Nah. You want the flavor-fillings to be lightly included at the start, allowing you to carefully appreciate the base ingredient and the nuances of the seasonings. By the time you’ve moved to finishing off the dish, you’ll want a bite heavy with seasonings, giving you a final burst of flavor. The gradation in flavor keeps the meal interesting, start to finish.
It truly depends on the food in question. Anything with a defined, desired filling/topping that cannot be considered its own meal- from a sandwich (especially grilled cheese), to a chocolate chip cookie, to pizza- you want that distribution as even as humanly possible, to avoid sad bites with none of that filling/topping. If it’s basically two blended meals (see also meatballs re: spaghetti), then nuance is definitely appreciated.
dan pashman of the sporkful podcast explains it as the conflict between “bite consistency” and “bite variety”, i.e., “how finely will i chop up this salad?”
Given that she separates/separated tacos into their component pieces, and would have the sausage deliberately picked off her sausage pizza and placed on the side…I’m guessing not.
Joyce would first cut the ends off her pizza. Then, after eating the rest of it, she would surgically cut the crusts open, and eat the cheese out of them.
Hm…does Joyce eat the crust of pizza to begin with? Would it being stuffed crust make that more or less likely? Why do I feel so sad at the thought that this comic strip character might not have enjoyed stuff crust pizza?
Yes, but the whole point of stuffed crust is to make the ‘bones’ more appetizing, give it some flavor, instead of just being (often burnt,) flavorless bread.
I _do_ have Joyce’s exact food issues. Stuffed crust pizza doesn’t count because I can’t see the cheese inside the crust. By the time I taste it, it’s too late to worry about it. That might not totally make sense but we’re talking about a purely psychological phenomenon.
Admittedly, I find tacos okay as long as all toppings are on the side. The meat and shell count as one item, for some reason, and can be eaten together.
Not as such. But it would fall under obsessive-compulsive disorder or obsessive-compulsive tendencies depending on how much of an inconvenience it causes. Diagnosis of the disorder requires some degree of distress or an impairment in the ability to perform normal daily living: in this case, does the need to have food deconstructed turn a meal into a chore that keeps you occupied way beyond the amount of time that a meal should or do you go hungry rather than eat food that isn’t perfectly managed.
Well, we haven’t had a lot of information about how long does it take for Joyce to eat, and I don’t remember her being this particular about other stuff other than the showers.
Nah, regular cheese pizza is pretty easy to take apart. Sometimes it even spontaneously disassembles itself if you manhandle it or don’t bite all the way through!
The liquid is not depicted as clear. it could be one of those drawing conventions for readers to be able to see it. Otherwise I might think she’s already drank her entire glass, perhaps.
But in english you use the word pilaf to specify a certain kind of rice, making it a bastardization of the original word (an adjective instead of a noun in this case) and thus not redundant in “rice pilaf”.
The morale of this story is there is always someone ready to out-pedantic-response you in the internet.
Separate foods should be next to each other, not on top of each other. Because it’s easier to control the foods and regulate the ratio of Food#1 to Food#2 that way.
I just realized I’m like Joyce more than I thought.
I don’t think that’s like Joyce’s issues, personally? That’s saying that you have a preference for the amounts of different foods mixed together- for example, I like mash and peas, but too much mash and there’s not enough pea-joy, but too little mash and your peas fall off the fork and you run out of peas too quickly. That’s just having a preference, surely.
Frick, this is late, but I feel the need to reply. I don’t mean that I literally have the same issues with food that Joyce does. But like you said, I do have certain preferences or ‘rules’. Same as Joyce. Her rules are just much more strict.
When I was little and used to eat both meat and SpaghettiOs, I would always get the kind with meatballs and then purposely save them to the end so I would get to finish by just enjoying around 16-18 little meatballs.
So, I guess me, to answer your question.
On second thought, I shoulda said that it’s a fine preference yet with no clearly thought-out strategy on Joyce’s part. But saving the good part, or not caring, are fine too.
It just means so much to her now, but I never thought of it until she said it. And I remember being a kid and it took convincing for me to have my meat on my noodles or rice, for a few years.
Split the spare meatballs in half with your fork, and you can use them to wipe up any leftover sauce. (Whether that’s worth it when the “sauce” is just butter is debatable.)
I’ve never done the separate-food-into-its-component pieces thing*, but the distribute-each-bite-properly-so-it-has-the-right-amount-of-all-the-components thing, that is very me.
Also panel 4 Joyce, you liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie
*except with pizza, because I like the ghost of pepperoni on my cheese pizza but not the pepperonis themselves
BUT, on the other hand, I just realised something!
At some point, I stopped counting the amount of fries I was taking* with each bite of a burger, to ensure equal distribution of that as well. Because yes of course I used to do that as well.
But yeah, somehow I stopped giving a damn about that. And I didn’t even notice that I stopped giving a damn.
Well, it’s either that, or I automatically pick the right amount of fries and don’t have to waste precious conscious brain activity on thinking about it.
*Three fries on the fork (four if they were all small, two if one was exceptionally long).
When I ordered pizza in Germany (’82-ish) it was served whole, not sliced. I was to eat with knife and fork. I continued this, in states, sometimes. Less messy.
Only take-away pizza (or, you know, those US pizza chain pizzas) come sliced in Germany.
In an ordinary Italian style restaurant, you’re expected to use knife and fork.
First of all: Hey, I live in Norway. Most junk food places serve their bags in rectangular boxes that looks like this (except not as overloaded with fries) and quite often add a small fork to that:
Because we are -civilised- in how we eat our junk food and get our impending heart attacks.
Secondly, stabbing fries with a fork is a wonderful feeling. Plus, in Norway we usually puts special seasoning on our fries (called Pommes Frites-krydder) which makes the fries supremely delicious, but also gives them the Cheetos effect, if you know what I mean.
A lot of that also happens at various places here– the rectangular box, seasoned fries. Sometimes the place will even throw a plastic fork into the bag, but unless I ordered like a salad–which, let’s be real, I didn’t— I’m like, “What would I need a fork for?”
And then I eat my fries with my hands, like Godzilla intended.
Also, stabbing things can be a fun feeling, I get that. But you know what else is a good feeling? Just grabbing a fucking handful of fries and shoving them in your largest face-hole.
There’s a hobby that includes stabbing wool with a tiny needle a fuckton till it becomes what you want, it is called needle felting. Great for getting the urge to stab out!
Do you consider the depictions of countries in the comic “Scandinavia and the World” accurate? It’s funny but I hope it’s not leading me to misconstrue things about Nordic folks.
I eat fries with a fork because I hate getting my fingers greasy. Especially at restaurants. When I eat take-out fries, they are always served with one of those little wooden forks anyway (at least here in Germany), so why not use it? Plus, I usually eat fries with a lot of mayonaise or peanut butter sauce slathered all over them and I wouldn’t want to get all that grease on my fingers.
When it comes to burgers, it depends on what kind of burger it is. I’d never eat a McDonald’s burger with fork and knife, but one of those large ones with several patties and other toppings? Yes, totally. If the burger is too large to fit into my mouth, it gets eaten with a fork.
It depends on the burger and the bun in question. If you can’t get the optimal ratio of bun, burger, and condiments per mouthful with your hands, then you might need to use knife and fork.
And yes, I do this with burritos, too. I am the anti-Joyce. I want every mouthful to have the perfect combination. Don’t judge me.
The only thing I’d judge you on is that you still think you need to say “don’t judge me” when you’re already in the company of a lot of people who are all admitting they have their own particular rules (sometimes even laws) when it comes to consumption of food.
I eat burgers with fork and knife. I eat pizza with fork and knife. I even used to eat cream-and-wine-cooked mussels with fork and knife. Just don’t like to get my hands dirty. Or my shirt, for what it’s worth.
Fingerfood is an alien concept to me. It’s either food or it’s to be eaten with the tip of fingers, then it’s… well I always thought the english word for it was snack – but it appears that it’s still a huge cultural gap to grasp what a snack is…
Well Mussels should be eaten with a fork, I’ve never heard of them being finger food.
I’m like wise as averse to getting my hands or shirt messy. I think sauced food should be relegated the realm of fork and knife. Things like BBQ and wings just don’t appeal to me.
As for a snack, snacks are just a quick bite between meals. Anything can really be a snack, it’s more a concept of amount than type.
There are fancy places that serve their fancy burgers in an open faced style that really gets on my nerves. Each bun half with different ingredients piled on it. Is this a kit? Do I eat it with a knife and fork? Or what? Because if I try to assemble that into one burger, I’ll never get it into my mouth. If you need knife and fork, how is it a burger?
Yes, this is how I handle the mixed fruit I sometimes get at lunch. I have to eat the fruit one piece at a time so that each bite is different from the last, I’ve got at least one piece of each fruit all the way almost until the end, and the grape is the last one. (I say “the grape” because there’s usually only one.)
When I was a kid I’d put a serving of each food in a different segregated area on the plate, making sure none of them touched each other. And then I’d each food completely before moving on to the next — rotating the plate so that the food I was currently eating was closest to me. (These days I’m more relaxed about mixing, but only if it’s not something with a runny liquid like corn.)
Thinking back, the cotton ad seems to be the most common, and I hate it. I mean, I’m probably still going to buy the occasional cotton thing, but, like, I won’t like it.
Don’t worry, the atoms didn’t actually touch — that would violate the Pauli exclusion principle, since the outer shells of atoms are composed of free fermions. They were merely repulsed by the force normal.
I mean, we haven’t really seen any evidence of OCD-type intrusive thoughts, so I don’t know if it makes sense to say that. Obsessive personality ≠ OCD.
No, she doesn’t seem to have intrusive thoughts or anything of the sort.
She is, however, autistic, probably. (I’m autistic and I have a pretty good au-dar).
I have OCD (or PTSD? basically, they have overlapping symptoms, and I have some symptoms that are particular to each, but not all symptoms of either particular diagnosis).
So, Joyce’s symptoms don’t seem like mine, especially pre-medication, although obv everyone manifests differently. But, in-comic, Joyce hasn’t had any panic attacks or dissociative episodes, nor do any of her fears seem to rise to phobic levels of daily-life interference. She doesn’t seem to have intrusive thoughts or perseverations (Google if you need a definition). Nor does she seem to have obvious compulsions*
*often cleanliness and neatness compulsions are depicted in media (hand-washing, etc) but if a person’s underlying phobia isn’t avoiding illness, then the compulsions are going to be different. For instance, I was actually a hoarder to some extent, because my underlying phobia is all about avoiding loss, so I never wanted to throw anything away. Possibly TMI, but I even kept my hair from my hairbrush and finger-and-toenail clippings in plastic baggies, because I was afraid something bad would happen if I “lost” them [while simultaneously knowing how crazy that was]. Some people’s compulsions are just saying certain phrases.
Medication helped *a lot*. As did CBT oriented towards dealing with underlying fears and eliminating phobias. I’m not sure what Joyce’s deal is, but I think the lack of phobias and panic attacks probably eliminates any kind of anxiety disorder, save for very mild general anxiety.
@Inahc — er, I’m hesitant to name specific medications, only because I’ve seen people take it like advice. And the truth is, everyone’s brain chemistry and hormonal makeup is different, so buspirone might really work for you, and I don’t want to discourage you to take what I take when, in fact, the medication your doctor recommended works better.
So, I’ll say this: I initially took stuff that had bad side effects, then stuff that didn’t work, then Paxoteine, which worked really well for a long time (along with CBT). I ultimately had to switch things around because I started having increasing hypersomnolence as a side effect (until I slept almost 16 hours a day). So I switched some stuff around and I have a Xanax prescription for emergencies (if panic attacks are coming on or are likely to be encountered, which is much rarer now), but I wouldn’t recommend the medication I’m on now to a person who experienced what I was dealing with in the beginning.
I also cannot stress enough the importance of getting a GOOD therapist, for at least 24 weeks. Those six months, I believe, helped as much as the medications, if not more-so.
yeah, that’s why I asked what class and not what exact meds 🙂 and yep, good therapists are worth their weight in gold.
I’m assuming you typoed Paroxetine (since google didn’t have results for Paxoteine) which is an SSRI, with all the damn side-effects. I find it kinda surprising and interesting how much overlap there is between OCD treatment and depression treatment. the anxiety overlap I expected, but not the depression. (my migraine med’s also an antidepressant!)
I used to have some ativan for emergencies, but it’s the day-to-day stress and ickiness that’s more of a threat to my health (both mental and physical now :/ ). When I was trying to get to the bottom of my muscle spasm issues the doctors even convinced me to try a daily benzo, which went even worse than you’d expect *and* brought the headache back. wtf. I’m glad it didn’t work though given how bad just the *expected* side-effects were and that benzos are really not meant for daily use.
it kinda seems like a lot of things are pointing towards antidepressants for me… but if I go that route I’d like to try one of the ones with *less* side-effects first, since I’ve only ever been on ones with extreme side-effects. (dry-mouth, even with xylitol to compensate, has been terrible for my teeth. so glad I’m on a low enough dose to not have it constantly any more. but the more I learn to relax, the more dizziness interferes with basic tasks.)
there’s also part of me advocating for more meditation (without any new medication) in the hopes that I can reach the part of my mind generating all these icky feelings and change its mind somehow.
well, plenty of time ahead of me for trying all the things. 🙂 thanks for sharing.
@Gaia– Fuck you. What the fuck is wrong with you? People get PTSD from *trauma*. Why the fuck would you ask a stranger, like, “by the by, what traumatic thing happened to you? Just curious.” You don’t even know my real name fuckhole, why would I tell you that?
Free advice: in the future, don’t ask people to tell you about the literal worst thing that ever happened in their life unless 1. you’re a counselor or 2. you’re a survivor of trauma seeking support (like, in a support group setting or in an established relationship).
FUUUuuuuuck. Like, I wasn’t going to reply, but I’m like, fuck it. If this reply keeps you from asking other people that question, it’s worth it. I don’t care if you hate me over this. People are always like, “no judgement,” or “just saying,” but I am firmly saying that the voyeurism inherent in asking people to talk about their personal trauma in this context is cruel and selfish.
Doing it once, out of ignorance, is one thing. But if you do it again, you become characterized by a cruel and selfish action. It makes you a cruel and selfish person. So. Don’t do it again.
I’m writing this reply about an hour after my other reply, and, thinking on it, I’d like to apologize for going 100% intense, 0-60 like that. I stand by the gist of what I said, and I still want you to never ask that kind of question of people you don’t know. I believe that firmly, so I’m not apologizing for saying that.
But, in an hour’s hindsight, I *am* sorry that my gut response was so aggro. There’s, like, a good way and a bad way to criticize people (I’ll bet Joyce would know a Bible verse about that– something something speak the truth in love, probably) and I’ve got to admit, there’s no way to frame calling you a “fuckhole” as going about it the right way.
So, as embarrassing as it is, I am sorry for losing my cool like that. I was wrong to speak in anger. Fart Captor and Inhac already got the gist of it without the caps-and-swears, so I probably should’ve let it lie. Anyway, if I hurt you in my anger, I’m sorry. I hope you can forgive me.
I *really* hope you can simultaneously forgive me and still take my point about personal questions, but, ah, I understand if you don’t do both.
Sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but words will never harm me, so feel free to call me whatever you want. (Is there anyway to say this without coming of as a massive sarcastic douche?( the intent is: call me anything you like, my feelings can’t be hurt))
So I have no reason to forgive you. (At least from my perspective)
The reason I asked the question in the first place is, I’ve seen far FAR to many people claim PTSD because someone disagreed with them, which got my gut response to be “Great another one”.
It infuriates me when people say the have PTSD when they don’t, as it’s horribly disrespectful to people who actually have it.
Based on your reaction any doubt in my mind has been cleared, sorry for assuming you where one of the fakers, but I hope you understand why I asked.
More autistic than OCD. She doesn’t seem to have intrusive thoughts or anything. But she definitely seems autistic. (I’m autistic myself and I have a pretty good au-dar)
Er, just a tl;dr version of my other comment: if she doesn’t have frequent panic attacks or dissociation, then, by definition, she doesn’t have OCD (or any mental illness in the “anxiety” category).
Er, I don’t have frequent panic attacks or dissociation, but I quite definitely have a mental illness in the “anxiety” category. I have generalised anxiety disorder, where I have a constant underlying level of anxiety that spikes suddenly in response to individual stressors. I don’t have panic attacks, I just have “I am always somewhat tense, except when I’m so tense I can’t act at all.”
depends who you ask. I’m still not sure if what I get actually counts as panic attacks; I got hardly any of the standard symptoms until I was on dexedrine.
@Arian — Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that GAD isn’t an anxiety disorder. Maybe it’s the word “frequent,” I don’t know what is a hard number of “x panic attacks per day/ week / month” to diagnose someone with an anxiety disorder that isn’t being well managed.
I was proud of myself, we had a bag of berry skittles at work and I ate them as a handful instead of sorting them into colors and eating them by descending preference order. Like an adult!
I am retired. A couple hours ago, I poured out my bag of M&Ms (peanut) and ate them that way. (descending faves) Always eat the green ones last, as they are the aphrodisiacs. (this was a thing at my USAF Tech School, and still do. My room-mate was hoarding all her green ones in a tin, for the grad party)
I played a color-grouping game with the small rolls of sugar candy tablets that go by the name Smarties in the USA – Fifteen pieces per roll – six colors/flavors – what are the odds that a roll of fifteen will have two or more of each color – find a roll that meets this ‘quota’ and you save it, otherwise eat it and on to the next roll – this game led to some massive Smarties consumption
Colored candies are not a food. They are an artistic medium. You pour them onto a plate and arrange them in interesting patterns. The leftovers get eaten. When you are done, you deconstruct your artwork, from the outsides in.
But the timing of her decision to overcome it is interesting–my guess is either she wants to impress him, or her discomfort at the unfamiliar church genuinely bothered her, and she wants to break out of that cycle of needing familiarity.
I don’t have OCD, so if anyone commenting about Joyce having OCD actually does, then that should take precedence. But like…I really feel like we should not be calling Joyce/her behavior OCD and throwing that around. It doesn’t even seem to fit, really.
Yeah, agreed. I do a couple of the same things Joyce does wrt food. Food touching is gross. Sauces, condiments, and mixing things is also gross. Soup and stew are the grossest. So if Joyce has OCD (and I’m not saying she does or doesn’t, but if people are using this as shorthand for ‘does this habit a lot’ then please don’t) then I better get myself checked out.
Anyone who is thinking about calling out Joyce as OCD just because she’s picky about food should listen to Terry Gross’s “Fresh Air” interview with John Green.
For that matter, even if you aren’t thinking about calling out Joyce as OCD should listen to that interview. Seriously, everyone should listen to that interview.
Seriously though.
Also I mean picky eating is much more an autistic thing and I’ve already suggested she’s autistic and I’m autistic myself and the calculation of how much noodle per meatball I have so I know how to eat it is definitely a thing I do.
I mean there’s also how she communicates and her sensory things, but if we’re on the subject of this strip…
Fellow autismo*, here for a quick contrast. Calculations above a certain level tend to give me mild panic attacks. I also compulsively eat things that no reasonable person would eat, often to a rousing chorus of “That’s no good anymore, you’re gonna make yourself sick!”.
Not intending to invalidate your habits, naturally. It’s called a spectrum for a reason.
*”Autismo” is fun to say in an awful Spanish accent, is all.
at this point I’m less intertsted in which label fits best, and more just wishing there was a damn solution. if there was a pill to make the icky feelings go away, I’d take it. :/ specific issues have come and gone over time but the quantity of them and the way they escalate is quite frustrating sometimes. always having to watch myself and control myself and endure those feelings *sucks*.
I still have some hope that meditation might help in a stronger way eventually, though. (and maybe I’ve temporarily forgotten something obvious)
I do have OCD, and while neatness / cleanliness OCD *is* a kind of OCD, it is far from the only type. People with, say, a hoarding compulsion might assume they can't possibly have OCD because OCD is always portrayed with a compulsion to clean and organize. (Ask me how I know).
Also, a key part of OCD is panic attacks and anxiety, which Joyce doesn't seem to have.
I don't find casual use of the phrase "OCD" to be offensive, just frustrating, because the OCD = neatness myth is a huge problem. It prevents people from seeking diagnosis, or getting misdiagnosed as ADHD or something associated with "messiness," which is harmful. But, in essence, if someone has panic attacks, intrusive, obsessive thoughts, perseverations, and compulsions designed to soothe an underlying fear, they have OCD.
The perseverations could be pacing, running a finger pattern, or pulling one's hair out; obsessive thoughts could involve making a mental list of all colors in alphabetical order or something more frightening; they could come in the form of an hours-long vivid daydream [this symptom in isolation is called "maladaptive daydreaming"] or frequent small interruptions; compulsions could be bizzarre efforts to clean oneself (hand-washing), be small or empty (compulsive exercise / vomiting, which is often misdiagnosed as anorexia), keep everything (hoarding), impose order (er, organizing everything).
The compulsions come from an effort to self-soothe, and when self-soothing can't happen, that's when the panic attacks happen. But, generally, OCD looks very different from patient to patient. It reminds me of the Chimanda Ngozi TED*Talk "Danger of a Single Story." It isn't that there are no OCD people whose obsessions and compulsions center on order and cleanliness; it's just that there are many more who don't have those issues but still have OCD.
Also, finally: OCD doesn't have any sensory processing problems. If a person has highly picky texture preferences, or avoids loud events, they probably have a different thing. I've met several other people with OCD, and few are picky eaters. Even those who have vomiting compulsions will eat pretty much whatever, as long as they can throw it up later.
“Also, a key part of OCD is panic attacks and anxiety, which Joyce doesn’t seem to have. ”
uh, she seemed on the edge of one in church there. and panic attacks have some hollywood issues too; mine tend to be very internal, less physical and more.. well maybe they’re more dissociation than panic? I dunno. still sucks, whatever it is.
but thanks for the OCD info, always good to dispel those myths 🙂 the more I learn about it the more I think it fits me, but I feel that way about quite a few labels now :/ like, food ratios are not sensory… they shouldn’t matter! but wanting them to not matter doesn’t do much 😛 I’d managed to forget about them but I do still have to finish my cereal in the right order… and the sensory issues feel like three kinds of issue mixed together – it feels too loud/strong/painful, it feels *wrong*, and it won’t shut up.
I would like to add that not all folks with OCD/OCD-type stuff have compulsions. Pure-O OCD, the kind characterized only by intrusive thoughts/obsessions, is quite common.
@ Vivid Grim– Absolutely! It gets complicated, of course, because things can overlap, and not every patient has every symptom.
@Inhac– I guess we don’t know for sure if Joyce has panic attacks. But, if she has, they must be mostly offscreen. Her discomfort in church didn’t read like a panic attack to me. Anxious, sure, but not a lot of what panic feels like, all the physical symptoms (up to or including dissociating). She seemed more-or-less okay after the service, whereas after a panic attack she’d be really worn out.
See Joyce, that’s the wrong way to eat mixed foods. You identify the tastiest part (probably the meatballs) and you save that for last so you can really savor them and have that be the aftertaste that lingers after the mea-
….
…. wait. That’s me speaking, and I’m an only child.
Joyce, eat the meatballs immediately before any of your kin can steal them off your plate.
Whenever I go out to eat with mom, she tries to encourage me to order dessert so she can steal a few bites. She’s very obvious about it, to the point that it’s a running joke.
One time I didn’t have the patience for her stealing dessert from me, so I figured, “hey, I’ll just order a side of fries instead of dessert, that way she’ll be thwarted”.
At first, I used to eat the meatcakes (it’s a Norwegian thing) and try and skip the (boiled) potatoes, to my parent’s chagrin.
Then I tried eating the potatoes first and saving the meatcakes for later. My parents at least tolerated this, since it meant I would eat potatoes.
Then I realised that potatoes in themselves are pretty meh to eat, but when you eat them together with something, they’re so mild that they don’t really take away the taste from the tasty stuff. So might as well eat them together (very carefully balanced to make sure there were no potatoes left in the end).
I was actually really interested in that story and then it turned out to all be about stupid football.
(because it was written for a site about that, and an audience who cares about that.)
If this is the worst thing that is “wrong” with her — and why the fuck is this “wrong”? I’d say it’s a quirk, but pots and kettles — but if this is the worst thing about her, then she would better than 99% of us.
I have a very good au-dar, especially when it comes to AFAB (assigned female at birth) people 🙂
I am rarely wrong (although it has happened in the past, like, I don’t have a perfect record, but usually I’m pretty spot-on).
The way she communicates, her sensory issues, her obliviousness of many social “rules”, and her attachment to things like her favorite sweater (even with blood stains!)… To me that screams autism.
I mean…I’m definitely not a doctor, but she seems…fine? Quirky?
IDK much about autism, so I have no opinion there, but I do know that mental illnesses suck because they’re painful. Whether they’re depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, psychoses and hallucinations, or ADHD-type disorders are problems because they hurt and interfere with a person’s living. Which is why people with mental illnesses are encouraged to see doctors and stuff– not to “fit in,” but to be well.
My life is phenomenally better since getting treatment for my mental illness, even though it was a long process (starting at age 13, with a lot of trial and error). From the outside it just looks like I no longer do weird stuff and can sleep normally. But in my head, I feel so much better. More relaxed. More joyful.
I’m like a personification of those “it gets better” advertisements.
But if Joyce isn’t in pain, then she doesn’t need to “get better.” Oddness is not a mental illness. Being strange doesn’t mean a person is suffering. I have odd personality quirks that have nothing to do with my mental illness. So do a lot of people. She wants to separate food or give eating mixed food a shot, she’s not hurting anyone, and she’s not in pain. So maybe people need to judge a little less.
It feels a lot like a bad habit to be honest. It doesn’t so much distress as disgust her. She’s forcing herself and her immediate reaction is one of someone rationally dealing with it. If it was more than that it would probably cause a stronger emotional response.
Panel 1: I like that Jacob is aware enough to notice this as a possible thing and try and check in on that to make sure someone isn’t feeling social pressure to perform a certain way. And I love that he seems aware that social pressure can exist even with the best of intentions just from the social norms that govern human interactions.
Like, the level of understanding he has about these things will make him an amazingly empathetic lawyer when he grows up and it’s easy to see why so many straight women in the comic are infatuated by him.
Panel 2: And I like this little hesitation, because there is a piece that is doing it for him. He’s a handsome man that Joyce wants to impress and having someone you’re crushing on is always going to make you more willing to try and stretch your comfort zones just because that’s what’s modeled so much as what you do when you’re in love. Heck, it’s the basis of a lot of rom coms.
Not to mention he’s a convenient person to test herself with. He’s not someone like Becky or Dorothy who knows her inside and out, but rather a mostly-stranger. And it’s someone who is comforting and sympathetic and willing to give lots of safe words to back up into neuroses.
Like, this is probably the best possible person for her to stretch her ability to cope with changes and new things with, especially in an environment where she has some mystery about her.
I don’t know about OCD but as the only daughter of a large-ish family (and being the youngest) I’ve long thought theres a case of Joyce being picky because food was probably one of the few things she could control
That’s exactly what I thought: food is one of the few areas where a child can exert any control over their lives. Youngest child and only daughter in a fundamentalist household, she had a lot of restraints on her!
You think that. In my country it is the most common thing to bully children into eating exactly as much and exactly what the parent wants. It’s not even frowned upon. I usually make the most exptic dishes I can when I cook for my parents, so they get to feel the pain.
yeah oh god. It even took a war for me to control the -size- of my portion, so I didn’t get scolded for leaving food on the plate. (And then puberty hit and I rapidly chubbied up and my parents were like ‘OH NO MUST WATCH FOOD QUANTITIES AND NOT EAT TOO MUCH’ and I was one half ‘seriously?’ and one half ‘FREEDOM SWEET FREEDOM’) (Nothing like ‘oh, I’m dieting’ to deflect ‘why aren’t you eating more of [gross food]?’)
My father was big on not forcing kids to eat stuff they hate (he was a petty tyrant in many other ways but not about food). My mother preferred eat what I give you exactly what I give you, but if she started in on that, it would lead to a fight, soooo she instead would passive-aggressively sulk at you over how much or little you were eating – you needed to eat enough that she wouldn’t feel insulted (and thus start sniping at you about how ungrateful you are) but not so much she thought you were being gluttonous (and thus started sniping about you about how you’re gettin kinda chubby and need to watch what you eat and don’t eat things with “a tonne of calories” all the time and etc). Add to that the fact that she’s got a complicated eating disorder history (anorexia which morphed into anorexia/bulimia which became binge eating disorder as she got older) so she also was very strict about there being “good” foods (carrots, lettuce, bean spouts – basically anything with the approximate caloric density of water) and “bad” foods (everything else) and the more you ate of “bad” foods the worse you were as a person (weak, lazy, hedonistic, gluttonous, etc).
I am the only kid she raised who’s at a healthy body weight as an adult, and that’s cuz I hire a dietician to do all my food planning. Everyone else has some variety of eating disorder or pathological over-eating. I myself struggle with the brain-garbage around eating but I’ve mostly got my head space under control with that stuff. Mostly.
My niece was really picky about food from at least the age of five, and she is the oldest of two. I suspect she’s a supertaster, and the fact that her dad can’t stand the taste of red meat sort of lends credence to that hypothesis.
Panels 3-4: But I love that she doesn’t go there. Because old Joyce would have. Old Joyce would have gone all in on the narratives that a “good girl admits that she’s a vessel for a good man’s wants” so long as it doesn’t involve hanky-panky. If this had occurred in the beginning of the comic, Joyce would have worked her ass off trying to become a good Christian wife for him in between freaking out about his religion.
But here, she recognizes that that’s not something she really wants. She likes having a level of independence from the guys she’s interested in. Plus, what she’s saying is true. This is just as much about testing how far she’s come and trying to embrace change because she doesn’t like her status quo as it is about impressing the cute boy. Probably more.
Panel 5: And this test against herself is important to her. She recognizes her neuroses around food and she appreciates the support of those around her, but I think the food may have gotten tied to her religion and her culture as parts of an old Joyce she doesn’t fully like being anymore and is slowly exploring extricating herself from.
Like, if she can break through on foods touching other foods, maybe she can go to a church with no crackers or grape juice without having a panic attack or stop hating herself for her sexual fantasies. Or at least it feels these struggles have become somewhat intertangled for her.
I like what you said about how the struggles are entangled. That’s a thing I think a lot of people do (or at least I do), where we draw connections between different problems we’re facing simply because in facing them contemporaneously we’re naturally inclined to see correlations. And that means that if we can overcome one tribulation, it can us in a headspace where suddenly everything else seems solvable.
Honestly if these fucking video ads keep teleporting my browser window I might stop reading the comments altogether. (In addition to NatureMade there’s also some sort of cotton-related advertisement now, so I guess I’ll eschew cotton forever out of spite)
Oh man. There has been exactly one time in my life where I was about to ask the person I was dining with this question — and in the moment, I decided not to.
In hindsight, that didn’t work out the way I would have liked it to. But there’s no guarantee that things would have been any different if I had asked it — in all likelihood, I’d just be kicking myself for a different reason.
tl;dr: if you are ever have to ask yourself, “Is this a date?”, then you should probably assume that it’s not.
For some reason my boyfriend is so aversive of the word “date” that I’ve always had to frame it differently, like “do want to meet?” or anything. We’ve been together for three years now, but we’ve never really had a declared date 😀
As long as he doesn’t look surprised when you say “boyfriend” about him, in front of him. 😀.
I was once, in high school, corrected when I asked a guy “How long have you been going out with X?”
He and X were, he informed me, only “seeing each other, not “going out together”. It was a minor nomenclature transgression I didn’t even know I was making.
Despite the comments about OCD, reading the comments today felt so good because I found out there are other people who do the same things I do regarding food. I wouldn’t say I’m a picky eater, especially when compared to my brother, but I do like being organized with my food. Also: I don’t have OCD.
I think some of the issue is that we humans, most of us, love to put things in little boxes… and the irony is, most of our own behavior is not so neatly quantified and classified and defined and separated.
(Note that putting things in boxes, with labels on them, is vital to functional cognition. Imagine if you had to consciously evaluate and decide if any and every given object was a tree, or a desk, or a person – all the work that normally gets done below the level of our awareness. You’d literally never get anything else done.
The problem, of course, comes when we stop updating the model to match the observed data, and switch over to trying to shove everything into the same boxes, or through the same holes, with no regard to whether they actually fit.)
Robert Anton Wilson had a whole bit where he talked about things not fitting into the boxes people put them in. Ending with “The most thoroughly and relentlessly damned, banned, excluded, condemned, forbidden, ostracized, ignored, suppressed, repressed, robbed, brutalized and defamed of all ‘Damned Things’ is the individual human being. The social engineers, statisticians, psychologists, sociologists, market researchers, landlords, bureaucrats, captains of industry, bankers, governors, commissars, kings and presidents are perpetually forcing this ‘Damned Thing’ into carefully prepared blueprints and perpetually irritated that the ‘Damned Thing’ will not fit into the slot assigned it. The theologians call it a sinner and try to reform it. The governor calls it a criminal and tries to punish it. The psychologist calls it a neurotic and tries to cure it. Still, the ‘Damned Thing’ will not fit into their slots.”
You can tell from panels 1, 2 and 5 how difficult Joyce is finding this (which, I think, she’s only attempting to impress Jacob). She is seriously neurotic when it comes to food, isn’t she? Maybe even disablingly so!
If it were to impress Jacob, she’s admit it I think. She’s been brought up to think it’s a virtue after all. But no, I think there’s a dead giveaway to this being her genuinely renegotiating her relationship with her brain, and it’s the last panel. She’s talking about a NEW problem. She can be fine with mixing food as long as it’s measured perfectly evenly (possibly so it can count as one united food: noodles-and-meatballs, and not two foods mixed). She can get over the first hurdle, but there’s a next one right after.
And if she was trying to impress Jacob without tipping him off to it, I think she wouldn’t have said “Yes, thank you for noticing” on the previous page. There’s not much ‘impressing’ a new date with your glorious non-pickiness if you freely admit that ordering two things together is a dramatic moment to you. Joyce is being very open with Jacob about what she’s doing and feeling, which I think is wonderful, and so I think she can and should be taken on her word here.
I guess there really isn’t a name that completely encompasses all of her neuroses.
She’s just weird, but that’s not a bad thing necessarily.
Although this is the side of her I can’t relate to at all. I mean I do the “leave the tastiest for last” stuff sometimes but she’s in a while different level.
Well OCPD or OCD (these are not the same thing) or autism could theoretically but that would be her own specific case of it. It could also just be that she had developed quirks for specific reasons related to her upbringing and that is just the way she is which is fine too, nothing wrong with that.
But I can relate to Joyce here as an autistic person because I remember when I would make myself obscure food rules at random when I was younger too.
The whole autistic spectrum is way beyond me so I’ll refrain from saying much, but her neuroses seem to be way too focused for me to get the impression she’s somewhere in it.
Yeah, I don’t necessarily read her as autistic the way I read Dina as it, but there’s a lot of traits there I recognize in myself and I wouldn’t be surprised if she were. (There’s the food thing, the reacting badly to change in total freezeups, the way she went from zero to superfan with Dexter and Monkey Master… we’ve never seen a social or other sensory issue with her, which is where I lean more towards “anxiety disorder” rather than “autism”, but she does have a LOT of similar traits.)
Like I said, my personal guess is some form of anxiety disorder that might explain the food compulsions and definitely explains a lot of other things. She also MIIIIGHT have Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, but I wouldn’t personally bet on it because she seems to have a decent range of foods provided they don’t touch and doesn’t get a ton of anxiety eating in new places.
She reads a lot of social things differently, I feel. Look at her interactions with Sarah. Everyone (except her and Dina) learned to stay the heck away from Sarah, but Joyce is kind of oblivious to how much Sarah wants to be left alone.
When it comes to sensory issues, I can’t really think of her food thing not being related to sensory issues. I know that’s where I got my own pickiness from. And like, did you see how Joe saved her a plain doughnut so she could eat one? I don’t think that had anything to do with foods touching, it was another kind of picky. Probably the kind that doesn’t want her mouth overwhelmed. (I can’t eat non-plain doughnuts because it is Too Much for my mouth. I also can’t eat a bunch of other stuff unless I “blunt” its taste with couscous or bread or something, it seems she just goes for bland rather than trying to blunt stronger tastes, and I’ve been there).
Now you’re diagnosing her based on what other characters think about her eating habits? Joe said he did it because he knew she didn’t like food touching. She said she wouldn’t pick out sprinkles, except the blue ones. Those have to go.
That’s not sensory. At least not tastewise.
Joyce seems like a platonic ideal of what I might have been like if I hadn’t been basically -given- an anxiety disorder by my mom demanding perfection from me and public school… being public school. She’s rolled a 20 with that homeschooling, as it allowed her a completely different social environment and expectations that never made her feel like a freak or left out. She was seen as ‘having quirks’ and ‘best socialized out of her whole homeschool group’ because she’s sunny, joyful, trusting (oh man the ‘people sometimes lie’ idea is so fucking hard to get through my head no matter how many times I get burned) and extroverted.
Talking endlessly about her own interests and genuinely being unable to understand why others don’t share her joy at them, craving closeness in ways that leaves people weirded out and not realizing that until told directly… IMHO, Joyce 100% socializes like a bright and joyful and unscared autistic.
Add the TOO RELATABLE food pickiness, and if I knew Joyce personally I’d definitely send her some links on the chance she finds them interesting…
I have trouble with “people lie” too. :/ all the mysterious “ghost” things from my childhood are much more easily explained by someone not being willing to admit they did something mildly inconsiderate.
I have a different set of food issues from joyce, but, I wouldn’t mind those links 🙂 90% of what I know of aspergers comes from the 90’s and I’m not sure if I’ve reevaluated much of it since then.
Oh god Joyce I feel you so much on this. If you mix different types of food together then you should do it -properly- and -evenly-. There should be exactly one tomato slice in each spoonful of salad. If you mix meat with mashed potatoes it damn better be in a constant proportion.
I have not tried to -count individual noodles-, but the general idea is #relatable
BTW – I agree that Joyce didn’t order something different just for Jacob. She also did it for herself – to prove to herself that she can. She’s finding it immensely hard but she’s trying to persevere!
Joyce has a quirk, for whatever reason. It bugs me when people make fun of other people for being quirky. Like when John felt OK to dismiss her because she “ordered off the kids’ menu”. Jacob is giving her space to address it her way, if she wants to. I get the feeling if she had just ordered plain noodles, he wouldn’t have said anything about that. Classy.
(My boss has an odd, compulsive laugh. I’ve overheard so many people say they can’t stand his laugh, and one person left the office because of it. Maybe there’s a reason for it but try to look past it?)
Well, it is apparently something of a running family joke. Becky teases her about it regularly and joked about it with Hank.
Jacob isn’t in the kind of relationship with her where it’s appropriate to do that.
And John’s an ass and dismissing her wasn’t okay, but the earlier bits in that sequence about her not being able to eat in India were more good-humored.
Yep. Becky with Joyce needing a “week’s worth of Lunchables”, and John mentioned “Indian food in India, you’d have died of starvation”. That was fair.
All the rest of John was John being an ass.
Like these two guys couldn’t be any more opposite, bonus points for reminding us how John called Joyce’s hitting Toedad “an extreme reaction”, while Jacob said it was awesome and compelling and he respects the moxie it took.
She’s trying to prove to Jacob that she can tolerate change that crosses the line of her neuroses. Doing so requires more courage than perhaps anything else she has done recently.
“Calmly” as in “Surprising herself with her ability to manage something she would never have been able to do before.” Same with the church. Even if she freaked out, she went through with it, which is a huge step.
Even Becky, who is more finely tuned to Joyce’s mood than anyone else in the comic, went from “oh shit, is Joyce OK”-full support mode to ship her with “Jake” in just a few strips.
And of course, impressing Jacob sure helps with the motivation.
I think that all her freaking out about the service is WHY she’s making herself do this. Either because she’s feeling brave after having survived what she was raised to view as basically a satanic ritual with her soul still in tact, or because she’s feeling embarrassed about her reaction and is trying to compensate.
Though I think the main reason she’s more calm about this is because the reasons for the aversions are totally different. She’s not afraid that she’ll be damned to eternal torment if her food touches or if she eats something unfamiliar to her. She just really doesn’t want to.
It’s also very in line with her reaction to eating sushi. She didn’t get worked up or panicky then, either. She only avoided eating it.
It’s also what Cerberus talked about, where when you have a bunch of personal problems, some big and some little, working on the little ones can seem as important as working on the big ones.
Autistic. She’s autistic. People with OCD have been saying in the comments it doesn’t look like OCD at all, and autistic people (like me!!!) have been saying in the comments Joyce-with-food seems eerily like looking in the mirror.
Based on my own experience, there is a 99.99999% chance she doesn’t remotely enjoy it and in fact considers it a bane of her existence and wishes she could just forget it and eat like everyone else without noticing these things.
Autistic pickiness SUCKS.
(And yeah, it’s much closer to that than OCD)
🙁 today sucks. I wanted to make a nice dinner. but appareently that’s too much, and the part of me saying NO (while I kinda wasn’t listening) got so angry we kinda exploded a mushroom.
I just want to be able to DO things goddamnit! 🙁 going to the bank and the grocery store should not take a whole day’s worth of spoons! 🙁 >:(
…also not freaking out that the compost bin wasn’t 100% clean cost a fair amount of spoons. if I wasn’t afraid of bleach I’d bleach the fuck out of that thing regularly.
I would like to introduce you to your new best cleaning friend:
hydrogen peroxide
It is a very effective sanitizer, but unlike bleach it doesn’t stink. As an added bonus it breaks down to water and oxygen, so no nasty chlorination byproducts!
Diluted to around 3% it poses little danger, but you definitely should rinse your skin if you get some on it. You can save money by ordering 35% H2O2 online and diluting it, but you want to very careful with that stuff!
she wants to be able to do an infinite number of things. 😛 like, it *is* unfair how few things we can handle, but it’s not like she’d actually be satisfied if dinner was one of those things. the goalposts would move and she’d be unhappy about something else. :/ I don’t know what to do about that, nor am I sure who exactly is doing the goalpost-moving.
funny timing actually; last night, despite knowing I’d probably hate the food and the noise and the fact that I do horribly in groups I don’t know well, I pushed my boundaries and came with my gf and some of their friends to an Asian noodle place.
just looking at the menu filled me with anxiety because I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat most of it. and what I did end up getting, fried calamari, was super disappointing.
having ARFID/autistic food issues while dating someone with a broad/sophisticated/non-white palate is nerve-wracking sometimes
It sounds like you’re like Joyce not just in being a picky eater, but in trying to expand your boundaries, even when it makes you anxious. That’s something to be proud of.
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only as brave as that first bite when there’s still a chance of it not being bad
(unevenly distributed is bad!)
Ever since I came to college, all my food has been fairly evenly distributed. Specifically, in line with Student’s t-distribution.
All my freshly-brewed hot drinks followed the student’s tea distribution.
fb
t-distribution? …. okay, that’s pretty close to normal.
“(unevenly distributed is bad!)”
Nah. You want the flavor-fillings to be lightly included at the start, allowing you to carefully appreciate the base ingredient and the nuances of the seasonings. By the time you’ve moved to finishing off the dish, you’ll want a bite heavy with seasonings, giving you a final burst of flavor. The gradation in flavor keeps the meal interesting, start to finish.
It truly depends on the food in question. Anything with a defined, desired filling/topping that cannot be considered its own meal- from a sandwich (especially grilled cheese), to a chocolate chip cookie, to pizza- you want that distribution as even as humanly possible, to avoid sad bites with none of that filling/topping. If it’s basically two blended meals (see also meatballs re: spaghetti), then nuance is definitely appreciated.
dan pashman of the sporkful podcast explains it as the conflict between “bite consistency” and “bite variety”, i.e., “how finely will i chop up this salad?”
Would old-Joyce eat stuffed crust pizza?
Given that she separates/separated tacos into their component pieces, and would have the sausage deliberately picked off her sausage pizza and placed on the side…I’m guessing not.
But she still eats the pizza with the cheese on it, so maybe she’d eat it with the cheese IN it?
Joyce would first cut the ends off her pizza. Then, after eating the rest of it, she would surgically cut the crusts open, and eat the cheese out of them.
Then, if she were REALLY hungry, she might…
Get another slice, and do the same with that one.
Eating the crusts is for suckers.
That is what you have dipping sauces for.
Okay, it is really just salad dressing in single serve pancake syrup packs but it is an option.
Hm…does Joyce eat the crust of pizza to begin with? Would it being stuffed crust make that more or less likely? Why do I feel so sad at the thought that this comic strip character might not have enjoyed stuff crust pizza?
I don’t have Joyce’s … issues… but I don’t bother with stuffed crust, as I never eat the pizza ‘bones’, anyway.
wait, wait, what are the bones of a pizza? Like, just the crust? Or…like crust and toppings?
When I’ve heard it used, the crust is what is meant.
Yes, but the whole point of stuffed crust is to make the ‘bones’ more appetizing, give it some flavor, instead of just being (often burnt,) flavorless bread.
If your pizza crusts aren’t tasty in their own right, you’re buying bad pizza.
Hear, hear!
What they said!
The only time I don’t eat the crusts is when I overcook a frozen pizza.
I _do_ have Joyce’s exact food issues. Stuffed crust pizza doesn’t count because I can’t see the cheese inside the crust. By the time I taste it, it’s too late to worry about it. That might not totally make sense but we’re talking about a purely psychological phenomenon.
Admittedly, I find tacos okay as long as all toppings are on the side. The meat and shell count as one item, for some reason, and can be eaten together.
Do the issues have a name? Honestly curious here.
Not as such. But it would fall under obsessive-compulsive disorder or obsessive-compulsive tendencies depending on how much of an inconvenience it causes. Diagnosis of the disorder requires some degree of distress or an impairment in the ability to perform normal daily living: in this case, does the need to have food deconstructed turn a meal into a chore that keeps you occupied way beyond the amount of time that a meal should or do you go hungry rather than eat food that isn’t perfectly managed.
Well, we haven’t had a lot of information about how long does it take for Joyce to eat, and I don’t remember her being this particular about other stuff other than the showers.
Now I’m wondering how the rest of her family eat.
They tease her about her habits, so I assume they’re less fussy.
Given that the cheese and sauce and bottom of the crust are all together I’m surprised she eats pizza at all
Nah, regular cheese pizza is pretty easy to take apart. Sometimes it even spontaneously disassembles itself if you manhandle it or don’t bite all the way through!
She talks like someone who was just “inception”-ed.
And check out the color coded drink
Iirc Joyce’s drink is Sprite. Wonder if she got a flavor in it or no? With old Joyce I’d say no, but this new food-on-food-eating Joyce, who knows?
Wonder how Joyce would react to a Coke Remix machine.
I mean, presumably she just encountered one.
and didn’t taste the fact that all the sodas come out of the same spigot??
Ohhh, that makes sense. At first all I could see it as being was milk, but milk at Noodles and Company comes in little boxes, so that wasn’t it.
She’d only take one sip, though
No-one tell her it’s actually Sierra Mist.
If memory serves, she can taste the difference, so no one has to
The liquid is not depicted as clear. it could be one of those drawing conventions for readers to be able to see it. Otherwise I might think she’s already drank her entire glass, perhaps.
Um, you mean Jacob’s coke(?) and Joyce’s sprite(?)
sometimes i still prefer food when its in separate piles.
Joyce would not enjoy gourmet food.
…is that salmon with cole slaw on the side? Mashed potatoes with stuff in? I am slightly unsettled.
I assume it’s rice with other vegetables in it. Maybe Rice Pilaf.
You do know the Persian word for rice is pilaf, so using “rice Pilaf” is actually saying “rice Rice” (baby).
vanilla rice
But in english you use the word pilaf to specify a certain kind of rice, making it a bastardization of the original word (an adjective instead of a noun in this case) and thus not redundant in “rice pilaf”.
The morale of this story is there is always someone ready to out-pedantic-response you in the internet.
I love how I got Mary’s avatar for my little “insuferable prick” moment.
The most wellknownsontg by Vanilla Rice
Actually, “rice” in Farsi is a “polo.”
If you had a Tex-Mex-Persian chicken and rice dish, you could call it Pollo Polo.
Or if you made a noodle and rice dish, you could call it a Marco Polo. ^,^
Or maybe if you were trying to find a pilaf in the dark, that would also be a Marco Polo.
Google “deconstructed” food sometime. I think Joyce would be all over that hipster trend. Unless the fact that it was different was more important.
That’s the word I use when, say, the roast vegetables aren’t ready but my wife and I are hungry for the meat and starch now.
My plating and presentation skills lead to a lot of the word “rustic”, as well.
Honestly that whole “new plating” idea of piling up food like that makes me think of something a little kid would do.
Separate foods should be next to each other, not on top of each other. Because it’s easier to control the foods and regulate the ratio of Food#1 to Food#2 that way.
I just realized I’m like Joyce more than I thought.
I don’t think that’s like Joyce’s issues, personally? That’s saying that you have a preference for the amounts of different foods mixed together- for example, I like mash and peas, but too much mash and there’s not enough pea-joy, but too little mash and your peas fall off the fork and you run out of peas too quickly. That’s just having a preference, surely.
Frick, this is late, but I feel the need to reply. I don’t mean that I literally have the same issues with food that Joyce does. But like you said, I do have certain preferences or ‘rules’. Same as Joyce. Her rules are just much more strict.
I wonder what Joyce would do when confronted by a pie or a pasty?
Like this: https://goo.gl/images/sHzDP0 ?
Okay that last panel is not really a problem. Who really wants to finish all of the meatballs or noodles and have a pile of the other left?
I mean, it depends on whether or not one part of the meal is exceptional, or at least noticeably better than the rest.
When I was little and used to eat both meat and SpaghettiOs, I would always get the kind with meatballs and then purposely save them to the end so I would get to finish by just enjoying around 16-18 little meatballs.
So, I guess me, to answer your question.
*awkwardly raises hand*
On second thought, I shoulda said that it’s a fine preference yet with no clearly thought-out strategy on Joyce’s part. But saving the good part, or not caring, are fine too.
It just means so much to her now, but I never thought of it until she said it. And I remember being a kid and it took convincing for me to have my meat on my noodles or rice, for a few years.
Split the spare meatballs in half with your fork, and you can use them to wipe up any leftover sauce. (Whether that’s worth it when the “sauce” is just butter is debatable.)
You are the friend Joyce needed to plan this contingency with.
I’ve never done the separate-food-into-its-component pieces thing*, but the distribute-each-bite-properly-so-it-has-the-right-amount-of-all-the-components thing, that is very me.
Also panel 4 Joyce, you liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie
*except with pizza, because I like the ghost of pepperoni on my cheese pizza but not the pepperonis themselves
When I eat a burger, I am very upset if the burger/bread ratio is out of hand. Or the patty is not shaped just like the bun.
And yes, I will rip off surplus areas of bun and cover surplus areas of patty, thank you very much!
Hot dogs are a Problem for that reason–the bun is always bigger than the hot dog! Must remove excess bread for optimal meat/bread ratio!
You get me!
Let’s be best friends forever now!
Frankly, the best solution to this (for when making hot dogs at home) is to just buy some pretty big buns and then put two hot dogs in each bun.
They make extra long bun-sized hotdogs now, helps with the problem!
What hot dogs are you eating where the bun is larger than the dog?
“Or the patty is not shaped just like the bun.”
This is why Wendy’s pisses me off.
BUT, on the other hand, I just realised something!
At some point, I stopped counting the amount of fries I was taking* with each bite of a burger, to ensure equal distribution of that as well. Because yes of course I used to do that as well.
But yeah, somehow I stopped giving a damn about that. And I didn’t even notice that I stopped giving a damn.
Well, it’s either that, or I automatically pick the right amount of fries and don’t have to waste precious conscious brain activity on thinking about it.
*Three fries on the fork (four if they were all small, two if one was exceptionally long).
Sorry, fries on the fork?
seconded. fork?
My mother gives us grief about eating fries with our fingers which I have never understood. Fries. Are. Finger. Food.
When I ordered pizza in Germany (’82-ish) it was served whole, not sliced. I was to eat with knife and fork. I continued this, in states, sometimes. Less messy.
Only take-away pizza (or, you know, those US pizza chain pizzas) come sliced in Germany.
In an ordinary Italian style restaurant, you’re expected to use knife and fork.
Eat them however you want.
Except by drizzling the entire order of fries in ketchup. No. Fry condiments stay to the side unless you’re making poutine.
Edit: Vinegar is the only other exception. That’s supposed to go all over the fries.
First of all: Hey, I live in Norway. Most junk food places serve their bags in rectangular boxes that looks like this (except not as overloaded with fries) and quite often add a small fork to that:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/67/Fries_2.jpg/1920px-Fries_2.jpg
Because we are -civilised- in how we eat our junk food and get our impending heart attacks.
Secondly, stabbing fries with a fork is a wonderful feeling. Plus, in Norway we usually puts special seasoning on our fries (called Pommes Frites-krydder) which makes the fries supremely delicious, but also gives them the Cheetos effect, if you know what I mean.
ah. understood, and thank you; however, I still eat Cheetos (and fries, chips, etc) with my fingers.
*imagines eating Cheetos with a fork*
A lot of that also happens at various places here– the rectangular box, seasoned fries. Sometimes the place will even throw a plastic fork into the bag, but unless I ordered like a salad–which, let’s be real, I didn’t— I’m like, “What would I need a fork for?”
And then I eat my fries with my hands, like Godzilla intended.
History shows again and again how forks have made a folly out of men!
Use the forks, Luke.
Also, stabbing things can be a fun feeling, I get that. But you know what else is a good feeling? Just grabbing a fucking handful of fries and shoving them in your largest face-hole.
There’s a hobby that includes stabbing wool with a tiny needle a fuckton till it becomes what you want, it is called needle felting. Great for getting the urge to stab out!
That should be “lived in Norway”.
Sheesh, you’d think I’d remember what country I currently live in when I’ve been here for almost five years now…
I was here like, “Huh, maybe he moved back to Norway?”
So thanks for clarifying.
Hah, as if I’d let the Americans off the hook that easily.
No, you’re going to have to suffer me for a good while longer!
Do you consider the depictions of countries in the comic “Scandinavia and the World” accurate? It’s funny but I hope it’s not leading me to misconstrue things about Nordic folks.
(I’m in the northeast US.)
I eat fries with a fork because I hate getting my fingers greasy. Especially at restaurants. When I eat take-out fries, they are always served with one of those little wooden forks anyway (at least here in Germany), so why not use it? Plus, I usually eat fries with a lot of mayonaise or peanut butter sauce slathered all over them and I wouldn’t want to get all that grease on my fingers.
When it comes to burgers, it depends on what kind of burger it is. I’d never eat a McDonald’s burger with fork and knife, but one of those large ones with several patties and other toppings? Yes, totally. If the burger is too large to fit into my mouth, it gets eaten with a fork.
Wait, out of hand?
So you’d be eating a hamburger with UTENSILS?
…..
HEATHEN!
No, not the burger itself! Sheesh, let’s not talk crazy now
It depends on the burger and the bun in question. If you can’t get the optimal ratio of bun, burger, and condiments per mouthful with your hands, then you might need to use knife and fork.
And yes, I do this with burritos, too. I am the anti-Joyce. I want every mouthful to have the perfect combination. Don’t judge me.
The only thing I’d judge you on is that you still think you need to say “don’t judge me” when you’re already in the company of a lot of people who are all admitting they have their own particular rules (sometimes even laws) when it comes to consumption of food.
Just relax, we’re all weird here.
And when everyone’s weird… no one is.
Except for Derek. That boy ain’t right.
I eat burgers with fork and knife. I eat pizza with fork and knife. I even used to eat cream-and-wine-cooked mussels with fork and knife. Just don’t like to get my hands dirty. Or my shirt, for what it’s worth.
Fingerfood is an alien concept to me. It’s either food or it’s to be eaten with the tip of fingers, then it’s… well I always thought the english word for it was snack – but it appears that it’s still a huge cultural gap to grasp what a snack is…
Well Mussels should be eaten with a fork, I’ve never heard of them being finger food.
I’m like wise as averse to getting my hands or shirt messy. I think sauced food should be relegated the realm of fork and knife. Things like BBQ and wings just don’t appeal to me.
As for a snack, snacks are just a quick bite between meals. Anything can really be a snack, it’s more a concept of amount than type.
This reminded me of these lines from a camp song:
I eat my peas with honey, I’ve done it all my life.
It makes the peas taste funny, but it keeps them on my knife!
There are fancy places that serve their fancy burgers in an open faced style that really gets on my nerves. Each bun half with different ingredients piled on it. Is this a kit? Do I eat it with a knife and fork? Or what? Because if I try to assemble that into one burger, I’ll never get it into my mouth. If you need knife and fork, how is it a burger?
Yes, this is how I handle the mixed fruit I sometimes get at lunch. I have to eat the fruit one piece at a time so that each bite is different from the last, I’ve got at least one piece of each fruit all the way almost until the end, and the grape is the last one. (I say “the grape” because there’s usually only one.)
When I was a kid I’d put a serving of each food in a different segregated area on the plate, making sure none of them touched each other. And then I’d each food completely before moving on to the next — rotating the plate so that the food I was currently eating was closest to me. (These days I’m more relaxed about mixing, but only if it’s not something with a runny liquid like corn.)
Oh, I also have to alternate fruit bites between fruits I love (e.g. strawberries, pineapple) and fruits I don’t love as much (e.g. melon).
Whenever I eat like a bag of chips or candy, I always try to have an even number of them in a handful.
Today’s video ad that’s fucking things up for me is for something called Saxenda, which is apparently a weight-loss drug.
Op, now it’s about cotton.
Thinking back, the cotton ad seems to be the most common, and I hate it. I mean, I’m probably still going to buy the occasional cotton thing, but, like, I won’t like it.
I disabled java. I still get ads – just not the big ones.
If I wanted a homogeneous meal, I’d eat porridge.
Blech. Stuff touching.
I am not joking either. My skin crawled a little. 😛
Don’t worry, the atoms didn’t actually touch — that would violate the Pauli exclusion principle, since the outer shells of atoms are composed of free fermions. They were merely repulsed by the force normal.
I don’t care. Stuff touched. 😛
“600 noodles per meatball, eh?” *immediately stuffs face*
does joyce have like? mild OCD?
No. She does not.
Drop the mild.
I mean, we haven’t really seen any evidence of OCD-type intrusive thoughts, so I don’t know if it makes sense to say that. Obsessive personality ≠ OCD.
No, she doesn’t seem to have intrusive thoughts or anything of the sort.
She is, however, autistic, probably. (I’m autistic and I have a pretty good au-dar).
Yea I’m Autistic too. Just, yknow, in media it’s hard to tell what the intention is for the character.
Well that’s neat altogether.
I have OCD (or PTSD? basically, they have overlapping symptoms, and I have some symptoms that are particular to each, but not all symptoms of either particular diagnosis).
So, Joyce’s symptoms don’t seem like mine, especially pre-medication, although obv everyone manifests differently. But, in-comic, Joyce hasn’t had any panic attacks or dissociative episodes, nor do any of her fears seem to rise to phobic levels of daily-life interference. She doesn’t seem to have intrusive thoughts or perseverations (Google if you need a definition). Nor does she seem to have obvious compulsions*
*often cleanliness and neatness compulsions are depicted in media (hand-washing, etc) but if a person’s underlying phobia isn’t avoiding illness, then the compulsions are going to be different. For instance, I was actually a hoarder to some extent, because my underlying phobia is all about avoiding loss, so I never wanted to throw anything away. Possibly TMI, but I even kept my hair from my hairbrush and finger-and-toenail clippings in plastic baggies, because I was afraid something bad would happen if I “lost” them [while simultaneously knowing how crazy that was]. Some people’s compulsions are just saying certain phrases.
Medication helped *a lot*. As did CBT oriented towards dealing with underlying fears and eliminating phobias. I’m not sure what Joyce’s deal is, but I think the lack of phobias and panic attacks probably eliminates any kind of anxiety disorder, save for very mild general anxiety.
can I ask what class of meds helped? I’m thinking of giving buspirone a second chance once I’m done tweaking my migraine meds.
@Inahc — er, I’m hesitant to name specific medications, only because I’ve seen people take it like advice. And the truth is, everyone’s brain chemistry and hormonal makeup is different, so buspirone might really work for you, and I don’t want to discourage you to take what I take when, in fact, the medication your doctor recommended works better.
So, I’ll say this: I initially took stuff that had bad side effects, then stuff that didn’t work, then Paxoteine, which worked really well for a long time (along with CBT). I ultimately had to switch things around because I started having increasing hypersomnolence as a side effect (until I slept almost 16 hours a day). So I switched some stuff around and I have a Xanax prescription for emergencies (if panic attacks are coming on or are likely to be encountered, which is much rarer now), but I wouldn’t recommend the medication I’m on now to a person who experienced what I was dealing with in the beginning.
I also cannot stress enough the importance of getting a GOOD therapist, for at least 24 weeks. Those six months, I believe, helped as much as the medications, if not more-so.
yeah, that’s why I asked what class and not what exact meds 🙂 and yep, good therapists are worth their weight in gold.
I’m assuming you typoed Paroxetine (since google didn’t have results for Paxoteine) which is an SSRI, with all the damn side-effects. I find it kinda surprising and interesting how much overlap there is between OCD treatment and depression treatment. the anxiety overlap I expected, but not the depression. (my migraine med’s also an antidepressant!)
I used to have some ativan for emergencies, but it’s the day-to-day stress and ickiness that’s more of a threat to my health (both mental and physical now :/ ). When I was trying to get to the bottom of my muscle spasm issues the doctors even convinced me to try a daily benzo, which went even worse than you’d expect *and* brought the headache back. wtf. I’m glad it didn’t work though given how bad just the *expected* side-effects were and that benzos are really not meant for daily use.
it kinda seems like a lot of things are pointing towards antidepressants for me… but if I go that route I’d like to try one of the ones with *less* side-effects first, since I’ve only ever been on ones with extreme side-effects. (dry-mouth, even with xylitol to compensate, has been terrible for my teeth. so glad I’m on a low enough dose to not have it constantly any more. but the more I learn to relax, the more dizziness interferes with basic tasks.)
there’s also part of me advocating for more meditation (without any new medication) in the hopes that I can reach the part of my mind generating all these icky feelings and change its mind somehow.
well, plenty of time ahead of me for trying all the things. 🙂 thanks for sharing.
And what pray tell would you have gotten PTSD from?
o.0 that seems like a really, *really* personal/private/potentially-triggering question to just… *ask*…
Yeah… Especially asking it in a way generally used to convey skepticism.
Stella doesn’t need to explain further or prove anything.
@Gaia– Fuck you. What the fuck is wrong with you? People get PTSD from *trauma*. Why the fuck would you ask a stranger, like, “by the by, what traumatic thing happened to you? Just curious.” You don’t even know my real name fuckhole, why would I tell you that?
Free advice: in the future, don’t ask people to tell you about the literal worst thing that ever happened in their life unless 1. you’re a counselor or 2. you’re a survivor of trauma seeking support (like, in a support group setting or in an established relationship).
FUUUuuuuuck. Like, I wasn’t going to reply, but I’m like, fuck it. If this reply keeps you from asking other people that question, it’s worth it. I don’t care if you hate me over this. People are always like, “no judgement,” or “just saying,” but I am firmly saying that the voyeurism inherent in asking people to talk about their personal trauma in this context is cruel and selfish.
Doing it once, out of ignorance, is one thing. But if you do it again, you become characterized by a cruel and selfish action. It makes you a cruel and selfish person. So. Don’t do it again.
@Gaia–
I’m writing this reply about an hour after my other reply, and, thinking on it, I’d like to apologize for going 100% intense, 0-60 like that. I stand by the gist of what I said, and I still want you to never ask that kind of question of people you don’t know. I believe that firmly, so I’m not apologizing for saying that.
But, in an hour’s hindsight, I *am* sorry that my gut response was so aggro. There’s, like, a good way and a bad way to criticize people (I’ll bet Joyce would know a Bible verse about that– something something speak the truth in love, probably) and I’ve got to admit, there’s no way to frame calling you a “fuckhole” as going about it the right way.
So, as embarrassing as it is, I am sorry for losing my cool like that. I was wrong to speak in anger. Fart Captor and Inhac already got the gist of it without the caps-and-swears, so I probably should’ve let it lie. Anyway, if I hurt you in my anger, I’m sorry. I hope you can forgive me.
I *really* hope you can simultaneously forgive me and still take my point about personal questions, but, ah, I understand if you don’t do both.
Sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but words will never harm me, so feel free to call me whatever you want. (Is there anyway to say this without coming of as a massive sarcastic douche?( the intent is: call me anything you like, my feelings can’t be hurt))
So I have no reason to forgive you. (At least from my perspective)
The reason I asked the question in the first place is, I’ve seen far FAR to many people claim PTSD because someone disagreed with them, which got my gut response to be “Great another one”.
It infuriates me when people say the have PTSD when they don’t, as it’s horribly disrespectful to people who actually have it.
Based on your reaction any doubt in my mind has been cleared, sorry for assuming you where one of the fakers, but I hope you understand why I asked.
i’d say it’s also pretty disrespectful of people who have ptsd to punish everyone who says they have it, just in case they’re somebody who doesn’t
and that rule applies to a *lot* of other things in life too.
I relate to that last comment in the strip on such an etheral level.
Joyce, you’re not picky, you’re OCD…
This is Nikola Tesla shit right here
Tesla was discredited by the Templars.
(or is picky eating a sign of having OCD tendencies?)
Mmmmmmmmm, gonna go with “nope” on this.
More autistic than OCD. She doesn’t seem to have intrusive thoughts or anything. But she definitely seems autistic. (I’m autistic myself and I have a pretty good au-dar)
Er, just a tl;dr version of my other comment: if she doesn’t have frequent panic attacks or dissociation, then, by definition, she doesn’t have OCD (or any mental illness in the “anxiety” category).
Er, I don’t have frequent panic attacks or dissociation, but I quite definitely have a mental illness in the “anxiety” category. I have generalised anxiety disorder, where I have a constant underlying level of anxiety that spikes suddenly in response to individual stressors. I don’t have panic attacks, I just have “I am always somewhat tense, except when I’m so tense I can’t act at all.”
And the last one isn’t a panic attack?
depends who you ask. I’m still not sure if what I get actually counts as panic attacks; I got hardly any of the standard symptoms until I was on dexedrine.
@Arian — Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that GAD isn’t an anxiety disorder. Maybe it’s the word “frequent,” I don’t know what is a hard number of “x panic attacks per day/ week / month” to diagnose someone with an anxiety disorder that isn’t being well managed.
Sorry 🙁
As a friend of mine once said,
“Look, I’m not going to lie to you about something like this, any more than I’d eat unsorted candy.”
(And half of you just nod.)
I was proud of myself, we had a bag of berry skittles at work and I ate them as a handful instead of sorting them into colors and eating them by descending preference order. Like an adult!
Yes. Like an adult.
<.<
I am retired. A couple hours ago, I poured out my bag of M&Ms (peanut) and ate them that way. (descending faves) Always eat the green ones last, as they are the aphrodisiacs. (this was a thing at my USAF Tech School, and still do. My room-mate was hoarding all her green ones in a tin, for the grad party)
As an adult and engineer I have been known to track color distribution among multiple, little bags of M&Ms.
Strangely enough it leads to eating more of them.
I played a color-grouping game with the small rolls of sugar candy tablets that go by the name Smarties in the USA – Fifteen pieces per roll – six colors/flavors – what are the odds that a roll of fifteen will have two or more of each color – find a roll that meets this ‘quota’ and you save it, otherwise eat it and on to the next roll – this game led to some massive Smarties consumption
I could see myself playing that game with Smarties.
(If you are not in the USA, and have never had Necco wafers I would suggest you stick to Smarties.)
Sigh. Looks like another Halloween upcoming where 80% of the candy stays in-house.
Who decided the green thing, anyway?
Silly Rabbit, the green M&Ms are Spinach Pills, capable of powering your Popeye cartoon feats of strength.
It’s because the green M&M is the sexy female one, that’s why.
And is the (female) brown one actually brown or is it the green one, only naked?
Colored candies are not a food. They are an artistic medium. You pour them onto a plate and arrange them in interesting patterns. The leftovers get eaten. When you are done, you deconstruct your artwork, from the outsides in.
Also, Joyce is telling the truth:
This has nothing at all to do with Jacob, and is all about her personal neuroses. :/
But the timing of her decision to overcome it is interesting–my guess is either she wants to impress him, or her discomfort at the unfamiliar church genuinely bothered her, and she wants to break out of that cycle of needing familiarity.
I’ve been known to be wrong before, though.
I suspect that she’s being defiant in response to Becky needling her in front of Jacob.
I can’t decide if it’s better or worse for Joyce’s OCD that her favourite subject is math.
Better.
Otherwise, she’d be stuck trying to order her food alphabetically, when the foodstuffs have synonyms.
I’m a bit of a picky eater, and even I’m not as bad as Joyce.
I don’t have OCD, so if anyone commenting about Joyce having OCD actually does, then that should take precedence. But like…I really feel like we should not be calling Joyce/her behavior OCD and throwing that around. It doesn’t even seem to fit, really.
Yeah, agreed. I do a couple of the same things Joyce does wrt food. Food touching is gross. Sauces, condiments, and mixing things is also gross. Soup and stew are the grossest. So if Joyce has OCD (and I’m not saying she does or doesn’t, but if people are using this as shorthand for ‘does this habit a lot’ then please don’t) then I better get myself checked out.
Anyone who is thinking about calling out Joyce as OCD just because she’s picky about food should listen to Terry Gross’s “Fresh Air” interview with John Green.
For that matter, even if you aren’t thinking about calling out Joyce as OCD should listen to that interview. Seriously, everyone should listen to that interview.
Ooo, I’m currently reading Turtles All the Way Down by John Green. I’ll probably listen to the interview once I’ve finished it.
Seriously though.
Also I mean picky eating is much more an autistic thing and I’ve already suggested she’s autistic and I’m autistic myself and the calculation of how much noodle per meatball I have so I know how to eat it is definitely a thing I do.
I mean there’s also how she communicates and her sensory things, but if we’re on the subject of this strip…
Fellow autismo*, here for a quick contrast. Calculations above a certain level tend to give me mild panic attacks. I also compulsively eat things that no reasonable person would eat, often to a rousing chorus of “That’s no good anymore, you’re gonna make yourself sick!”.
Not intending to invalidate your habits, naturally. It’s called a spectrum for a reason.
*”Autismo” is fun to say in an awful Spanish accent, is all.
at this point I’m less intertsted in which label fits best, and more just wishing there was a damn solution. if there was a pill to make the icky feelings go away, I’d take it. :/ specific issues have come and gone over time but the quantity of them and the way they escalate is quite frustrating sometimes. always having to watch myself and control myself and endure those feelings *sucks*.
I still have some hope that meditation might help in a stronger way eventually, though. (and maybe I’ve temporarily forgotten something obvious)
Thanks <3
I do have OCD, and while neatness / cleanliness OCD *is* a kind of OCD, it is far from the only type. People with, say, a hoarding compulsion might assume they can't possibly have OCD because OCD is always portrayed with a compulsion to clean and organize. (Ask me how I know).
Also, a key part of OCD is panic attacks and anxiety, which Joyce doesn't seem to have.
I don't find casual use of the phrase "OCD" to be offensive, just frustrating, because the OCD = neatness myth is a huge problem. It prevents people from seeking diagnosis, or getting misdiagnosed as ADHD or something associated with "messiness," which is harmful. But, in essence, if someone has panic attacks, intrusive, obsessive thoughts, perseverations, and compulsions designed to soothe an underlying fear, they have OCD.
The perseverations could be pacing, running a finger pattern, or pulling one's hair out; obsessive thoughts could involve making a mental list of all colors in alphabetical order or something more frightening; they could come in the form of an hours-long vivid daydream [this symptom in isolation is called "maladaptive daydreaming"] or frequent small interruptions; compulsions could be bizzarre efforts to clean oneself (hand-washing), be small or empty (compulsive exercise / vomiting, which is often misdiagnosed as anorexia), keep everything (hoarding), impose order (er, organizing everything).
The compulsions come from an effort to self-soothe, and when self-soothing can't happen, that's when the panic attacks happen. But, generally, OCD looks very different from patient to patient. It reminds me of the Chimanda Ngozi TED*Talk "Danger of a Single Story." It isn't that there are no OCD people whose obsessions and compulsions center on order and cleanliness; it's just that there are many more who don't have those issues but still have OCD.
Also, finally: OCD doesn't have any sensory processing problems. If a person has highly picky texture preferences, or avoids loud events, they probably have a different thing. I've met several other people with OCD, and few are picky eaters. Even those who have vomiting compulsions will eat pretty much whatever, as long as they can throw it up later.
“Also, a key part of OCD is panic attacks and anxiety, which Joyce doesn’t seem to have. ”
uh, she seemed on the edge of one in church there. and panic attacks have some hollywood issues too; mine tend to be very internal, less physical and more.. well maybe they’re more dissociation than panic? I dunno. still sucks, whatever it is.
but thanks for the OCD info, always good to dispel those myths 🙂 the more I learn about it the more I think it fits me, but I feel that way about quite a few labels now :/ like, food ratios are not sensory… they shouldn’t matter! but wanting them to not matter doesn’t do much 😛 I’d managed to forget about them but I do still have to finish my cereal in the right order… and the sensory issues feel like three kinds of issue mixed together – it feels too loud/strong/painful, it feels *wrong*, and it won’t shut up.
I would like to add that not all folks with OCD/OCD-type stuff have compulsions. Pure-O OCD, the kind characterized only by intrusive thoughts/obsessions, is quite common.
@ Vivid Grim– Absolutely! It gets complicated, of course, because things can overlap, and not every patient has every symptom.
@Inhac– I guess we don’t know for sure if Joyce has panic attacks. But, if she has, they must be mostly offscreen. Her discomfort in church didn’t read like a panic attack to me. Anxious, sure, but not a lot of what panic feels like, all the physical symptoms (up to or including dissociating). She seemed more-or-less okay after the service, whereas after a panic attack she’d be really worn out.
See Joyce, that’s the wrong way to eat mixed foods. You identify the tastiest part (probably the meatballs) and you save that for last so you can really savor them and have that be the aftertaste that lingers after the mea-
….
…. wait. That’s me speaking, and I’m an only child.
Joyce, eat the meatballs immediately before any of your kin can steal them off your plate.
I do the same as you. Also basically an only child, but my mom was the type to take bites of the parts I was saving for last. It was very upsetting.
Whenever I go out to eat with mom, she tries to encourage me to order dessert so she can steal a few bites. She’s very obvious about it, to the point that it’s a running joke.
One time I didn’t have the patience for her stealing dessert from me, so I figured, “hey, I’ll just order a side of fries instead of dessert, that way she’ll be thwarted”.
…. that was not my most brilliant moment.
At first, I used to eat the meatcakes (it’s a Norwegian thing) and try and skip the (boiled) potatoes, to my parent’s chagrin.
Then I tried eating the potatoes first and saving the meatcakes for later. My parents at least tolerated this, since it meant I would eat potatoes.
Then I realised that potatoes in themselves are pretty meh to eat, but when you eat them together with something, they’re so mild that they don’t really take away the taste from the tasty stuff. So might as well eat them together (very carefully balanced to make sure there were no potatoes left in the end).
When I do this, people try to take the foods I’m saving. Purposefully to torment me.
People are the worst.
Tbf they’re often only pretending.
Taking my food without my explicit permission is grounds for a stabbing. That’s Not Okay.
That’s why I eat with a fork in each hand — one to feed myself and the other to defend.
Joyce is redefining the term “meal plan”.
Twinsies!
What is the psychological name for whatever the fuck is wrong with her?
Human.
The worst kind of mental illness, if we’re being honest.
It does have a 100% fatality rate.
If we’re to be needlessly pedantic and nitpicky about it, it “only” has somewhere between 95-99% fatality rate.
I mean, who’s to say that the 17776 story won’t in fact come true one day?
gah, don’t bring that up again.
I was actually really interested in that story and then it turned out to all be about stupid football.
(because it was written for a site about that, and an audience who cares about that.)
That’s hardly the worst of it. An alarmingly high percentage of violent criminals show signs of the human condition!
!
!!
!!!
If this is the worst thing that is “wrong” with her — and why the fuck is this “wrong”? I’d say it’s a quirk, but pots and kettles — but if this is the worst thing about her, then she would better than 99% of us.
Well said.
I mean, it’s not the worst thing about her, because if it were half the comic wouldn’t have happened. But still.
Wow, rude.
You don’t seem to be one to talk if someone else’s harmless neurosis is this upsetting to you.
Autism, and it’s not “wrong” with her or with any autistic (like me), it’s just different about her.
Different doesn’t mean defective.
Just me here, but Joyce has personally never read to me as someone with autism (coming from another someone with autism).
I have a very good au-dar, especially when it comes to AFAB (assigned female at birth) people 🙂
I am rarely wrong (although it has happened in the past, like, I don’t have a perfect record, but usually I’m pretty spot-on).
The way she communicates, her sensory issues, her obliviousness of many social “rules”, and her attachment to things like her favorite sweater (even with blood stains!)… To me that screams autism.
All of that is based on David Willis, though.
That doesn’t make it less autistic
???
I mean…I’m definitely not a doctor, but she seems…fine? Quirky?
IDK much about autism, so I have no opinion there, but I do know that mental illnesses suck because they’re painful. Whether they’re depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, psychoses and hallucinations, or ADHD-type disorders are problems because they hurt and interfere with a person’s living. Which is why people with mental illnesses are encouraged to see doctors and stuff– not to “fit in,” but to be well.
My life is phenomenally better since getting treatment for my mental illness, even though it was a long process (starting at age 13, with a lot of trial and error). From the outside it just looks like I no longer do weird stuff and can sleep normally. But in my head, I feel so much better. More relaxed. More joyful.
I’m like a personification of those “it gets better” advertisements.
But if Joyce isn’t in pain, then she doesn’t need to “get better.” Oddness is not a mental illness. Being strange doesn’t mean a person is suffering. I have odd personality quirks that have nothing to do with my mental illness. So do a lot of people. She wants to separate food or give eating mixed food a shot, she’s not hurting anyone, and she’s not in pain. So maybe people need to judge a little less.
Well, I’d say it goes beyond “quirky”.
It’s now something she’s actively trying to overcome. Because it does bother her.
It feels a lot like a bad habit to be honest. It doesn’t so much distress as disgust her. She’s forcing herself and her immediate reaction is one of someone rationally dealing with it. If it was more than that it would probably cause a stronger emotional response.
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: I like that Jacob is aware enough to notice this as a possible thing and try and check in on that to make sure someone isn’t feeling social pressure to perform a certain way. And I love that he seems aware that social pressure can exist even with the best of intentions just from the social norms that govern human interactions.
Like, the level of understanding he has about these things will make him an amazingly empathetic lawyer when he grows up and it’s easy to see why so many straight women in the comic are infatuated by him.
Panel 2: And I like this little hesitation, because there is a piece that is doing it for him. He’s a handsome man that Joyce wants to impress and having someone you’re crushing on is always going to make you more willing to try and stretch your comfort zones just because that’s what’s modeled so much as what you do when you’re in love. Heck, it’s the basis of a lot of rom coms.
Not to mention he’s a convenient person to test herself with. He’s not someone like Becky or Dorothy who knows her inside and out, but rather a mostly-stranger. And it’s someone who is comforting and sympathetic and willing to give lots of safe words to back up into neuroses.
Like, this is probably the best possible person for her to stretch her ability to cope with changes and new things with, especially in an environment where she has some mystery about her.
Yeah, Jacob is growing on me so much here. He’s Good At Joyce.
I don’t know about OCD but as the only daughter of a large-ish family (and being the youngest) I’ve long thought theres a case of Joyce being picky because food was probably one of the few things she could control
Or not
That’s exactly what I thought: food is one of the few areas where a child can exert any control over their lives. Youngest child and only daughter in a fundamentalist household, she had a lot of restraints on her!
You think that. In my country it is the most common thing to bully children into eating exactly as much and exactly what the parent wants. It’s not even frowned upon. I usually make the most exptic dishes I can when I cook for my parents, so they get to feel the pain.
yeah oh god. It even took a war for me to control the -size- of my portion, so I didn’t get scolded for leaving food on the plate. (And then puberty hit and I rapidly chubbied up and my parents were like ‘OH NO MUST WATCH FOOD QUANTITIES AND NOT EAT TOO MUCH’ and I was one half ‘seriously?’ and one half ‘FREEDOM SWEET FREEDOM’) (Nothing like ‘oh, I’m dieting’ to deflect ‘why aren’t you eating more of [gross food]?’)
My father was big on not forcing kids to eat stuff they hate (he was a petty tyrant in many other ways but not about food). My mother preferred eat what I give you exactly what I give you, but if she started in on that, it would lead to a fight, soooo she instead would passive-aggressively sulk at you over how much or little you were eating – you needed to eat enough that she wouldn’t feel insulted (and thus start sniping at you about how ungrateful you are) but not so much she thought you were being gluttonous (and thus started sniping about you about how you’re gettin kinda chubby and need to watch what you eat and don’t eat things with “a tonne of calories” all the time and etc). Add to that the fact that she’s got a complicated eating disorder history (anorexia which morphed into anorexia/bulimia which became binge eating disorder as she got older) so she also was very strict about there being “good” foods (carrots, lettuce, bean spouts – basically anything with the approximate caloric density of water) and “bad” foods (everything else) and the more you ate of “bad” foods the worse you were as a person (weak, lazy, hedonistic, gluttonous, etc).
I am the only kid she raised who’s at a healthy body weight as an adult, and that’s cuz I hire a dietician to do all my food planning. Everyone else has some variety of eating disorder or pathological over-eating. I myself struggle with the brain-garbage around eating but I’ve mostly got my head space under control with that stuff. Mostly.
My niece was really picky about food from at least the age of five, and she is the oldest of two. I suspect she’s a supertaster, and the fact that her dad can’t stand the taste of red meat sort of lends credence to that hypothesis.
Panels 3-4: But I love that she doesn’t go there. Because old Joyce would have. Old Joyce would have gone all in on the narratives that a “good girl admits that she’s a vessel for a good man’s wants” so long as it doesn’t involve hanky-panky. If this had occurred in the beginning of the comic, Joyce would have worked her ass off trying to become a good Christian wife for him in between freaking out about his religion.
But here, she recognizes that that’s not something she really wants. She likes having a level of independence from the guys she’s interested in. Plus, what she’s saying is true. This is just as much about testing how far she’s come and trying to embrace change because she doesn’t like her status quo as it is about impressing the cute boy. Probably more.
Panel 5: And this test against herself is important to her. She recognizes her neuroses around food and she appreciates the support of those around her, but I think the food may have gotten tied to her religion and her culture as parts of an old Joyce she doesn’t fully like being anymore and is slowly exploring extricating herself from.
Like, if she can break through on foods touching other foods, maybe she can go to a church with no crackers or grape juice without having a panic attack or stop hating herself for her sexual fantasies. Or at least it feels these struggles have become somewhat intertangled for her.
I like what you said about how the struggles are entangled. That’s a thing I think a lot of people do (or at least I do), where we draw connections between different problems we’re facing simply because in facing them contemporaneously we’re naturally inclined to see correlations. And that means that if we can overcome one tribulation, it can us in a headspace where suddenly everything else seems solvable.
Yup and it can also create weird stressors where suddenly going to the store or not carries weights of solving larger problems.
It’s very much a double-edged sword in my experiences.
The human brain. Our first ally and last enemy.
yeah no kidding… my brain’s swinging back and forth a lot yesterday and today… either everything feels ok or everything feels impossible/intolerable.
Honestly if these fucking video ads keep teleporting my browser window I might stop reading the comments altogether. (In addition to NatureMade there’s also some sort of cotton-related advertisement now, so I guess I’ll eschew cotton forever out of
spite)Seriously, fuck cotton.
This is a date right?
Oh man. There has been exactly one time in my life where I was about to ask the person I was dining with this question — and in the moment, I decided not to.
In hindsight, that didn’t work out the way I would have liked it to. But there’s no guarantee that things would have been any different if I had asked it — in all likelihood, I’d just be kicking myself for a different reason.
tl;dr: if you are ever have to ask yourself, “Is this a date?”, then you should probably assume that it’s not.
Not really. Sexual/romantic tension between people eating lunch together does not make it a date.
In my book, it only counts as a date if both people acknowledge it as such. This can be declared after-the-fact, but that’s not terribly common
For some reason my boyfriend is so aversive of the word “date” that I’ve always had to frame it differently, like “do want to meet?” or anything. We’ve been together for three years now, but we’ve never really had a declared date 😀
As long as he doesn’t look surprised when you say “boyfriend” about him, in front of him. 😀.
I was once, in high school, corrected when I asked a guy “How long have you been going out with X?”
He and X were, he informed me, only “seeing each other, not “going out together”. It was a minor nomenclature transgression I didn’t even know I was making.
Hmm, I’m starting to seriously wonder if she is actually close to clinically ocd.
See comments above: more likely autistic. Both food pickiness and organizing little things to self-soothe are very much autistic things.
Despite the comments about OCD, reading the comments today felt so good because I found out there are other people who do the same things I do regarding food. I wouldn’t say I’m a picky eater, especially when compared to my brother, but I do like being organized with my food. Also: I don’t have OCD.
I think some of the issue is that we humans, most of us, love to put things in little boxes… and the irony is, most of our own behavior is not so neatly quantified and classified and defined and separated.
(Note that putting things in boxes, with labels on them, is vital to functional cognition. Imagine if you had to consciously evaluate and decide if any and every given object was a tree, or a desk, or a person – all the work that normally gets done below the level of our awareness. You’d literally never get anything else done.
The problem, of course, comes when we stop updating the model to match the observed data, and switch over to trying to shove everything into the same boxes, or through the same holes, with no regard to whether they actually fit.)
Robert Anton Wilson had a whole bit where he talked about things not fitting into the boxes people put them in. Ending with “The most thoroughly and relentlessly damned, banned, excluded, condemned, forbidden, ostracized, ignored, suppressed, repressed, robbed, brutalized and defamed of all ‘Damned Things’ is the individual human being. The social engineers, statisticians, psychologists, sociologists, market researchers, landlords, bureaucrats, captains of industry, bankers, governors, commissars, kings and presidents are perpetually forcing this ‘Damned Thing’ into carefully prepared blueprints and perpetually irritated that the ‘Damned Thing’ will not fit into the slot assigned it. The theologians call it a sinner and try to reform it. The governor calls it a criminal and tries to punish it. The psychologist calls it a neurotic and tries to cure it. Still, the ‘Damned Thing’ will not fit into their slots.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/894938-the-most-thoroughly-and-relentlessly-damned-banned-excluded-condemned-forbidden
Dang it, Joyce.
You can tell from panels 1, 2 and 5 how difficult Joyce is finding this (which, I think, she’s only attempting to impress Jacob). She is seriously neurotic when it comes to food, isn’t she? Maybe even disablingly so!
If it were to impress Jacob, she’s admit it I think. She’s been brought up to think it’s a virtue after all. But no, I think there’s a dead giveaway to this being her genuinely renegotiating her relationship with her brain, and it’s the last panel. She’s talking about a NEW problem. She can be fine with mixing food as long as it’s measured perfectly evenly (possibly so it can count as one united food: noodles-and-meatballs, and not two foods mixed). She can get over the first hurdle, but there’s a next one right after.
And if she was trying to impress Jacob without tipping him off to it, I think she wouldn’t have said “Yes, thank you for noticing” on the previous page. There’s not much ‘impressing’ a new date with your glorious non-pickiness if you freely admit that ordering two things together is a dramatic moment to you. Joyce is being very open with Jacob about what she’s doing and feeling, which I think is wonderful, and so I think she can and should be taken on her word here.
Is Joyce in danger of starvation? Deficiency diseases? I think not.
Let’s not go overboard.
Joyce is a big girl now.
Joyce: “I’m a big girl now. And I got to stop saying stuff like, *poses* “I’m a big girl now”. ”
(h/t Steven Universe)
My theory is that Joyce is willing to mix foods now because she’s drunk.
She had real wine earlier and it’s playing with her inhibitions.
…. because she’s never had any before and her tolerance is so low that it only takes a sip to…
…. also, because she THINKS she’s drunk and therefore is subconsciously acting like…
….. okay, because I’m feeling silly. Nyeh.
I thought Willis’ universe had met the quota for youngsters who get drunk on (basically) alcohol fumes, with Walky and Sal.
However, Joyce might think she’s drunk and convince herself to act accordingly.
I guess there really isn’t a name that completely encompasses all of her neuroses.
She’s just weird, but that’s not a bad thing necessarily.
Although this is the side of her I can’t relate to at all. I mean I do the “leave the tastiest for last” stuff sometimes but she’s in a while different level.
But hey! She’s trying. Kudos for that.
Well OCPD or OCD (these are not the same thing) or autism could theoretically but that would be her own specific case of it. It could also just be that she had developed quirks for specific reasons related to her upbringing and that is just the way she is which is fine too, nothing wrong with that.
But I can relate to Joyce here as an autistic person because I remember when I would make myself obscure food rules at random when I was younger too.
The whole autistic spectrum is way beyond me so I’ll refrain from saying much, but her neuroses seem to be way too focused for me to get the impression she’s somewhere in it.
In what way are they focused? As an autistic person I see a lot of my own autistic traits in her
Yeah, I don’t necessarily read her as autistic the way I read Dina as it, but there’s a lot of traits there I recognize in myself and I wouldn’t be surprised if she were. (There’s the food thing, the reacting badly to change in total freezeups, the way she went from zero to superfan with Dexter and Monkey Master… we’ve never seen a social or other sensory issue with her, which is where I lean more towards “anxiety disorder” rather than “autism”, but she does have a LOT of similar traits.)
Like I said, my personal guess is some form of anxiety disorder that might explain the food compulsions and definitely explains a lot of other things. She also MIIIIGHT have Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, but I wouldn’t personally bet on it because she seems to have a decent range of foods provided they don’t touch and doesn’t get a ton of anxiety eating in new places.
She reads a lot of social things differently, I feel. Look at her interactions with Sarah. Everyone (except her and Dina) learned to stay the heck away from Sarah, but Joyce is kind of oblivious to how much Sarah wants to be left alone.
When it comes to sensory issues, I can’t really think of her food thing not being related to sensory issues. I know that’s where I got my own pickiness from. And like, did you see how Joe saved her a plain doughnut so she could eat one? I don’t think that had anything to do with foods touching, it was another kind of picky. Probably the kind that doesn’t want her mouth overwhelmed. (I can’t eat non-plain doughnuts because it is Too Much for my mouth. I also can’t eat a bunch of other stuff unless I “blunt” its taste with couscous or bread or something, it seems she just goes for bland rather than trying to blunt stronger tastes, and I’ve been there).
Now you’re diagnosing her based on what other characters think about her eating habits? Joe said he did it because he knew she didn’t like food touching. She said she wouldn’t pick out sprinkles, except the blue ones. Those have to go.
That’s not sensory. At least not tastewise.
Joyce seems like a platonic ideal of what I might have been like if I hadn’t been basically -given- an anxiety disorder by my mom demanding perfection from me and public school… being public school. She’s rolled a 20 with that homeschooling, as it allowed her a completely different social environment and expectations that never made her feel like a freak or left out. She was seen as ‘having quirks’ and ‘best socialized out of her whole homeschool group’ because she’s sunny, joyful, trusting (oh man the ‘people sometimes lie’ idea is so fucking hard to get through my head no matter how many times I get burned) and extroverted.
Talking endlessly about her own interests and genuinely being unable to understand why others don’t share her joy at them, craving closeness in ways that leaves people weirded out and not realizing that until told directly… IMHO, Joyce 100% socializes like a bright and joyful and unscared autistic.
Add the TOO RELATABLE food pickiness, and if I knew Joyce personally I’d definitely send her some links on the chance she finds them interesting…
I have trouble with “people lie” too. :/ all the mysterious “ghost” things from my childhood are much more easily explained by someone not being willing to admit they did something mildly inconsiderate.
I have a different set of food issues from joyce, but, I wouldn’t mind those links 🙂 90% of what I know of aspergers comes from the 90’s and I’m not sure if I’ve reevaluated much of it since then.
Oh god Joyce I feel you so much on this. If you mix different types of food together then you should do it -properly- and -evenly-. There should be exactly one tomato slice in each spoonful of salad. If you mix meat with mashed potatoes it damn better be in a constant proportion.
I have not tried to -count individual noodles-, but the general idea is #relatable
If she were at home, she could just blend it. Bam, instant homogenization.
BTW – I agree that Joyce didn’t order something different just for Jacob. She also did it for herself – to prove to herself that she can. She’s finding it immensely hard but she’s trying to persevere!
Joyce has a quirk, for whatever reason. It bugs me when people make fun of other people for being quirky. Like when John felt OK to dismiss her because she “ordered off the kids’ menu”. Jacob is giving her space to address it her way, if she wants to. I get the feeling if she had just ordered plain noodles, he wouldn’t have said anything about that. Classy.
(My boss has an odd, compulsive laugh. I’ve overheard so many people say they can’t stand his laugh, and one person left the office because of it. Maybe there’s a reason for it but try to look past it?)
Well, it is apparently something of a running family joke. Becky teases her about it regularly and joked about it with Hank.
Jacob isn’t in the kind of relationship with her where it’s appropriate to do that.
And John’s an ass and dismissing her wasn’t okay, but the earlier bits in that sequence about her not being able to eat in India were more good-humored.
Yep. Becky with Joyce needing a “week’s worth of Lunchables”, and John mentioned “Indian food in India, you’d have died of starvation”. That was fair.
All the rest of John was John being an ass.
Like these two guys couldn’t be any more opposite, bonus points for reminding us how John called Joyce’s hitting Toedad “an extreme reaction”, while Jacob said it was awesome and compelling and he respects the moxie it took.
I’m lost…
An hour or so ago Joyce was freaking out because a church was different to her own.
So now she can calmly order “touching food” ??
(Not only touching, but reasonable mixed up!)
She’s trying to prove to Jacob that she can tolerate change that crosses the line of her neuroses. Doing so requires more courage than perhaps anything else she has done recently.
“Calmly” as in “Surprising herself with her ability to manage something she would never have been able to do before.” Same with the church. Even if she freaked out, she went through with it, which is a huge step.
Even Becky, who is more finely tuned to Joyce’s mood than anyone else in the comic, went from “oh shit, is Joyce OK”-full support mode to ship her with “Jake” in just a few strips.
And of course, impressing Jacob sure helps with the motivation.
I think that all her freaking out about the service is WHY she’s making herself do this. Either because she’s feeling brave after having survived what she was raised to view as basically a satanic ritual with her soul still in tact, or because she’s feeling embarrassed about her reaction and is trying to compensate.
Though I think the main reason she’s more calm about this is because the reasons for the aversions are totally different. She’s not afraid that she’ll be damned to eternal torment if her food touches or if she eats something unfamiliar to her. She just really doesn’t want to.
It’s also very in line with her reaction to eating sushi. She didn’t get worked up or panicky then, either. She only avoided eating it.
It’s also what Cerberus talked about, where when you have a bunch of personal problems, some big and some little, working on the little ones can seem as important as working on the big ones.
I’m hoping its the embarrassed option
possible mild OCD?
Autistic. She’s autistic. People with OCD have been saying in the comments it doesn’t look like OCD at all, and autistic people (like me!!!) have been saying in the comments Joyce-with-food seems eerily like looking in the mirror.
The OCD is strong in her
Joyce reminds me of Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally.
….. trying to imagine Joyce faking an orgasm in a crowded restaurant.
Appropriate avatar is appropriate 😂
I’m currently at Noodles and Company because of this comic. They should pay you for advertising.
Jeez, Joyce. Take up engineering and put that OCD to good use.
Its OCD or she just enjoys being difficult around food
Based on my own experience, there is a 99.99999% chance she doesn’t remotely enjoy it and in fact considers it a bane of her existence and wishes she could just forget it and eat like everyone else without noticing these things.
Autistic pickiness SUCKS.
(And yeah, it’s much closer to that than OCD)
I think I’m in love with their relationship.
🙁 today sucks. I wanted to make a nice dinner. but appareently that’s too much, and the part of me saying NO (while I kinda wasn’t listening) got so angry we kinda exploded a mushroom.
I just want to be able to DO things goddamnit! 🙁 going to the bank and the grocery store should not take a whole day’s worth of spoons! 🙁 >:(
also it’s really hard to tell hte difference between being low on spoons, and anxiety *claiming* I’m low on spoons so I won’t try to do anything.
…well, that and two phone calls. ok. maybe I did more things than I realised. 🙁
…and checking the mail. and taking the recycling out. and halfassedly rinsing the compost bin. and having breakfast counts, I guess.
I wish all these little things didn’t cost me spoons. 🙁
…also not freaking out that the compost bin wasn’t 100% clean cost a fair amount of spoons. if I wasn’t afraid of bleach I’d bleach the fuck out of that thing regularly.
I would like to introduce you to your new best cleaning friend:
hydrogen peroxide
It is a very effective sanitizer, but unlike bleach it doesn’t stink. As an added bonus it breaks down to water and oxygen, so no nasty chlorination byproducts!
🙂
H2O2 demonstrates broad-spectrum efficacy against viruses, bacteria, yeasts, and bacterial spores. neat. it does kill skin, though, so I’d still have to be quite careful with it.
Diluted to around 3% it poses little danger, but you definitely should rinse your skin if you get some on it. You can save money by ordering 35% H2O2 online and diluting it, but you want to very careful with that stuff!
“I just want to be able to DO things”
she wants to be able to do an infinite number of things. 😛 like, it *is* unfair how few things we can handle, but it’s not like she’d actually be satisfied if dinner was one of those things. the goalposts would move and she’d be unhappy about something else. :/ I don’t know what to do about that, nor am I sure who exactly is doing the goalpost-moving.
just caught up with DoA, and learned why my gf said “you’re Joyce” yesterday. this is ableism WOW I cannot believe my own gf would dot his to me
funny timing actually; last night, despite knowing I’d probably hate the food and the noise and the fact that I do horribly in groups I don’t know well, I pushed my boundaries and came with my gf and some of their friends to an Asian noodle place.
just looking at the menu filled me with anxiety because I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat most of it. and what I did end up getting, fried calamari, was super disappointing.
having ARFID/autistic food issues while dating someone with a broad/sophisticated/non-white palate is nerve-wracking sometimes
It sounds like you’re like Joyce not just in being a picky eater, but in trying to expand your boundaries, even when it makes you anxious. That’s something to be proud of.
aww, thank you! yeah, it’s something. so it’ll probably be a while before I agree to that again. :>
*though