is autistic, most doctors would probably diagnose her with OCD, anyway, because she’s an adult woman, and 99.999% of doctors wouldn’t attempt to evaluate an adult for autism if you put a billion dollar prize on it. But, they’d also be reticent to diagnose her with OCD, even if she has it, because it makes her “high-functioning” and therefore, it can’t quite be a “disorder,” now, can it?
The shambles of mental health care in our world is fucking so exhausting.
Whether or not Dorothy is autistic, a question of “are you sure you’re not” is not overstepping when coming from someone who’s autistic themselves, which I’m from context like 99% sure Sarah is and knows she is. Look at her reaction to Joyce’s possible diagnosis, that’s an autistic welcoming a new flock member right there.
Like, yeah Sarah is not being tactful about this, but Dorothy is being 100% worse, and very much could use some correction and education on the topic.
Oh that’d be a really fun twist
OK, but at the rate everyone’s going in this thread, the whole cast will be diagnosed with autism.
I mean given the person who wrote them is ND (idr if Willis ever got officially diagnosed?) yeah majority of the cast are gonna show some traits
I mean, I’m pretty sure that’s correct in the first place. Not the whole cast but like 80% or so actually ARE. It’s WHY THEY ARE A FRIENDGROUP.
Haha I’d love it if this turned out to be the case
We don’t even know if Joyce is yet! She’s only got a referral not a diagnosis!
I’m a little surprised about this Dorothy dialogue— you’d think as mom friend she’d attribute Joyce’s tiredness to having a LOT to go through that day. (Even if it’s actually the uterus.). I will attribute it to being 19.
I mean the comment section has been calling out Joyce as autistic for a WHILE. IIRC people just backed off bc Willis said it was his own traits he put in her and we kinda gave him space about that.
This is a solid joke, well-told and set up flawlessly. Craftsmanship worthy of respect!
I *shrieked*.
Well done aligning the plotline/dialog, Mr Willis. I laughed and applauded ^_^
Okay, everyone, it’s been like 3 days, can we all just accept that, yes, Sarah and Dorothy are both kinda being assholes right now and stop trying to litigate which of them is the bigger asshole?
Peace? In this comment section? When people can demonise every person in comic for breathing in the wrong way?
You ask too much.
Did you say BREATHING!?
How DARE you! HOW. DARE. YOU!
People BREATHE Icalasari, get over it. I’ve been breathing since I was born and I refuse to stop. I refuse death simply to breathe more.
I’m getting some Dril vibes from this comment. I dig it.
You’re just ableist towards people who can’t breathe.
Man I think “ableist” is the most abused word of the Twitter and Tumblr side of the Internet.
Well, it’s easy to use as a weapon, because it instantly paints the target as a very specific type of Bad Person and puts them in the defensive. And societally, we’ve for some reason decided that “defending yourself” and “being guilty/the aggressor” are the same thing, so it’s a powerful tool to have in your belt. Especially when you’re deliberately co-opting terms designed to help people and using them in bad faith to shut others down, which is basically all A Certain Type Of Liberal wants to do, because they’re empty inside and need to make it everyone else’s problem.
Yeah I’m sad that some people in Europe are importing this way of thinking from the US.
I remember a couple of years ago I read two people arguing on Facebook and one of them was so full of the other person’s shit that ended up insulting her, I think calling her stupid or something worse like retarded, and her response was calling him an ableist. Girl, he’s insulting you, do you really think he cares about that? lol You don’t insult people with nice words. The problem lies elsewhere, not in his use of one specific insult.
Sorry Sam, but you will be demonised for saying that webcomic characters breathe. Where do they do it, in space?
In the hammerspace between panels.
Oh! So that’s why overlapping panels feel so suffocating!
https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/batman-can-breathe-in-space
Canonically Batman can breathe in space in the Willisverse.
If we don’t keep rioting what am I going to do with all these torches and pitchforks…you’re just trying to put hardworking angry mob suppliers out of business 🙁
Co-signed.
Not much of a debate there. Sarah is clearly taller than Dorothy!
damn, you’re right.
Who cares which ones being a “bigger” jerk? That’s silly. It’s more important to decide which one’s being the funnier jerk, and I gotta give that to Sarah.
Or I would, if Carla hadn’t shown up with perfect comedic timing.
See, I’m just cool with someone being an asshole to Dorothy about this. Joyce will get to be an asshole to Dorothy about it when she’s less exhausted, but it’s nice for Sarah to pinch hit for a while, while Joyce is indisposed. Dorothy absolutely deserves what she is getting, its her own behavior mirrored back at her, and she’s totally blind to it.
I always like when a character is being a complete melt and another character is just following along and doing exactly the same thing back at them. It’s good comedy.
Very unproductive in real life. LOVE IT for my fictional characters in comedy serials!
I try not to frame interpersonal behavior as “productive/unproductive”, because what’s productive? Doing enough friendship paperwork? Hauling sufficient sensitivity ore back from the socialisation mines? Making sure you keep the meter running when you stop at a red light in your interaxi*? I might be getting carried away with these tortured wordplays, but hopefully the point hasn’t been buried.
*interaction taxi
I think they are using productive vs unproductive more like constructive vs destructive. Like it isn’t very productive to your goal is to create understanding to irritate someone and put them on the defensive.
Yeah, I like to appropriate corporate speak for this too.
Corporate speak is almost invariably greasy and alien, so I try to avoid it for things that are actually important.
It’s hilarious though.
Dorothy absolutely has friendship paperwork.
True. I’d say her weird spreadsheet (or list or whatever it was, I’m not checking right now) qualifies, from back during her bizarre “I wanna be RA and this is definitely up for a vote right now” period. Seriously, what the hell was up with that and why was she so convinced it was aligned with reality?
Okay, that was a good set-up.
Autism diagnosis aside, I think Dorothy still hasn’t fully grasped that Joyce has gone through some pretty significant personality shifts, and that Joyce gradually becoming less dependent on her to get by.
Also I think Sarah’s gripe with Dorothy has more to do with her making projects out of her friends when they are distressed.
Agreed. Why would it be worrisome to Dorothy that Joyce does NOT freak out at saying the word “uterus”? Expecting Joyce to have the same old hangups all the time is just trying to fit her back into the box.
It’s funny the alt text wonder how she even know that word when she’s right out of a medical consultation about that 😀
Pretty sure the alt text was talking about the term “masking”, as that makes a lot more sense.
Tbh I’m surprised she used the word uterus and not womb being super fundie and all…
Dorothy truly is the over protective mom who always remembers you at your most vulnerable/naive but writes of attempts at growth and change as “phases”. I don’t think she as even really accepted that Joyce isn’t religious anymore.
this was well done
Honest question: what *would* be a good reaction in a situation like this, when your friend is ‘something’ that you don’t know very much about?
For contrast, I have heard a lot of queer people say that it’s annoying to ‘have to educate ignorant people’ when those could just Google it. Which I get, having to answer the same questions over and over must be bothersome.
And on the other hand, Dorothy gets this kind of backlash for googling Autism. Yeah she’s being obnoxious based on like one thing she read probably, but the basic impulse to look it up rather than having Joyce do all the explaining work isn’t really a bad one, is it?
It’s not her doing research that’s the issue I have, its her immediately trying to tie something as universal as “being tired” to being autistic, especially since Joyce hasn’t even gotten the diagnosis yet so arguably she’s as guilty as Sarah when it comes to armchair diagnosing
Kinda reminds me of that “trans broken arm syndrome” phenomenon, where numbskull doctors will assign “being trans” as the reason for any and all medical difficulties, with a broken arm being an extreme example for illustration.
…For the purpose of denying insurance coverage, because “We don’t cover transgender healthcare.”
(Actual quote from my insurer.)
Your insurer sounds like a prat. Then again, they’re an insurer, so I guess being a useless parasite and doing everything they can not to provide the service you pay for, it kinda comes with the territory.
Yeah. I actually have pretty good insurance. You’re right, though, it just comes with the territory.
Folks are learning, though, a tiny bit at a time, over many years of complaints. And I’m getting more relaxed about teaching them.
Hey now, certainly us parasites can’t all be bad 😆
But yeah it just seems like its one social pyramid scheme after another with humans and their societies, at least since the neolithic era, go fucking figure
I just learned this and I be like WTF?!?? 😵😠
If I ever get into machine learning, I’ll make it very clear that we should definitely stop automating bigotry like this and disguising it as “science”
Bad news, machine learning is trained from human datasets, and therefore imports our bigotry and biases. It’s one of the many problems with things like facial identification and crime tracking/prediction.
Or, like, chatbots that get fed the wrong parts of the internet, they also turn out super racist and sexist.
then we’ll find a way to incorporate a “counter-weight” that’ll ensure it will favor the weak and restrain the strong
your species has already come so far, it’d be a waste to not at least TRY to avert extinction somehow
You folks been following this story in the news about the software engineer placed on administrative leave from Google for “breaking confidentiality” after saying that its AI natural language processing program had awakened to sentience?
https://news.google.com/search?q=AI+sentient+LaMDA
Streisand effect, much?
Funny you should mention “sentience”, I actually took a class on the philosophy of Cognition and A.I. — and I’ll say “sentience” is HARDLY the clean and cut concept most humans think it is 😮
We keep moving the sentience goalpost every time a computer reaches the one we’ve set…pretty soon we’re going to realize it wasn’t even a real thing to begin with.
(there is an SMBC comic about exactly this, but there’s no good way to search SMBC so I often can’t find the comic I’m looking for out of 20 years of them. Instead I found a related but not the same comic: https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2867#comic )
When you say “administrative leave”, is that meant to be code for “the Loudmouth Masher 3000”?
Something like that. Like a suspension with probation.
Why can’t real life be more like bad sci-fi in any of the fun ways? Feeding loose-lipped employees to the cyberlions is Evil Robotics 101.
Given the professional stigma attached to administrative leave, it’s arguably worse than cyberlions.
True. At least the cyberlions have cool HF chainsaw tails.
Daaang. Now I want to be eaten by a cyberlion!
…I mean, really, who wouldn’t?
IMO I’d rather be eaten by Dina with dinosaur powers
I’d die, yes, but it’d be a happy death 🥰
Joyce is justifiably tired of talking about it too. She’s ready to have some time with Dorothy to watch cartoons or something fun.
Trans broken arm syndrome, yikes, like the doctor just can’t stop obsessing over this one thing. In a similar vein, women often get diagnosed as depressed or anxious when they have real physical illnesses that need addressing, but so many doctors can’t see past their ingrained sexism. It all comes together when you realize America hates everyone but straight, white, males — doctors have to deprogram that like everyone else.
Another one that’s super “fun” is when a person weighing more than 130 lbs has a problem and every doctor just says “Have you tried not being a Fatty McFatterson”? as a sort of checkmate. It’s laziness and bigotry, that’s what it all boils down to in my eyes. They spend years and years getting their fancy degrees and certifications, and then expect to just coast by on some papers on their office wall without ever actually having to work.
#NotAllDoctors #OnlyMostDoctors
The thing Dorothy is doing wrong, is reducing her whole person, down to her new diagnosis, and retroactively preparing to change her entire inter-personal style with Joyce, to accommodate a bunch of symptoms she saw in a pamphlet as the New Joyce who she must Handle Correctly For Joyce’s Own Good. It’s fucking dehumanizing.
Like, if in the future, Joyce gets a diagnosis, and realizes some troubles she has in one area or another, feel more justified now, or she otherwise feels differently about setting a boundary, or asking for an accommodation about something specific, she is a grown woman who can ask her friends to do that for her. But even if Joyce gets diagnosed as the most autistic adult to ever get to that age in human history, the twenty years she spent being herself don’t change. Joyce is still Joyce. So, when you have Dorothy’s attitude, you are doing several things, all of them shitty:
– You’re devaluing Joyce’s whole established self, her whole personality, and reducing it to a collection of problems that she has; the person you know, is now a list of “autism symptoms, then what’s leftover counts as personality.” Nobody deserves to have that much of their self pathologized externally, especially by a friend.
– You’re likely prescribing unwarranted meaning to anything and everything Joyce does, or doesn’t do, at a level of scrutiny that is downright invasive, and once again, dehumanizing. “Is your general physical state because you are constantly masking your latent autism” is a pretty weird and over-bearing question to ask a person who found out they might be neurodivergent, like, six hours ago; Joyce doesn’t have a damn answer to that question yet, but Dorothy wants it, because calibrating her Friend Conduct to make sure that Dorothy isn’t culpable for doing anything wrong in the future, is incredibly selfish, and is not Joyce’s responsibility, especially right now.
– You’re inherently being massively condescending to Joyce, who from her perspective, was up until several hours ago Definitely A Normal Average Person, and you are already dangling “treating her like a helpless child for the rest of her life” over her head, even if only subtextually. It’s just shitty to autistic people, in general. She’s gotten this far, so have people like Dina; Joyce is a grown adult woman, if one who is sheltered and under-prepared, she is still an independent person. Treat her like the friend you’ve known her to be for years, now, not some new weird alien entity.
At the end of the day, even if we now know she is autistic, nothing about Joyce as a person, has actually changed. What she clearly wants and needs, given that she has obviously complicated and alienating feelings about the premise of her potential neurodivergence, is the assurance her friends won’t see her and treat her differently. But, Dorothy is so obsessed with seeing everybody’s problems as her direct responsibility to solve, she regularly forgets to see them as people, first; it’s why most of the non-cast lack any real connection with her. She’s drawn to people who are willing to put up with her need to optimize and fix them; people who don’t feel at least kind of broken, can tell right away that Dorothy can sometimes be fake as fuck, even if in the most well-meaning ways.
It’s all so brutal, because not only is Sarah only grinding this against Dorothy’s nose, because Dorothy is doing exactly this to Joyce without realizing it or acknowledging it, but Dorothy’s utter indignant fury that something might be “wrong” with her, exposes her shitty attitude towards the very people she tries hardest to help, so clearly. Who knows how many people are going to blow up at who, here? They’re all going to be more justified than Dorothy, and we all know damned well she copes very poorly with actually being wrong.
Others have already explained it well but yeah: research good, trying to lead the convo about the person’s new dx bad.
It’s good that she’s educating herself about her friend’s potential diagnosis but she needs to back off a bit, give Joyce space to process (or ask HER what she needs rather than assuming based on her quick research) and basically spend a little more time listening, less time trying to fix things. And I know the latter is VERY much a major trait for Dorothy (and I get it, I used to be that way and still sometimes am) so this is probably quite the challenge for her.
It’s a common impulse when you find out someone has a new challenge to deal with or new information to process to want to try to “fix” it but with stuff like mental and physical health, often a person’s need to try to “fix” the problem ends up coming off/turning into more them trying to make themselves more comfortable with your diagnosis than actually really helping you. They feel awkward, they don’t know what to do, so they try way too hard to be helpful but that’s about them and their feelings of awkwardness, not actually the person it’s being directed at.
tl;dr right now she needs to step back and let Joyce take the lead, listen, learn, and then reflect on if there’s anything she can change in her own behavior that might help, but leave it to Joyce to tell her (or ask Joyce) what she specifically needs as far as advice/help and not start attributing EVERYTHING about Joyce’s behavior to her potential autism.
It’s not easy, it takes practice and time for sure, and there’s usually conflict along the way, when an established friendship is suddenly facing one person dealing with a new major diagnosis like this.
Take an hour to google it *extensively*. And then not act as an expert and maybe ask friends who you know are also autistic (like Dina, not unlikely Amber). Ask Sarah who spends more face time with Joyce (and also is likely autistic, not that Dorothy’d realize that). And then google some more.
The first step is honestly spending enough time googling it that you don’t take it as offensive when someone suggests you might be the thing. That’s one reaction that’s definitely shitty, bigoted behavior.
My reply will focus on your question “What would be a good way to handle it?”
In pretty much any situation like this the best response imo is to take the person’s lead on it. Obviously Joyce is not in the space to think about it at the moment, and a lot of people need time to reflect on it themselves.
Showing empathy and support is important, asking how they feel about it, and showing compassion for whatever they say ( “It sounds like you’re unsure/confused/sceptical/anxious about the referral” ) and showing that you are both willing to support them in the way they need AND that you’ll respect their boundaries ( “If you want to talk about it, I’d be happy to listen so you can sort out your thoughts, but if you’d like some time then I’ll respect that”).
Practical help is good too, not even directly connected to the issue, like, knowing that Joyce doesn’t have the spoons to deal with a lot at the moment Dotty could offer to bring her food and supplies or to take notes in class and let the teachers know she’s unwell so she can recover.
Research is absolutely great, like others have said, but not to be used against Joyce. Dorothy should be googling “how do I support someone going through xyz”. Something that I do when I know someone is exploring their neurotype or are supporting someone else is that I offer to send them resources, like youtube or podcasts. If they don’t want it, I don’t push it. If Joyce thought it was helpful, she could also offer to find out what sort of information the Dr will want from her and help to put it together so that Joyce isn’t on the spot.
Long-story short, the best thing to do is to listen, empathise and respect that this is an extremely personal journey and that it’s up to Joyce what support she needs.
I would have thought she’d have better google skills. IRL when you google because you’re trying to support someone dealing with a diagnosis of any kind you are sure to come across a page that says, “Things not to say to someone with X.” It’s like she just googled “what is autism” and not “how to support someone with autism.” Though who knows, maybe she hit one of those cult websites I hear about, but even I know that autism speaks is bad news.
yeah she probably just googled “what is autism” or even just “autism”
Looking again at panel 4, Dorothy doesn’t see the irony that what she accuses Sarah of is basically what she’s been doing uh. Was probably looking the supposed usual symptoms on her phone too.
Well, this throws a whole different light on Dorothy’s relationship to Becky- she doesn’t let the irritation shine through with her the way she is with Sarah. Of course, Sarah was never a project of Dorothy’s, as well.
Yeah, Becky needs support, so therefore, you must have perfect clinical affect with her, at all times. Sarah Has Her Shit Together, and thus she is Dorothy’s peer, and thus Sarah does not require coddling or kids gloves.
You know, unlike Becky, and Joyce, and Dina. Once someone is marginalized, you must treat them with perpetual, hyper-competent support, at any cost; everybody “normal” can get fucked, until they’ve been specifically wronged. It’s the standard behavior of the well-meaning-but-superior College Progressive. Learning to treat everybody as if they deserve care and respect, that takes some practice.
As does not condescending to literally everybody, all the time.
It’s more like Dorothy considers Becky a friend and is nicer to her, Sarah and Dorothy aren’t friends.
Also I accidentally flagged your post and I am so sorry x.x fingers.
Maybe Joyce didn’t have the energy to scrunch at the word because she’s still in a bit of pain.
I am liking Sarah’s snark here. Seems like she’s basically doing to Dorothy what Dorothy is doing to Joyce and I am all for this
Never liked being looked at as a subject for research or something (…Which is funny as I was used as a subject for research by my child psych to write a paper on autism)
The phrase “armchair diagnosis” is coming up a lot, especially with regard to Sarah. I’m not 300% sure that’s what she’s actually doing. I think she’s just mimicking Dorothy’s behavior out of annoyance. The only thing she’s missing is a “That’s you. That’s what you sound like.” I really don’t think she’s actually assigning any traits to Dorothy in any serious or important way. It’s not actually a problem.
Same. Especially cuz I just don’t think Sarah really likes Dorothy enough to show any genuine concern or interest in her outside of a “gotcha”.
Sarah is, ultimately, trying to help Joyce, too. But, surprise surprise, she is also not great socially!
You know, maybe it’s not just that some of the cast is likely neurodivergent. Maybe teens and twenty-somethings are just uniformly terrible at this stuff?
Eh, or the fact that ND people tend to attract other ND people because they understand each other better. I’ve seen that postulated a few times and it would certainly explain my friend group!
About a decade ago I was talking to my mother about an article I read which describe a young autistic boy as not playing with his toys, only lining them up.
And my mother, startled, said “Huh? But that’s how children play!”
Because all the children she had ever really spent time with – herself, her brother, all her cousins, eventually her daughters and grandchildren – played with toys that way.
It has taken nearly half my life to hammer it into my mother’s head that nearly everybody she knows is neurodiverse in some way. And at every step – somebody getting a new diagnosis, somebody pointing out that “everybody” most certainly does not do this one thing she thinks is totally normal – she’s balked. “But, if THAT is an ADHD/autism/whatever thing, surely you’re not suggesting the whole world is really whatever!?” No, Mommy. Not the whole world. Just all your friends and family.
My mother has systematically removed every single NT person from her life, just as fast as she could. She won’t associate with them any longer than she has to, and if she DOES have to she comes out of it complaining about how weird, and stupid, and boring they are. I’m reasonably certain this is how she met my father – she was actually engaged to another man at the time, but, well, that man was extremely NT and my father was extremely not, and so she decided to change grooms before the wedding. (He was fine. He married somebody else within the year, and she and my mother exchanged Christmas cards until both their husbands died.)
There’s a moral to this anecdote, and the moral is this: people like to spend time with people who are more like them. It’s not surprising that if there are two autistics and one guy with certain ADHD in a group of friends, probably all the other people they associate with show some strong neurodivergent traits.
There’s lots of other people in this dorm. We just hardly ever see them. Probably all those other people we almost never see are totally NT, 100%. But our main cast doesn’t hang around with them and vice versa, because birds of a feather and all that.
Yeah I’m trying to think and I really don’t know if ANY of my friends are NT. At least not my closest friends. My husband, oddly, might be? I guess I needed ONE NT person in my life to help me navigate all the parts of life I struggle with. XD
Then again who knows, he’s highly introverted and sometimes excessively unemotional (arguing with him is like arguing with a robot or Spock).
Amber, Dina, Sarah, Joyce and Dorothy are likely all autistic.
Walky is very, very not not-ADHD.
Ethan has an approximately 99.(9)% probability of being autistic.
IDK what Sal’s and Carla’s deals are but they have Very Vibes.
…and so on.
Yeah no main character in this strip is neurotypical.
(Maybe Billie and Ruth, but only if you count “depression” as neurotypical, which I wouldn’t)
Joe…
and that’s about it, that’s the list.
Okay yeah I forgot about Joe.
That is indeed the full list.
IIRC, there is a small but definite overlap between being trans and being autistic. This is probably because brains are complex, but of course the bigots have their own ridiculous explanation that involves insulting both autistic AND trans people.
(There’s also a small but real correlation between being lefthanded and being trans, probably for the same reason, but somehow the bigots and concern trolls never suggest that lefthanders just aren’t capable of knowing their own minds, or are somehow being misled into thinking they’re trans when they’re not. I WONDER WHAT THAT REASON MIGHT BE.)
I think you mean positive correlation more than overlap. Like… of course there’s overlap, there’s no reason they would be mutually exclusive.
But yeah, it’s entirely possible Carla is in the overlap. She just hasn’t had enough screentime to tell for sure!
Yes, you’re correct, that’s definitely what I meant.
Legit, I have people in my friends group that talk about their interactions with doctor-diagnosed and self-diagnosed neurodiverse people and use words and phrases that suggest they aren’t including themselves in that grouping, and I’m just sitting here like “it’d be rude to tell them, I think, but…someone’s gotta tell them right?”
Neurodiversity is absolutely like stand powers. We attract each other inherently. I’m not sure what the exact mechanism is, but I’d be hard pressed to believe any of the people I regularly talk with are neurotypical at all.
Yes, but Dorothy hasn’t scheduled her weekly self-reflection for this time block, she’s going to have to get to being self-critical about this in 3-4 business days…4-5, now that she needs to possibly clear that block for studying and reviewing her “How To Be There For Your New Autistic Friend” materials.
Yeah as someone who is super irritated by backseat medical advice (being a person with chronic illness), Sarah’s behavior here isn’t actually bugging me, I think precisely because it’s sort of satirizing Dorothy’s behavior.
Also, Sarah obviously actually knows what masking is. Unlike Dorothy. One of the two people present knows what they’re talking about, and Dorothy is not that person.
Sooooo… it’s not an armchair diagnosis if you’re only joking?
I mean, that’s a pretty broad statement I wouldn’t say always applies. I’m just saying in this very specific context I would be less bothered by Sarah’s behavior directed at Dorothy here than Dorothy’s directed at Joyce because Dorothy is being simultaneously annoyingly “over-helpful” and a bit ableist by getting so irked at the implication that she too might be ND.
Whereas Sarah is kind of needling her in a “Look you’ve got some quirks too” sort of way that to me doesn’t so much come off as armchair diagnosing but rather “stop treating it like such a foreign concept/something bad and give Joyce a break because it could just as easily be you.”
But I dunno that’s just my personal take. I have no idea if that’s what Willis intended.
Yeah I’m pretty sure Sarah is also autistic and it didn’t occur to her contextually that “you have some autistic looking traits yourself, maybe you’re too?” can come across as an… insult?? until Dorothy brought that baggage into the situation.
And then Sarah just instantly lost willingness to coddle Dorothy’s internalized ableism… because her responses and reactions here ARE THAT!!!
Is Sarah being tactful here? No! Is she obligated to be tactful when someone is being bigoted in her direction? SUPER NO
It’s not an armchair diagnosis if you’re the thing yourself and recognizing/suggesting samesies. Like, you might be wrong, but it’s a completely different thing?
The problem with armchair diagnosis is that it comes from a place of ignorance about the condition in question. Like what Dorothy is doing right now with Joyce’s fatigue, it comes across as extremely condescending. It has that undertone of “I have spent five minutes on this and can now solve the problem for everyone else forever, presumably because they were doing it all wrong all along”.
When you ARE actually an expert on the condition… because you have a kid with the condition and have educated yourself enough to know how the symptoms present in adults… or because you HAVE the condition… the game is completely different. You DO actually have insight the other person doesn’t have, because they did not have access to the information you did.
Like… nobody is calling out the gynecologist for “armchair diagnosing” Joyce because it’s clear in context that giving her a referral was a measured, proportioned and reasonable response coming from a place of knowledge about the thing.
In the same way, what Sarah is doing isn’t coming off as armchair diagnosing to me. Even if she’s wrong, all she’s doing is making suggestions based on reasonable evidence.
Sure, I said those words in that order.
Yeah, and it’s like, really fucking funny
Hard agree. I’m lovin’ it.
I can definitely see that today, but it’s a bit more difficult to apply to the earlier strip where she suggested Dorothy was autistic. Dorothy wasn’t doing anything to mimic yet – Sarah wasn’t mimicking her googling of autism.
Knows what word? Uterus?
Why did you say that name
That was an amazing set up and joke.
Perfect joke! I did not see this coming at all! It’s making me giddy!
First off, Dorothy being neurodivergent is kinda obvious to anybody with eyes and any understanding of neurodiversity. The only question is what type/s she is. Autism spectrum disorder is one, but there’s also things like ADHD, OCD, dyslexia, dyscalcula, dyspraxia, dysgraphia, hyperlexia, tourette’s syndrome, synesthesia,…
It’s actually quite… well… diverse! There’s also a lot of comorbidity where a lot of people have more than one, making the unique cocktail that makes up our brains. Like also recognizes like and just like LGBTQ+ people, we are drawn to one another rather we have a label yet or not!
I was actually a lot like Dorothy in school. The over analyzing. The 110% achiever. List making. Always wanting to help others… turns out I had ADHD, OCD (not obsessive cleaning person), and generalized anxiety. My ADHD is actually where I got my hyperfocus and my perfect grades came from rejection sensitivity (How To ADHD did a great video on it). Analysis Paralysis is why I froze up sometimes making decisions. I’m also a laser-focused BEAST in a crisis because I both lived with that anxiety/fear every day that cause most people to freeze up and had probably already thought out what I would do if caught in a situation that’s at least applicable (before you doubt, just know I have brainstormed plans for everything from every possible natural disaster to how to prove my identity to people I know now if I ever accidentally traveled back in time to become a younger version of myself). My greatest weakness informs my greatest strength and visa versa.
I was gonna say not ADHD because Dorothy’s ability to actually accomplish a TON of stuff baffles me as someone with ADHD, but then it occurred to me school/trying to achieve a career in politics is a major interest so yeah I could see her academic success being a hyper-focus thing.
Also her excessive organization reads VERY much like someone not realizing they have ADHD and developing their own coping methods unawares because it’s what they need to do to stay on top of things (I had many a meticulously color-coded planner in school). And I pulled it off operating like that for years and succeeding in my career before my stamina finally snapped and my executive function broke completely. I think I just forget sometimes that people with ADHD CAN do really well in subjects I sucked at (math, history, politics) if they happen to enjoy them. My interests have always been art, natural science/bio, and sci-fi/fantasy media so those are what I tend to hyper-focus on at the exclusion of all else.
Also, I sympathize. I also have anxiety, and am also a worrier/over-analyzer. I’m GREAT in an actual crisis when I don’t have time to think, only react, but as soon as I have time to think and prepare I become an anxious indecisive mess.
I might also be doing this thing now where now that I’m diagnosed I’m just seeing it everywhere. Last week I was saying Walky seems like he has ADHD, though if they both have it, just goes to show how differently it can manifest in different people but perhaps is a factor in why they clicked so well despite their differences (ND people tend to cluster together, so many of my friends have ADHD too).
Exactly! Most of my friends have ADHD and despite everything we have in common, we also express it in very different ways. I also have two friends with ASD (including my best friend) and while they are undeniably on the spectrum, how it’s expressed, their strengths/weaknesses, and their personalities couldn’t be more different. I often get too comfortable talking with my friend group and then end up feeling very self conscious when I talk to a neuro typical person and they find me weird or can’t follow my thought process or don’t “get” why I do certain things (like needing a fidget while I listen to them TO listen to them).
Learning more about myself and how my brain works (analysis paralysis, executive disfunction, anecdotal communication, hyperfixation, rejection sensitivity,…) has helped me a lot. Things like
1. Fidgets of multiple types (everything from improvised ones like silicone scrub pads to creating jewelry with beads that my brain liked from Michael’s to actual fidgets designed for it like the magnet ones, a nee-doh, and a chewer) placed everywhere so I both have them handy and enough variety to get the one I need at the moment
2. Making lists and setting multiple alarms
3. Replacing drawers and the like with a cubby system (with boxes and trays to put stuff in), bookshelves, and a hanging thing for shoes (for panties and socks) and a big see through med box. Basically if we can’t see it, we forget it exists!
4. Therapy and learning coping techniques
5. Built in breaks
6. Keeping water jugs and a glass by my bed and chair so I won’t forget to drink
7. Feeding my cat the same time I take my meds so I can’t ignore the alarm
8. Combining multiple tasks into a single task so I don’t get task switching fatigue and simplifying tasks when I can
9. Having a set food/snack to eat (regardless of quality) for those days I freeze up (my food fixation varies with last time it being hummus and corn chips)
10. Learning to ask for simple platonic physical contact to help oxytocin levels and overall mood
11. Using music to make showering and cleaning less draining
…and so on. Knowing that and why I do what I do has made me be able to see the same patterns in other people too which is both a way to pass on what I’ve learned and just neat honestly. I’m not surprised you do it too.
Nice things to hyperfocus on. I tend to like medical, biology, geology, science fiction hypotheticals, science, math (don’t get me waxing poetic about snowflakes!), psychology, mythology, gaming, how random things get made (like dice or backstrap weaving), the origins of stuff (like the history of dice or origin of creole), and animals, but there’s plenty more. One of my friends is really REALLY into history, mythology, and biology. Another is obsessed with art (making and looking at) and costume design. It makes for a really fun conversation when so many similar but different people get together and start bouncing ideas off each other. It’s the best kind of chaotic and I always look forward to their info dumps because it’s awesome to see them so happy and in their element (even when I’m lost XD ).
*Waves at proof of ADHD in the form of 3am ramblings*
Oops! O_O
Welp! Hope I don’t regret that in the morning. Yeet!
the outta sight outta mind trait is truly terrifying at times. I made a comment to a friend of mine once that got the response “uh, your brother?” and all I could reply with was “oh right, I have a brother”
Right!? Our memories are either like a steal trap or a colander. There is no in between.
BlueWind, LOVE this 🥰
Especially your part about loving infodumps and tip #8, combining multiple tasks into one to avoid task-switching fatigue, REALLY brilliant idea, reminds me of something the creator of Mario said, can’t remember tho, 😅 Neuro-fluid!!!
your interests sound awesome to me too, thanks for sharing!!!
I’m glad! It’s always awesome when I share a few of my favorite tips and tricks and someone else is like THIS! So thanks for letting me know my numbered list wasn’t as silly to share as I thought once I saw how long the post was O_O
Honestly, info dumps are fucking amazing. You just have to be respectful and accommodating of both sides. Doing things like avoiding triggers, asking the listener if they are mentally/situational in a place to listen right then (and the listener being honest but also making it clear it’s not a no but a not right now), discussing and respecting boundries (like not on x day or no more than a certain number of links per day), provide accommodation (like fidgets, offering to do it via text, using tone tags or emoji, or letting the listener know you still benefit even if they only half listen/multi task), and so on. I wouldn’t talk to my arachnophobic friend about bugs or NOT warn my friend with misophonia if something I sent them might trigger it. I’ve got one friend that LOVES walls of links (especially if it’s an animatic) while another will freeze up and not look at anything if it’s over 3. I’m fine with my best friend playing a game or coloring a mandala with limited input while I info dump or try to work out a problem out loud. They know if I have a fidget that I’m listening and that sometimes text is just easier for me to process. Communicating and being honest about our anxieties has actually made a lot of things MUCH easier. There’s none of that feeling of getting on somebody’s nerves. I don’t end up feeling drained and/or frustrated after spending an obscene amount of time typing something up only for it to go ignored and every link unclicked while my friend silently feels overwhelmed and shame/guilt. Things we need to focus, stimming, how out brains react to certain things, and how we communicate is all explained so it’s cut WAY back on misunderstandings. It’s really nice.
Thank you!!! All the other little kids wanted to be things like astronauts or generic scientists or vets. Meanwhile, I was like GEOLOGIST! XD
I was gonna say not ADHD because Dorothy’s ability to actually accomplish a TON of stuff baffles me as someone with ADHD
Fun fact, my niece who is soooooo ADHD is actually the most organized and accomplished person in our house. We’ve all got our executive function issues, but somehow she managed to figure them out before high school. I’m still not sure how she manages it, but it’s to the point where when we went to the neuropsych it was only to get confirmation of her dyslexia – we actually didn’t think the ADHD was an issue.
Turns out it is VERY much an issue, she just compensates for it REALLY WELL.
No, Carla, she’s obviously Amber
That was a *beautiful* buildup to a great punchline.
LOL Carla.
This is such a weird thing for Sarah to be aggressively shitty about. Like this is Mike level assholeishness.
from what I can tell, she’s just doing what Dorothy is doing to Joyce in real time. She’s hitting her with the Uno reverse.
Oop yeah you got my second thought while i was still drafting my self reply.
See if she hadn’t been saying these shitty things to Joyce earlier I could buy that
I guess it could be the other way and that she’s pointing out Dorothy’s quirks to say a quirk doesn’t equal neurodivergence so back off Joyce…?
I dunno
I’m pretty sure Sarah is just also autistic and increasingly aggrieved with Dorothy’s shitty reactions. “Hey maybe YOU’RE autistic” is at most friendly level teasing, from the perspective of an autistic person, and an aggressively negative reaction referencing ableist tropes (“we are different people” fucking really Dorothy???) is VERY offputting.
Think a gay person saying “are you sure you’re not gay” to a friend, and the friend getting angry in response. Like, just, wow, that was not where the conversation was supposed to be going.
It’s not fucking bigoted to tell someone that you think they might be like you!!!
Now that’s a good payoff!!!
Dorothy REALLY hates the idea she may be neuroatypical.
Which is interesting.
It’s a character flaw that is very believable. She may or may not be but she’s also deadset against the idea she is….abnormal.
She thinks she’s gonna be a left-wing politician, of course she’s afraid of standing out in any perceivable way. In 20 years, she’s gonna be caving to Republican interests at every turn and wondering why Saying Diversity Words isn’t getting her votes.
I’d actually say it’s the belief that Dorothy already thinks she’s got some mountains to climb as the first atheist Presidential candidate other than Bernie Sanders.
Neuroatypical AND atheist? Hopefully, we’re beyond woman by then.
Throw in the fact she’s terrible at networking and even Dorothy may realize she’s got no chance.
I mean, “terrible at networking” and “neuroatypical” seem to be linked, and realizing one might well help remedy the other. If Dorothy realizes networking is actually a counterintuitive activity for her and she has to activley put effort into figuring it out for the neurotype she isn’t, she might well be more successful than otherwise.
Yeah I actually really like where this is going. I mean I don’t like ableism. But a story about someone who generally considers herself fairly progressive and educated on marginalization having to realize and confront her own ableism? Yes plz, a story that we really need in times like these that does not get told enough sadly.
Carla remains the best.
Also, there are other, non-Carla people in this strip. They’re probably trying and failing, it seems to be the DoA way.
Wait, so if Dorothy always attempts 8 hours of sleep and gets up at like 4:30 for her morning jog, she goes to bed at like 8:30pm?
Sounds about right. She’s kind of a square.
I’m gonna assume “attempts” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence because otherwise I am extremely jealous of Dorothy’s focus and energy. To be THAT motivated and obsessive about her goals yet still somehow get a full night’s sleep? ;__;
Then again I guess she’s a college student. I VAGUELY remember what youthful energy is like. And, granted, she is also fictional.
“Study, a social life, and sleep: pick 2” was the way I heard it described to me in my college days.
Yeah I used to sacrifice sleep, and still often do but I pay for it now. I used to be FINE on 6 hours a night and even the occasional 4 hour night but I think I used up my entire remaining lifetime supply of poor sleep resilience in the first year after my daughter was born, because now I feel like death if I get less than 8.
I wake up between 1 AM and 3 AM for work, I try to get between 4 and 6 hours. Sometimes I’ll fall into a depressive rut of “get up, go to work, go home, eat, sleet, repeat” and end up crashing around 5 PM. Not fun.
Good thing I’m about Sarah-level asocial, because that’s not exactly conducive to a healthy social life…
That sounds like when I was on 12 hour shifts 3 days a week, it took most of the other 4 days to recover, not to mention that I was working the nightshift and expected to function during the day when I wasn’t working.
Not even 5 minutes and Dorothy is already pulling out unhelpful assumptions, hahahahahaha I can’t even be annoyed, that’s just so predictable
😳 yes, very worrisome just how common this is,
😃 but on more positive news, anything interesting happening Down Under? What kinds of animals do you commonly see around where you live?
Not much, only animals are local birds, mostly magpies,seagulls if you go to the beach oh and ibis
Oh I accidentally pressed the flagged button on yours and then mine
Sorry, I forgot where the reply button was twice but I want to make clear I don’t want to flag comments
I’m so bad at technology sometimes 😞
Don’t worry, I feel so clumsy with this new system too. 😞
Thanks for sharing about the animals tho! 😊 warm and fuzzy feelings coming back 🥰
Everyone gets a flag!!!
We do get kookaburras in the morning sometimes, that’s definitely a stereotype that’s true
And bats at night, in Sydney at least, lots of bats
What animals do you get where you live?(state?)
Bats?!?!? SO JEALOUS 🤩 LOVE BATS 😍
Supposedly we get some bats on west coast US sometimes, but I never see em myself. Mostly squirrels, seagulls, opossums sometimes at night, stray cats, wild turkeys, vultures Canadian geese and ducks on some abandoned fields, and hawks too sometimes. 😄
I won’t way which state, but ill offer a hint. Here’s some music that comes from a game, whose name is shared with a dangerous yet beautiful mountain that resides here:
*plays “Tristam Village” from Diablo on hacked muzak*
(I can also go on for HOURS about the states history, so tempting but no. Neuro-fluid!!! 😅)
Less around the cities but I grew up in SoCal on the outskirts of the San Fernando Valley and there were loooots of bats at dusk. They’re so cute!
That’s so cool, I don’t know Diablo much so I’ll just assume it’s a cool place
@autogatos that’s so cool, it’s something else seeing lots of bats at dusk
I imagine mobile fat fingering will also cause false flags, too
I’m really sad that the house spiders have flown north for the Winter. Now all I got are the possums and bush turkeys cos the dog scared away the butcher birds 🙁
That sucks, butcher birds are so cool. I saw one once around here in Coogee(edge of Sydney coast side)
I don’t wanna throw other armchair diagnoses here, but since we are not talking about real people…
Frankly, based on their respective lives and interactions with other people in the comic, I’d have assumed that Dorothy were the neurodivergent one, not Joyce.
They both are. And so is Sarah. IMHO.
Non-neurotypical people flock together. Amber, Dina, Joyce, Dorothy and Sarah all get along because there is a level on which they see each other’s quirks as perfectly reasonable and not hard to accomodate, in a way most of the rest of the world doesn’t.
Joyce and Dorothy are just the two of them who hadn’t realized that about themselves.
Ahh the “I just learned about your condition 5 minutes ago and am already over helping!” friend…they mean well but can be exhausting and are often not actually helping.
And she’s not going to back off until Joyce snaps at her.
Overbearing mom friends don’t help as much as they boast they do.
I for one admire Willis’s dedication to his characters wearing patterned clothes, the stripes on Carla’s outfit, the gradient on Sarahs… So pretty. I love how Willis colors things.
Same! Any time someone has pink plaid on (Joyce had pink and green plaid once I think?) I love it. So pretty.
Plaid is one of those things that is veeery tedious to color but well worth the end result if you do it right. And I actually find the process really soothing in its tedium.
Joyce just needs to wear Gingham and my life would be fufilled
Blue Gingham? After all, she’s a friend of Dorothy…
Is that a pre-DADT Navy reference?
Uh, that’s kind of snark, right?
please?
If that reference is that out of date, I’m not just old, I’m ancient…
“Friend of Dorothy” dates back at least to the 50s.
Joyce I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore D:
So, Willis, are you trying to tell us something about armchair-diagnosing webcomic characters? Sorry I have to ask, but I’m usually as thick as Dorothy.
Also I’m gonna say that the reason I personally find Dorothy more annoying than Sarah is because most of what Joyce is interacting with. Sarah’s comments are rude but she’s also not following Joyce in their room and giving space, whereas Dorothy is pestering over something she barely understands
(I haven’t seen any indication that Dorothy has interacted with an autistic in the series that would indicate she was told about some lived experience, though that still wouldn’t make her an expert)
I’m over hear just wondering how Dina’s gonna react to these misconceptions 😵💫
If Dina intellectually kicking Dorothy’s and Sarah’s ass is necessary for Joyce to get the space she deserves, so be it. Joyce has already been denied the room for her growing pains re: atheism, and now she needs that room, that safe space more than ever 🥺
Yea, definitely thinking of that. I’m loving how much we’re seeing of Dina, feels like she’s able to be more of a fully fleshed out character instead of just an expected type. Like I’m always a little weary of asexual autistic characters but she got a wonderful exploration of that that didn’t deny her relationship to sex
Golly I hope Joyce gets some space, and maybe some supportive community, probably online like most of us but it would be nice to have in person. I’d like that myself(in terms of specifically neurodivergence)
Yeah, now I just wish that the equivalent of this wonderful, accepting, accessible community existed for Joyce. 😞
She’s already been through so much growing pain, I feel like I just want to reach my hand (tentacle?) out to her and say,
“Joyce, come with me. I know of a place, a safe space, where you can be who you want to be. There is a place, in cyberspace, where you can join in the fun.” 🥲
I’m honestly getting the impression Sarah is autistic herself, might or might not be officially diagnosed but has long known this about herself, is comfortable with it and doesn’t see it as a negative.
This is also why she’s putting 0 effort into respecting Dorothy’s internalized ableism. The sheer degree to which Dorothy is instantly defensive is actually kind of offensive to all autistic people she knows? Like, Sarah’s speculation about her neurotype might or might not be accurate BUT IT SURE AS HELL ISN’T AN INSULT. Think “are you sure you’re not gay” from a gay person. Even if you’re straight AN INSULT IT IS NOT AND TREATING IT AS ONE IS YOU INSULTING THEM ACTUALLY.
Sarah definitely knows more about what “masking” is than Dorothy.
That would be a fun twist, especially considering Sarah’s own relationship to academia and scholarships
The payoff on this joke is beautiful.
Dorothy honey I get it, you wanna help, but that just comes across as annoying and pushy.
Wow, this comment section is a disaster zone.
First of all? I don’t think Sarah is being ableist.
I mean, she’s not saying that Dorothy is incompetent for something because she’s autistic, that’s literally the opposite of the poitn she was making, she was speculating that Dorothy might not need so much googling because she can relate in the first place.
(And replying to Dorothy’s “masking” here is not armchair diagnosis, it’s defending Joyce and giving Dorothy a reality check on how she’s coming off)
AUTISTIC IS NOT AN INSULT. Sarah was not insulting Dorothy!!! And she backed off until Dorothy started being an ass to Joyce about it.
Which, in turn – I don’t really blame Dorothy here cause actually… I really do think Sarah is right and she’s autistic? She’s doing her best and it’s coming across tone deaf because she’s got wires all crossed in her head from masking for all her life and trying to fake a neurotype without even realizing what she was doing. She’s trying really hard and being overenthusiastic and that’s not a fucking crime.
She does need to dial that shit down and actually do some detailed research though…
Incidentally I also think Sarah’s on the spectrum and that’s WHY she’s so relaxed about this whole thing and clocks people as birds of a feather without so much as a pause.
(I don’t think that’s why she’s rude though. She’s rude because it’s her personal choice of a way of going through life. I mean, she probably made that choice because of how much of an asshole the world is to autistic people, but the decision to not put effort into trying to decipher the invisible social rules for being nice is a conscious and deliberate one. And I support her tbh)
Dorothy is getting so annoyed by Sarah’s speculation because she’s… uh… has some REALLY ableist attitudes. “We are not the same person” really Dorothy??? And Dina and Joyce are??? It’s just… really visible that she knows nothing about autism and has some ableist shit stuck in her head.
I hope she figures her shit out, because this is depressing.
Although not nearly as depressing as the comment section insisting that Sarah is ableist for insinuating Dorothy is autistic. Is she being tactful about it? No! Did she mean it in any way negatively? Not that I can see! “Your brain is spreadsheets” is literally a neutral observation when you’re autistic and don’t think it’s a bad thing? (Which it’s not)
Like… y’all, check your own attitudes.
Not to be That Guy*, but I think you might be misinterpreting a few things about people’s attitudes. I’ve thought that today’s comments have been remarkably civil and levelheaded about all this, and I haven’t actually noticed any insinuations that being autistic is bad or even that Sarah is implying it. Maybe there’s a little bit more use of the term “armchair diagnosis” than I’d personally prefer, but I’m already on record as disliking it when a lot of people repeat one specific word/phrase and seemingly refuse to use another one (like “asshole”), so that might just be me nitpicking. I’m not saying you’re inherently wrong about anything, but I do think you’re over-reading a couple of things and getting a strange conclusion about people’s intentions.
*or any sort of “guy”, for that matter
Okay, yeah, I meant “this comment section” more like for the whole comic. Kind of came in fuming from the comment section where Sarah said Dorothy might be autistic and half the comment section was like “WOW THAT INSULT IS OUT OF NOWHERE AND WAY OVER THE LINE”
Joyce says it’s her uterus. I thought it was her falopian tubes, because of this occurring every other month. So one of her tubes is playing up. But really, what do I know.
Ovaries I mean.
(Goddammit, I accidentally flagged this post. How is there not a confirmation for that?)
Heh, it’s been happening a lot. But not to worry, nothing happens unless a comment receives 5 flags. Even then it gets permanently unflagged if Willis has to approve it. But he’s at the mercy of the comment report plugin for the overall functionality of it.
Yes, the Fallopian tube could be causing this period to be worse, but it’s not the tube that’s cramping, it’s her uterus.
Carla has the perfect wrong timing!!! Also, Sarah’s sarcastic gaze at Dorothy… totally justified and pure gold! But I’m with Dorothy here. Forced analysis made by friends are really annoying. Sarah needs to look at herself.
Sarah was pre-empting Dorothy acting Exactly Like This.
Sarah’s giving Dorothy the same treatment she’s giving Joyce. Dorothy’s just doing it with a slightly nicer tone because overbearing mom friend.
You know…I never had people armchair me after I told them I was autistic.
But, did have a lot of denial I could be autistic. I think that was much better as I could point out thing I knew were overstimming and masking and get them to adjust. So learning with them.
If I had someone armchair me, I think I’d have exploded at them. I do research on my own medical issues – I don’t need every else doing it too. I’m capable. It’s already bad enough getting “don’t be sad” about my depression… getting it about my autism rofl…so done.
Because as we all know, autism and neurodivergence exists as a singular option, and not as, say, a Spectrum.
Are you suggesting that [popular movie with an autistic character] isn’t the defining source of information?
Are you implying that Sheldon Cooper is not a character you have a love/hate relationship with?
I imagine having any sort of relationship with Sheldon Cooper is mostly just exhausting. I’ve watched a lot of that show and he’s never been my favorite character. It’s the voice. I can’t handle prolonged exposure to Jim Parsons’s’s perpetually-midpubescent voice.
No, that’s impossible! Obviously every neurodivergent person is exactly the same! /s
Welcome to my world. Which is also the world of every neurodivergent who has go put up with that overgeneralizing crap that had the nerve to make itself look like “science” 🙄
Oh, boy. The infantilization and constant probing that comes with a fresh diagnosis. My favorite. Because obviously the Joyce who walked out of the exam room is a completely different person from the Joyce everyone knew that had the doctor’s appointment in the first place, now that she (probably) has a shiny new label.
/s
(In case it’s not obvious, I’m not a fan of how Dorothy’s taking this new information. Lotta bad memories…)
(accidental flag, oopsie daisies)
Tbf, it’s not as if Dorothy infantilizing Joyce is anything new
But now she has a shiny new justification to double down!
I’m going to offer a different interpretation of Dorothy here with regards to her irritation with Sarah.
First: she’s definitely being annoying and condescending to Joyce, and while I wish she’d knock it off, I also think it’s the worst she’s going to get.
That aside, I feel like Dorothy is not so much offended at the idea that she could be neurodivergent because it’s bad as much as she feels irritated because she’s already thought about it and come to the conclusion that she doesn’t fall under that label. Dorothy is a self-aware person. She’s also very online. I can absolutely see her sitting down and taking an online diagnostic test, and then considering the results. That’s not to say that she could be wrong, but I feel like Dorothy is the kind of person who *would* ask “well, am I X?” and come to an honest conclusion of “No”.
Backing your idea up, we’ve already been told Dorothy did exactly that regarding religion, so it’s not out of the realm of reason to figure she might have done the same with her own brain.
I hate to break it to you, but Dorothy “I understand people” Keener is most definitely not “self-aware”.
To delve a little deeper into my personal life, right around when I was Dorothy’s age, I had to sit down and seriously consider if I might be attracted to men. I had found myself appreciating how good some male actors looked on TV and wanted to consider “does that mean I want to smooch other dudes?” I’m not sure if I specifically knew the term “internalized homophobia” at the time, but I definitely considered how society perceived gayness at the time (2009-ish) when I did so.
But, ultimately, I came to the conclusion that no, I’m not sexually attracted to men. It’s not a knee-jerk reaction because society says that’s bad and I’m scared of what might happen, it’s that I genuinely don’t have that desire. I’m very glad I did so- it’s made me much more comfortable expressing appreciation for attractive men when I know it’s purely an aesthetic thing, and it’s also allowed me to have no trouble going to hot springs and the like where I and other dudes are naked.
So the parallel I’m drawing is that I think Dorothy may be saying “no, I’m not neurodivergent like that”* not because she’s being ableist and refusing to consider the possibility, but because she *already has* considered it and determined that the label doesn’t fit her.
*Though I do feel she may share my Generalized Anxiety Disorder, but that may be me projecting a fair bit
Possible but that seems less likely to me because of how limited her assumptions on autism seem to be: ie looking up stuff on her phone and asking Joyce if she’s tired because she’s masking and her “I can understand people” remark. Makes me feel like she has a vague awareness of what autism is but hasn’t looked into it too deeply before now (that are you masking but is very “I just googled your condition and now I am educated look how helpful I am being!” vibes). But I think had she suspected herself of having it previously and then concluded she didn’t based on analysis/research, she’d seem less “new” to these ideas.
I’m amused by the fact that Dorothy is getting annoyed at Sarah for her armchair diagnosis, while simultaneously doing the same thing to Joyce. Yes, ONE DOCTOR said Joyce should seek a diagnostic. The jury’s still out. Dorothy is already asking about masking. Whittling at Joyce’s faceted peg, be it square, pentagonal, or otherwise, to make it fit into the round hole of her perception of what is Autism.
I wonder if a more explicit call-out is coming in a comic or two.
Dorothy: well now that’s just bad timing…
I just realized we’ve been missing a perfect opportunity to reference a classic Doors song.
“People are Strange
When you’re a stranger
Faces look ugly
When you’re alone
Women seem wicked
When you’re unwanted
Streets are uneven
When you’re down
When you’re strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you’re strange
No one remembers your name
When you’re strange
When you’re strange
When you’re STraaaa ange”
-The Lizard King
nice song, anyway
Possibility that Jim Morrison was ND back before it was an accepted diagnosis rears its ugly head, or he could have been like me moved from place to place without landing long enough to establish strong connections. Morrison and I were both military brats, him in the late ’50s early ’60s, and me in the mid ’60s to early ’70s. I wonder how much of my mental problems were because of being ND, and how much were from having a nightmare childhood/adolescence?
Carla is contributing
Scrolling through the comments again bc it’s almost 10 am and i literally have not slept 🙃
I’m totally fine
(passed out between 12:30 and like, 5. Getting my first tattoo tomorrow so please, god, let me sleep normal for once)
I feel like Sarah is doing this because she’s defending Joyce in her own weird antisocial way. Is it a good way to go about it? No, but she’s only got the tools she has.
To all the people insisting that Sarah is simply defending Joyce, I have three questions
1) What, textually, defends that premise? Because I don’t see it. Sarah has a long history of being mean to people for no reason at all. Why assume that this is different? Especially when the needling began when the only thing Dorothy had said was “This isn’t going to change the way we feel about you”?
2) What makes it defensible to deal with interpersonal conflict by being mean to your friends to “make a point” or “teach them a lesson” instead of, I don’t know, talking to them about their behavior like a friend would.
3) What has Dorothy actually done besides say “This isn’t going to change the way we feel about you”, google autism when Joyce wasn’t looking, and ask one admittedly inappropriate question about masking? It isn’t at all unreasonable to anticipate where Dorothy’s behavior is going based on prior behavior, but she hasn’t actually DONE anything like the behavior Sarah is supposedly reflecting back at her.
I have to agree. I also think, to be honest, that it’s out of character to be this specific form of shitty. Like, Sarah’s always been on the “everyone sucks” train, thinking the worst of people- that they’re selfish and manipulative. She’s never given me an indication that she’d be ableist this way.
But she’s not defending Joyce, she’s needling Dorothy because Dorothy is “Ms. Perfect” and Sarah doesn’t like that she more or less has her life together.
You made a numerical list, so I’ll just go in order.
To answer Question 1, Sarah’s often been protective of Joyce in aggressive, sometimes unhelpful ways. Why does it need to be spelled out that she’s behaving within normally established parameters, for people to think that’s what she’s doing?
As for 2, I don’t think it really needs to be “defensible” for people to think it’s happening, especially in an environment that’s at least partially built around tearing into characters for perceived misbehavior. Like, who cares if there’s a reason for it to be okay? It’s flawed framing and not a good starting point.
For 3, as you said, Sarah is often mean for no reason. Why should she need a stronger prompt from Dorothy if she’s never needed one before? This also seems like bad framing. I don’t think anyone is saying Sarah’s not #Misbehaving with this, but it’s still happening, so what’s the use in asking us for justification?
This feels like you started at a conclusion and worked backwards from there. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.
Why, yes. Yes you are wrong. So let’s see if I can’t try again and get you to address the points I brought up.
There is no textual support that I can see for Sarah defending Joyce. Sure, Sarah has done so before, but that doesn’t mean she’s doing that here. Jennifer has had sex in the shower before, but not all instances of Jennifer taking a shower are for sex. In this case, there’s no reason to assume this behavior is defensive. Considering that this antagonism began before Dorothy did anything to defend Joyce from and that her antagonism does nothing to actually defend Joyce anyway, it’s just a bad explanation for her behavior without some kind of textual support. Maybe your support for that position is just that it seems plausible to you and you don’t have any other support. Cool. Good for you. Great analysis. Forgive me if I don’t find that in the least bit compelling.
I’m still curious what exactly Dorothy did. So far, the only thing I see is one ignorant question. Otherwise, her behavior is well within the boundaries of their relationship thus far. Will she and Joyce have to renegotiate boundaries in the light of this new information? Probably, yeah. But I don’t think we can fault Dorothy too much for not knowing yet what those boundaries are going to be when Joyce probably doesn’t know yet.
There certainly have been a number of comments to the effect of “I don’t think Sarah is being ableist, she’s just defending Joyce” or “Sarah may be being rude, but she’s not as bad as Dorothy because she’s just defending Joyce.” So yeah, I do think justification is warranted. Especially when much of that has been framed as Sarah “doing the exact same thing to Dorothy as Dorothy is doing to Joyce”. I think it’s worth asking what part of Dorothy’s single ignorant question is exactly the same as Sarah following Dorothy around with an unwanted and unrequested autism diagnosis and deliberately othering language “your brain is a spreadsheet” and “you’ve read enough books about us” (“us” here implying “people” of which Dorothy is not one).
Frankly, Dorothy is misguided. Sarah is just an asshole.
See, you started off with a weird remark there. “Let’s see if I can’t try again and get you to address the points I brought up.” As if I hadn’t already done exactly that, just not to your satisfaction. It’s weirdly combative, is all.
And then there’s the “Cool. Good for you. Great analysis.” bit, which is oddly terse and frankly comes off as condescending. I’m trying to engage you in good faith, and even admitted that I could be plain wrong, but you seem intent on framing this the same way one would frame a confrontation.
Basically, I don’t think we’re gonna see eye-to-eye on this and I’d rather not carry on with the vibe you’re putting out, so that’s just gonna have to be It. We simply don’t agree.
Ngl you’re coming off as kind of a debate bro here. And also just, generally condescending and dickish
Lol “a debate bro”. I hate knowing exactly what you mean by that
The pandemic has rotted by brain and I’ve spent way too much time watching political twitch streamers. I had to remind myself that normal people don’t used the term “debate pervert” and switch to something else
Personally, I find the entire concept of turning conversations into formal debates a little… well, exhausting. Especially when it’s clearly only one party who wants that.
It’s so pointless and honestly like, rude? The goal is never to actually change someone’s mind or whatever, it’s just to either chastise or look smarter than the other person. Totally getting those vibes from this person here, they sound like they’re just talking down to everyone who likes the theory and trying to come off morally superior.
She’s doing literally the thing Dorothy is doing to Joyce, to Dorothy. It’s a lazy, immature, condescending way to point out somebody’s asshole behavior. But damn if it isn’t hilarious.
The thing is, Sarah is not acting dickish.
Like… she’s not insulting Dorothy. She’s not being mean to her. She’s being tactless and insufferable, in a classic Sarah fashion, but she is not Mike. Her goal here is to help Dorothy and Joyce, and point first of that goal is to point out that Dorothy is likely neurodivergent herself and thus should approach helping Joyce from the point of empathy and personal experience, not from the point of googling a list of symptoms.
Like, the reason we think Sarah is defending Joyce and not attacking Dorothy is that she’s… not attacking Dorothy.
My contention is that she absolutely is attacking Dorothy; not because she’s saying Dorothy might be autistic, but because of the way she’s doing it. She’s incoming harmful stereotypes about autism and using othering and dehumanizing language. The quip about her brain being a spreadsheet is invoking the stereotype of comparing autistic people to computers or robots. The quip about “you’ve read enough books about us” implies Dorothy is not one ofus, but one ofthem. And when “us” is “people”, the implication is dehumanizing to Dorothy.
Further, Dorothy has already made clear that Sarah’s amateur diagnosis is unwelcome, but Sarah persists. And that, to me, makes her behavior seem not simply “tactless”, but actively malicious.
Now, I feel like I should clarify that I understand why autistic people in the comments are bothered by Dorothy’s behavior. It absolutely is a target spot-on example of benevolent ableism. People start attributing everything you do or think it feel to autism and that’s bullshit. “Oh, you don’t like peas? Is that an autism thing? Is it a texture problem because of your autism?” As though you’re not allowed to just not like peas. It’s pathologising your very existence. It’s a shitty thing to do. But the thing that frustrates and hurts me is that I cannot understand how people can look at both of these behaviors and say “Dorothy trying to understand her friend’s support needs and fucking up in a hurtful way is the same thing as Sarah telling Dorothy that she’s autistic because she has a weird robot brain” or trying to active benevolent intentions to those kinds of remarks.
It’s interesting but I wonder if Sarah is getting some amusement out of Dorothy and needling her because Dorothy’s reaction to Joyce reminds her a little too much of how a certain someone else treated Dina in the mall way back. Like Dorothy is more coming from a place of genuine caring for at her that probably preformative but, still.
*caring than being solely performative, but still
Overbearing, Dorothy. Dial down!
…. at the very very least until Joyce has stopped cramping…
alright lets be real, all but maybe two characters have some form of neurodivergency lmao.
also another bonding moment with sarah (I too diagnose my undiagnosed friends and mildly poke fun at them for it. they don’t deny it tho so maybe thats the difference lol)
also i’ve mentioned this before about how all these kids think they have it figured out when they really don’t. I think we’re about to see dorothy is one of the bigger offenders of this. Yes, she has a lot figured out (instead of just pretending like a lot of the others) but shes not letting herself learn new things or change her mind
Interestingly enough it’s a close parallel to how Joyce behaved in what she wanted to do and her reaction to many new things that would have shaken her convictions at the time.
yup <3 <3 <3
As unwanted as Carla’s interruption is. I’m glad that this will hopefully force the issues between Becky and Joyce specifically and Joyce and everyone who has been tiptoing around her and certain issues in general. Not gonna lie That shit is getting old.
this is the most annoyed by the characters of this comic i have ever been in my entire life lmao. never have i seen teenagers so out of touch with reality
How many teenagers do you know?
You haven’t seen enough teenagers.
Oh, are you yet another neurodivergent sick and tired of their displayed ableism that can pretend to be “science” and “compassion” so easily?
You are not alone. 😞
Honestly, it’s why I’m here for Sarah. She just needs to add, “This is what you’re acting like. Annoying, isn’t it?” and it would be perfect
I have never been less in touch with reality than when i was a teenager. They’re dumb by default
Don’t worry, Dorothy, I still love you.
I especially love that face in the last panel.
Imagine thinking Carla isn’t the best character in this strip. Couldn’t be me.
“I’m tired of your armchair diagnosing.
MY armchair diagnosing, however, is fine”
It’s okay when Dorothy does it because she’s a reasonably attractive, well-meaning blonde white girl. When Sarah does it, something something [racist rhetoric]. Idk, Dorothy’s sexy and all but she gets away with a lot.
Ooof, no, Sarah trumps Dorothy in sexiness like ten times over.
Sarah should get away with a lot more, tbh. I still wanna see her in a Slipshine with somebody.
Me too.
Indeed.
To quote Sal, “ah go fer tall”. I can also relate to her general disdain for being around people for too long at once.
I dunno. I’m autistic, but I can respect a good troll and rightly or wrongly Sarah’s been absolutely burning people alive today.
Dorothy, conversely, has been bugging the hell out of me since the whole Joyce/Becky trouble started and the current ‘IS THIS WHY YOU AREN’T WHAT I WANT YOU TO BE?’ like she’s just solved a Myst puzzle is only the latest cherry on top.
RIGHT?!?!?
The most ironic part is that, if Dorothy actually DID understand neurodivergence, she could actually use her being neurodivergent as evidence in FAVOR of her and Joyce being “totally different people”.
Because alongside each other, all neurodivergent brains actually display even more diversity among themselves than the entirely of all brains in the human species.
But Dorothy wouldn’t know that by doing a surface-read google search, and her acting like a 12-year-old who just discovered the word “communist” is just icing on the insidious ableism cake.
I remember agreeing with you yesterday.
The wellerman,
—if u tried to respond you might have accidentally flagged it.
🥲 thank you
Your welcome
re: “is this why you aren’t what I want you to be” THIS RIGHT HERE.
This is one of the biggest reasons why not only I dropped the “””autism””” label that was like a target on my back, but why I really despise the concept of “mental disorder” in general, or at least what it’s become today.
You cannot create a concept of “incorrect” mental functioning without creating alongside it a concept of “correct” mental functioning.
Considering how diverse our functioning needs are as many individuals living in many many different kinds of situations around the world, it really makes no sense to define “disorder” out side of what prevents us from attaining our most basic survival needs as humans.
It stands to reason that for the concept of mental disorder to have expanded as far as it has today, and especially with how Dorothy is using it, is nothing more than an exercise in power.
I think people are being a little hard on Dorothy but I COMPLETELY agree with what you said about mental “disorders”. My brain works differently, not worse, than other people’s brains. I will take medication if I need it to solve a problem in my life, not because this medication works well for others with the same “disorder”. Guess what, they’re not me.
I mean, it depends on the disorder. ADHD and autism, sure, very valid argument that those are cases of different not worse. Persistent depressive disorder and social anxiety disorders (going ten years strong, whoo!) I’m perfectly happy saying are dysfunctions. My ADHD is ruining my life because of how the world is built around me, but my depression making me want to no do the living thing anymore, or my anxiety paralyzing me to the point that i can’t even reach out for help, are definite problems with my brain. That’s a disorder.
(For the record my drugs are going great and the temptations to take a sewer slide are gone now but my point stands)
I honestly don’t feel like many people in this cast could actually be described as neurotypical.
If for no other reason than it’s clear the author is drawing from some levels of experience, and characters are often reflections of their authors.
Yeppppppp
Gonna say I know Sarah is making a point about Dorothy being overbearing but she might have a point. I wasn’t great at making friends but I got good grades in college and had ambition for politics and was eventually crushed by not really fitting in—and I didn’t really realize how different I was until grad school even though I’d always been a big outsider since I was a child–I just always thought one day I’d figure out the world
Sarah too, though—she’s my favorite character and I totally understand losing it and flipping out on a bully and punching them, and not understanding how I could be in the wrong for enforcing rules and doing what I need to do to ensure my own success
Not saying all of these characters are autistic, and definitely not saying it’s a bad thing if they are, just it would make sense
Eeeeyup.
Sarah calls it like she sees it, and she’s putting 0 tact into the mixture because Dorothy needs to stop being Like That.
Sarah – Is needling Dorothy about possibly being autistic.
Dorothy – Is diving head first into learning about autism and how to potentially help/be helpful.
Many Commenters Here – Oh this is totally the same thing.
Hey, I’m on the spectrum myself. The stuff Dorothy is doing is very insulting to me and many others on the spectrum. She’s infantalizing Joyce. At least in my case, that’s why I like what Sarah is doing – Slapping in Dorothy’s face why what she’s doing is asshole behaviour
Haha no you’re incorrect. Nobody is saying that lmao. Lol. Ecks Dee.
Once again, its not the researching that’s the issue
It’s that she’s immediately trying to apply Joyce’s (hypothetical) autism to everything she does
Joyce is allowed to be tired without it being because of anything, hell after the day she’s had I’d be more concerned if she wasn’t tired
Sarah is not needling her. Sarah is pointing out the elephant in the room.
this page set off a lot of interesting conversations
I came back to it ( and to see if anyone responded) and My comment is gone.
At first I was worried i said something wrong, but I just read many people are accidently flagging on mobile.
Damn. Oh no, probably flagged by accident by people eager to share similar stories
thats kind of a compliment in its own way
Yay to Neurodiversity , Boo to accidentally flagging.