There’s being exceptionally picky and there’s being nauseated about different foods being chewed up at the same time by someone else. It seems like a textural type issue. One of many issues Joyce needs to see a therapist about.
Long answer: Yes but diagnostically it’s at least somewhat superseded if there’s another sensory processing disorder in play. (Which is to say, in an edge case it might be considered part of your Sensory Issues Expansion Pack to autism/ADHD/OCD/insert specific neurotype here.)
Also, in this particular case it seems to be more on the anxiety/intrusive thoughts side of her issues than sensory, but like. One frequently begets the other.
And this is reason 517 why I relate to Joyce. There are some things I can’t even look at without setting off my Sensory Brain Issues.
There are many, many things that qualify as anxiety disorders or have major anxiety components beyond generalized anxiety disorder. OCD, for example. Some forms of PTSD have the intrusive thoughts and anxiety as key parts. Eating disorders definitely seem to have an anxiety component, though I won’t pretend to understand any but my borderline-ARFID diet, which is deeply influenced by autism and GAD.
There’s definitely an anxiety disorder in play here, but you could make a case for anything I just listed and probably a few more besides.
By the way, there’s something you wrote a while ago that’s been floating around in my brain for quite some time, so I guess I’ll just ask you now.
You wrote some time ago that “Autism Speaks is a hate group”. I’ve already known for quite some time that they have been engaging in some very dubious and even pseudoscientific practices, but them being a hate group is a new one on me.
Could you please elaborate? Who exactly do they hate?
King Daniel had the right of it. I could go into further detail, but this isn’t particularly obscure information once you go looking – you just have to know to Google with ‘controversies’ or ‘eugenics’ or, say, read through their Wikipedia page in detail – and I have neither the spoons nor the willingness to put seriously traumatic recaps at the top of the comments section. Especially not without spoiler capabilities, but like. I’m not subjecting MYSELF to a lengthy recounting of their history, either, nothing good can come of that one. Basically any autistic advocacy group run by actual autistics can give you an overview about the issues. You’ll probably also see a recent post in any US-based one calling out the Judge Rotenberg Center, which Autism Speaks supported for years. If they cut ties, it was only very recently and yes, that practice was going on then. No, I will not elaborate, because again: Not putting a lengthy discussion of ableist violence at the top of the comments section or making myself write it.
I may not mind doing periodic internet education about my neurotype, but it does take a fair bit out of me and this particular topic can get disturbing. Unfortunately, some of the most disturbing aspects are at the forefront of our collective community’s mind right now.
Wikipedia has a solid write up on Autism Speaks. Some fact checking is in order, but it doesn’t paint the organization or board members in a great light.
I live in the UK, so I’d never heard of them. Having now read up, I have to say, as the parent of an autistic son (and a teacher in schools for autistic students for many years), I’m horrified. Autism is a developmental condition, so far as our limited understanding of it tells us. It can’t be caught, it can’t be ‘cured’. The most us neurotypicals can ever hope to do is (a) understand, (b) try to give autistic individuals the means to develop a mental toolkit to help them deal with a world that is massively not designed for them, and (c) actively work towards changing that last thing I mentioned there in (b).
On a related note, my son’s favourite quote at the moment is, “Vaccinated children ARE more likely to get autism, because they’re still alive.”
Short list of why:
1, making anti Autistic propaganda including: commercials portraying autism as a demon that will destroy your marriage, ruin your family and steal your real child (the “I am Autism” video) and lionizing parents who openly fantasize about killing their Autistic children, presenting these infanticidal fantasies as the inevitable result of having an autistic child (the “Autism Every day” video), among others.
2, promotion of pseudoscientific abuse of Autistic ppl including ABA (which by some metrics is actually less effective than placebo and is associated with long term serious negative side effects like increased risk of suicide, mental health issues and PTSD symptoms), so-called “Miracle mineral solution” (aka bleach) enemas, and whatever tortures dreamed up at the Judge Rotenberg Center
3, refusing to allow Autistic ppl in real positions of authority within the group while engaging in tokenism to give the appearance of inclusivity (this is in violation of ethical principles of disability issues which demand real inclusion of the directly affected population, not just their parents or siblings (does YOUR mum understand your body and preferences as well as you? Neither does mine and she shouldn’t speak for me when I am totally capable of speaking for myself. It is NOT the same to platform autism parents and call it inclusion).
4. Supporting eugenicist research and research aimed at forced normalization of Autistic ppl above and to the exclusion of research that benefits actually Autistic ppl.
5. Until very recently, eradication of autism and Autistic ppl was an explicit part of their mission. Most of us autistics don’t want to be eradicated.
Thank you, ischemgeek, for the rundown, and thanks to Keulen for the links of awful.
The sad part is I’m inured to things like ‘yeah they shock people into compliance at levels you legally can’t apply to animals.’ Once they started causing measles outbreaks because vaccines cause autism (they don’t) and therefore measles was preferable to that risk, even if it killed their kid? Once they published a video where a woman fantasizes about killing herself and her autistic child with said child in the room with her, and the only thing that stopped her was thinking about her non-autistic kid? Once ‘autistic children killed by their parents’ became so horrifyingly frequent, and the media narrative inevitably sympathized with the murderer, that it inspired an autistic with ASAN to found the Disability Day of Mourning, which now can only read the names added to the list since last year because so damn many disabled people are killed by their caregivers they have people on staff whose job it is to search news articles and update the list? (Some of them are from years in the past, some are not, yes it happens here and now. This doesn’t even include other forms of lethal ableist violence. Just ‘killed by a caregiver, usually a close family member.’) It doesn’t horrify me anymore. That implies surprise. It hurts, because society hates disabled people so damn much, but it does not surprise me. And because Autism Speaks has the best PR of the lot, and spends all their money on research into ‘detection’ and ‘prevention’ and ‘awareness’ and precisely none to anything that would actually help autistic people or their families with day-to-day life, this is just the background radiation of my life. Our ‘awareness month’ is frequently a source of dread.
Thanks for the info. I’m really picky but my ten year old (who has other sensory aversions and signs of spd not related to food as well), is wayyyyy more limited in his diet than me or Joyce.
Of course he’s only ten and didn’t really expand his diet much this year probably due to the pandemic turning everything topsy turvy and exacerbating anxiety… But before the pandemic he had recently started trying new foods occasionally. He eats plain cheeseburgers sometimes now!
I suspect it’s less an eating disorder and more like a sensory processing thing. Although I suppose the two aren’t mutually exclusive, the latter might be the cause of the former. I knew someone who couldn’t handle condiments in a similar manner, grossed out by them, barely able to look at them. Joyce reminds me of him.
Eclipsa isn’t saying that Joyce is grossed out by condiments – they were just drawing a parallel with their friend, who was grossed out by condiments, to Joyce’s weird thing about foods being combined.
From how she’s described it, it ultimately seems to come down on whether she perceives the food as separate foods (such as cheese and bread, like on a charcuterie board or something) or a single one (such as a grilled cheese sandwich.) If the food meets her One Thing threshold, like a casserole, then it’s fine even if it’s technically a combination of several distinct ingredients. The act of putting the noodles in the cheese sauce makes them the acceptable Macaroni And Cheese. Mashed potatoes and peas, on the other hand, are two distinct foods, and therefore must be kept separate at all times. A condiment, therefore, CAN be okay if it’s part of The Food (like ketchup on a burger) or eaten separately but her brain nonetheless sorts it as part of The Food (ketchup and fries, dunno if Joyce is okay with that offhand but this is absolutely how I handle sauces and condiments.)
No, this isn’t a thing you can apply 100% rational thought towards. It’s the kind of thing that starts as a sensory issue and balloons into a massive ball of anxiety, especially when people don’t really know how to deal with your sensory stuff so they just… don’t, in one way or another.
I guess the unspoken need for there to be a defunct rational reason or past memory driving such a tendency is really more of a Freudian ideal, isn’t it?
There are very good reasons why Freud is discredited by modern psychology.
And I mean, in some ways there is a rationale – if this is historically a Safe Food that doesn’t trigger sensory issues, then no need to worry! If it’s not a safe food or it’s unknown, even if it’s things that are fine individually, then avoid at all costs. But what makes some foods acceptable and other foods not is a rich tapestry of scent, texture, flavor, and sometimes your brain just spontaneously decides this is no longer an Acceptable Food, don’t keep trying to eat it, you will gag.
I personally think that such tendencies could be diminished as long as one has strong enough incentive.
I myself used to be really finicky about my food (and to some degree I still am), sometimes due to texture or taste, but mostly due to incredible attention to nutrition in the interest of maximizing brain power.
I began being a lot less picky once I found out that foods I hated were actually essential ingredients in some of my favorite dishes (such as onions in mcdonald’s nuggets and pre-made potato soup). When I started to cook all kinds of food from manga that I thought looked amazing (like the Omiricu from Dragon Maid) I began cooking dishes from all over the world, and my excess of pickiness for the most part nearly diminished from there.
Also, sometimes I experiment with these supplements called Miracle Berries, which make things like lemons and mustard taste SWEET. Seriously those things are the key to unlocking a whole new UNIVERSE of flavors.
Cartoon Network’s Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld shorts, from their short-lived DC Nation block. Back when I picked her, it was recent enough you’d sometimes see Young Justice fans who recognized it. These days I’m too attached to my AmeWHAT face to change it, even if it’s well past the point of common recognition.
That was a very fun series of shorts. Still kinda wish someone had picked up the video game magical girl concept for Amethyst and Gemworld somewhere.
The DC Nation short had the bad timing of existing around the same time that other Gem-themed show happened to take off.
Its profoundly weird to me that DC’s putting out all these kids-oriented OGNs like Superman Smashes the Klan and Shadow of the Batgirl, these really good comics that exist in their own continuity and just tell really good stories about these characters instead of whatever Crisis event is coming up, and they still haven’t twigged onto giving Amethyst her own, even though Amethyst was basically a Magical Girl/Fantasy comic a decade before that became a thing in North America.
The Gemworld shorts were a bit before Steven Universe (the GLTAS/Young Justice block ended in March 2013, SU’s first episode was in May, but I believe the Amethyst shorts were all in the first wave a year earlier,) but yeah, the time period where you could greenlight something without worrying about confusion by the time it aired was pretty much nonexistent.
Oh hey, Googling it DC DOES have an upcoming middlegrade Gemworld graphic novel! Shannon and Dean Hale on writing, Asiah Fulmore on art. Excellent.
Haha, I was just about to say since I found that out just now.
One for Shazam too, thank god. I’d seriously give up the entirety of DC’s ongoing, in-canon universe for these. They are exactly what I want out of superhero comics right now.
As someone who was extremely picky as a kid (I am autistic and at one point there was a total of about 10 real foods I would eat, plus a few condiments. Milk, Weetabix cereal, apples, bananas, beef, mushrooms and broccoli, lettuce, cheese and rice.) plus chocolate and cakes that had no nuts or raisins. Not saying this happens for Joyce but for some folks the more you get pressured into trying things too far outside of your comfort zone, the more your brain just goes NOPE.
I was at my pickiest around 8 (not coincidentally the same year I had an abusive teacher encouraging my classmates to bully me, was adjusting to a new school, house and town, experiencing horrible bullying from the aforementioned classmates, and starting to realize how different I actually was from my age peers). For me it wasn’t ever things touching (salads were fine as long as they didn’t have bad things, Frex) but texture/sensory stuff plus probably a whole heaping pile of too stressed out to have the mental bandwidth to push my food boundaries. I could do some Bad Foods if they were pureed so I didn’t have to feel them (blueberry compote was fine but blueberries themselves were bad).
In uni, I WANTED very badly to be able to eat more things (by then my ok foods had expanded to include cauliflower, beans, some types of pasta, pureed tomato sauce, and carrots) so I did something they call food chaining. Basically slowly working on my comfort zone to expand it at my own pace. In my case, there’s some things that are still very firmly a sensory NOPE (celery and other things with a stringy texture,, peach fuzz, dough boys and other types of dumplings with a slimy texture, and carbonated beverages to name a few) but so long as it doesn’t have a texture I hate I am now actually a very adventurous water – mainly because when I try new foods people aren’t watching and recording what I eat or judging me for eating that way or putting the pressure of their excitement to see me trying a new thing on me and I am allowed to not like it, throw it away or give it to someone else, and get something I can eat.
I dunno if my case would have risen to ED nowadays (in the 90s I was just called a picky brat). But I can say Booster’s apparent lack of judgement around Joyce’s food hangups is probably helpful to Joyce (and I wouldn’t be surprised if Joyce’s food issues have ramped up to 11 this year owing to the stress in her life right now – from someone who had adjacent issues, some of it is very much a coping mechanism. I don’t know what fresh hell is waiting for me at school but I DO know my Weetabix and banana with milk will be the Exact Same Every Time if I pick the Right Banana (bananas had to be the right stage of ripeness because overripe bananas are a big NOPE on texture for me, but my range of acceptable ripeness has expanded a lot). It was a source of stability when literally everything else was changing and life was chaos.
I think my grandfather would have done better in life if he could have accepted the thoughts expressed in your comment. But he was a picky thinker in much the same way as you’re a picky eater, and I don’t think there was any way anyone was going to be able to force the thought “trying to force someone to experience a food can make them more avoidant of that food” into his brain.
I expanded my food interests widely after escaping from his influence. Not that he ever found out, because I was still food avoidant in his house when my family came to a visit, because just so much nope.
In more recent years, I’ve even found a restaurant that has a seasonal dish that prominently includes one of the foods I most detest which is somehow still delicious. To be clear, I wouldn’t put the sandwich in my top ten, but it is still somehow good.
I’m sure someone has said this but it seems like she has a selective eating disorder! It’s a very bad thing to suffer from (I do) so I really like the…representation? that comes from Joyce. Never seen it in any other character before. Mine branches from autism.
Yeah, I know that Willis replaced Mike in part because they had trouble developing a cartoony asshole into a fleshed-out character in a more realistic setting, so I’m really hoping that Booster actually gets some of the development that they were created to get.
It’s early yet. We’re at the end of the first book post-skip and this is the first real focus Sal has gotten, for one. And Amber’s been dramatically out of focus compared to where she and AG were pre-skip.
Yeah I meant to have a speech bubble of her saying something like “I think it’s a little much for me”
I picture her being very “deer in the headlights”
There’s a scene in One Punch Man where Saitama is on an alien ship and the navigator tells him to go one way instead of another, so he won’t reach the bridge. The face Saitama pulls a moment later is exactly what I imagine on Lucy.
Looking back, I guess what I wrote there was a little insecure. It’s just that I want to sport humor wherever I can, with the hope that it’ll reach someone, make their day, help them through tough times.
It’s just kind of hard to know if you’re heading in the right direction without any feedback, you know?
At least I took an opportunity there to make a neat pun!
But honestly, don’t you think it’s funny that these easter eggs make us burn calories instead of gain them?
Poop doesn’t bother me much either. I mean, yeah it smells bad and all that, but like, it doesn’t trigger my gag reflex like, say, spit does. *shudder*
It’s a valid question though. Tomatoes gross me out. I can’t eat them straight. It’s hard to even dice them up without gagging.
But tomato sauces and salsas are fine. I still prefer the chunks to be small, but it’s nothing like eating a tomato. I’m not fond of fresh salsas though – still too tomatoey.
Yeah I’m with you on the fresh tomatoes. I’ve spent the summer growing cherry tomatoes and I had to force myself to eat 2. It uh. Did not go well. Which is a shame, because my cherry tomato plants are thriving.
Going to try to put them into a salsa… We shall see how that turns out.
I can’t eat raw celery, it just tastes like pepper. Cooked and mixed into something else? No problem.
Don’t like mushrooms, either. They’re slimy, spongy little things that taste like dirt.
This one is fun geographically, but I don’t like steamed clams. It’s mostly for the same textural reasons as mushrooms, but they just taste like the salty low tide sand they came from. Clam cakes are amazing though, especially when they’re made with fresh steamers.
FINALLY, somebody who understands my distaste for mushrooms! They have the same texture as RUBBER, come on, who thought these things were supposed to edible?
Bored or starving cavemen who found the things, I guess? Somebody had to figure out which ones are edible, send you on the trip of a lifetime, or insta-kill you from the inside out.
Starving cavepeople. Because that’s not the sort of thing that a properly misogynistic society would make a brave warrior do. Oh god, that lifetime.
At least it was short, and I don’t recall getting raped once during it. Although, I do have to admit, I only identified *one* that insta-killed me. I think there’s probably more of them that would’ve done that if given the chance.
If they have the texture of rubber, are spongy, or slimy they’ve just not been prepared correctly. Most people fry their mushrooms for too long, and I don’t mean by a little, but by like 2 to 3 times longer than they need to be cooked. I used to be neutral on mushrooms, ok taste but pretty bad texture. Then I found out how to prepare them properly and they got SO MUCH better.
On another note, without mushrooms we wouldn’t have bread or cakes, nor most alcoholic beverages, and many non-alcoholic beverages would also be impossible to make. Mushrooms have done a lot for humanity.
Assuming you just want to fry some champignons (also known as portobello) in a pan, and maybe make a sauce.
Slice them about 5mm thick, or just cut them into 1cm pieces. You need just a drop of oil or a very small amount of butter on high heat (about 7 out of 9). Put in the mushrooms and move them around a little so they don’t burn. Once they start losing moisture and shrinking, and have all been lightly browned they’re done. By the time they’re down to half their previous size they are definitely done. Then add some salt and whatever other seasoning you like.
That’s where so many people go wrong, they just keep frying them until they’re dark brown and the moisture has completely evaporated. That’s just way too long.
If you want to make a sauce with them, dust some flower over them if you are in a hurry, add cream and lower the heat _as_soon_as_ they start losing moisture. Then simmer at low heat to thicken the sauce and season it.
I know you can also make them whole in a sort of wok with almost caramelized onions and then you can leave them in there for much longer without the texture getting weird, but I haven’t tried making that myself yet. It’s only something I’ve eaten.
My general experience with mushrooms is that if you fry or bake them the timing very important. If you prepare them whole they’re a bit more forgiving, and they’re easiest to get right in soups or stews.
Okay, now I won’t proclaim to be an expert on celery, disliking the texture of most vegetables, but are you sure you’re not allergic to celery? Allergies to food tends to make them taste spicy when they are not (if that is what you mean by them tasting like peppers, as I have seen people believe that *potatoes* are supposed to be spicy and not realising they are allergic).
… I don’t have any food allergies that I’m aware of (though plenty of intolerances), but that does sound consistent with the way soap tingles and dust causes a burning sensation. (I am definitely more allergic to one of those, even before trying to correlate the tactile sensation of each.)
It tastes like peppercorn seasoning pepper, not capsaicin hot peppers. I don’t think I’m allergic to it, because I can eat it fine if it’s cooked. The flavor and texture are unpalatable raw.
I’m also on team “cilantro tastes like soap”, so maybe that has something to do with it…
People allergic to tomatoes can sometimes still eat ketchup due to how it is processed without a reaction to my knowledge so I’d say that could depend on how it is prepared as it might be destroying the part you are having an initial reaction to when raw. Honestly to me, celery just tastes watery and like nothing else; my partner says it can vary between that, ‘good’ and very bitter for him.
Basically how I feel about most veggies. I literally cannot get a single bite for most veggies, and yet some people love the taste. That’s the part that confuses me most. I don’t understand how people’s sense of taste can be so wildly different.
On the basic biological level, this is how adaptation happens: little tiny random modifications to how everything works to see if it turns out well enough. Being incentivized to vary our diet makes it possible to adapt to pretty much any diet.
And then it’s possible to shift your taste preferences by deliberately changing your diet, too. And then there’s a mental component, where you can make something taste better because you’re starving, or because you tell yourself a story about how great it is.
You just reminded me of the story of how lobsters became synonymous with fancy food. Originally, it was considered the food of the poor, since it looks like a sea cockroach (which it pretty much is). There was literally, at least, one prison riot when they served lobster for too many days and were forced to change the rules to make that more humane. Finally a famous chef at the time decided to try to raise up the humble lobster, made it fancy, and drove demand up for it overnight. Thus why they are now considered fancy.
People will literally have or not have the right taste buds to taste some compounds, like the soapy taste in cilantro. Coupling these genetic variations with a mix of environment and habituation and it makes perfect sense that food tastes are as varied as, say, music tastes.
Because our brains develop organically. What we experience is vastly different from how other people experience it. There are some things that seem pretty consistent from person to person, but sense of taste doesn’t really seem to be one.
Tactile sense seems to be fairly consistent, apart from the degree to which one is sensitive, and the degree to which it may overlap with other senses. Texture is basically tactile sense, so we can agree that smooth muscles, like what chickens primarily have, have similar textures to most other creatures’ muscles. Ungulates and primates on the other hand mostly have striated muscles, which have a very different texture. Most people don’t eat ungulates or primates apart from cows and pigs, which gives rise to the ‘everything tastes like chicken, except for beef and pork.’ myth.
Actual taste, though, is quite different. My housemate can taste bitter, but doesn’t think that agave has any bitter taste to it. My other housemate thinks it has a very bitter taste, while I just feel like there’s a bit of bitterness in it. But we all agree that almonds taste bitter.
There are a few reference tastes that seem to be similar across the board, but thinking about it, it feels like that’s impossible to tell, because they’re the reference tastes. Sugar is sweet to just about everyone, because it’s frequently used as the definition of what sweet is. As such, whatever flavor sugar has, that is what we think of when we think ‘sweet as in taste’.
Most of my adult life has been me trying to convince myself that the veggies I hated as a child are in fact pretty good. It’s worked well with peppers, onions, and cabbage, but mushrooms are still pretty much a hard no.
But fruits? No. I will hate 80% of fruits until I die, thanks.
To be fair, mushrooms are not vegetables, they’re fungus. It’s kind of weird that anyone eats them. (Disclaimer: I eat some mushrooms, but I think that’s kind of weird.)
Yeah okay this is a weirdness. Like this is coming from someone who eat’s his Fajita’s *separately* in a bowl with a fork rather then rolled up in a shell as is proper.
Still it’s nice to see Booster again. I had been wondering where they had went off to.
I wonder if this means Joyce makes sure to swallow every part of one type of food in her mouth before eating another type of food. Like swallowing all the chicken nugget before eating some french fries.
It’s always all about the corn, but nobody talks about the human capacity for perfectly replicating the complete layout of Hollow Bastion from Kingdom Hearts entirely inside our own digestive tract.
Wow, I think she may have just like. Completely disrupted Booster’s fuzzing. Yes I’m stressed but I don wanna share that with you fortunately I am stressed by a lot of intensely weird shit so here’s your fob-off hai douzo
I like burrito bowls, just not the ones from Chipotle.
I got their stuff a couple times in the past, just to see what the fuss was about, and it did not settle well either time. I can get similar food from an authentic Mexican restaurant locally for the same prices, and that’s always fine. Even Taco Bell doesn’t bother me, so IDK what the problem was. (Maybe their famous salmonella and e.coli…)
Only a professional or at least a graduate student could provide anything close to an accurate diagnosis (as well as anyone could EVER do that with such limited information).
Even with a formal test, diagnostics are hardly exact science yet. It’s complicated but I get the sense that this may be due in part to the fact that the rigorous field is still relatively new.
To get a sense on this factor, between 1970 and 2000 the DSM went from listing just 47 to over 300 distinct mental disorders. This is still controversial even today, and at one point the APA was even accused of disease mongering. Whether or not they actually were is a whole can of worms I won’t be getting into now, but you get the point.
I’ve had the quandary of realizing that everything on my plate is comparatively delicious. Then, I have to alternate bites of each until I’m left with the ultimate mouthful – and which should have that honor?
I mean I wouldnt call myself a picky eater (ive learned what i like and don’t like and i can try nee things) but ready mixed salads from my universitys students cafes will always disgust me
honeatly cant believe people exist who will eat THE WHOLE THING rather than picking their faves
It’s at this point that, all kidding aside, Joyce should have been in therapy a long time ago. I suspect that they will try to convince her to see someone just because it’s obvious that her undiagnosed conditions are making her miserable.
It’s the things that are poisonous unless cooked that bother me. What’s the thought process there? “Bob ate one of these and died. Guess I’ll throw it on the fire and try it. What could go wrong?”
It might have been that Bob was from a tribe that hadn’t discovered cooking yet. Two hills and a river further southeast Charlie’s tribe had figured out that things in general tasted better if you heated them up and so they were all fine. When they later met they were able to exchange information and figure out that eating that thing raw was a really bad idea, but cooking it and then eating it was fine.
Sure there are, but if its the only thing around you CAN eat, you figure out a way to make yourself eat it. I have roughly 15 million foods that make me gag on reflex, no matter how deliciously prepared, but if that’s all there is to eat, I can choke it down.
She’s got the excuse that therapy would have been resisted by literally her entire community for fear of seeing her as abberant, and them by extension. Human tribalism is weird, and it only gets worse with any tribe that has religious pinnings.
Yep. Remember, Joyce thought all Jennifer needed to cure her depression was faith in Jesus and maybe a boyfriend (but mostly Jesus,) and Ross frames Bonnie’s death as ‘Satan taking her’ from them. Mental illness can’t exist except as a lack of faith. Talking to a therapist who acknowledges their feelings are real and valid might give people the emotional processing to realize they aren’t happy with this, and that maybe fear of eternal damnation isn’t a good guiding principle for your theology, and maybe also gay people aren’t literal evil.
Joyce has made that particular break, but repairing the damage is going to take much, much longer.
Her brain associates this stuff with disgust. There is nothing she can do really since it’s an emotional reaction. Kind of like with a phobia, you understand that, say, a friendly cat, won’t hurt you but you can’t resist the fear.
Agreed that that’s what’s going on, but this probably *is* something she could work on with a therapist if she ever had the desire to. My experience is with OCD (which is not that same kind of disgust, but there’s some disgust there I’m working through mixed in with the anxiety), but I’m *guessing* that this is something that very gentle exposure therapy could help her with this – maybe starting out with two things that she’s pretty okay being together, and gradually working her way forward until it doesn’t seem like such a big deal, and she’s found new things that she likes. This definitely doesn’t seem like it could work with the rip-the-proverbial-band-aid-off exposure therapy, though, since I think that would just trigger her feelings of disgust. That said, she’d have to want to do this.
Oh yeah she can definitely ease her way out of it with some therapy help. What I wanted to say was more like “She can’t do something Right this moment, she can’t force her way past her disgust”.
Given to proliferation of ruminant animals among domesticated species, the claim that a person is wild for chewing is demonstrably undermined. More accurate analogs may include: cow, pig, goat, buffalo, or (if one is inclined to imply that the act of chewing implies blind obediance) sheep.
I like how Joyce said she wasn’t gonna think about it and then immediately did think about it. In my experience that seems to be how it goes when you want to avoid thinking about something.
See, I was about to say something about that now being my headcanon for Sarah’s favorite food, and then you went and stole my comment. You comment-stealer you.
…. okay, yeah, that’s an example of putting to LITTLE thought into it.
….
… but if you think about it, topology can get you asking questions like the curvature of space and whether the universe is curved. And as big-scale questions go, there are few as gross as that.
I find the more you think about it, the less gross it is actually because then I am just picturing the building blocks of food and not food any more and Biology is cool to me.
Let me tell you guys about nattō. Somebody put some soybeans out to soak and then forgot about them. A starving beggar found them. They had half rotted into slimy goo, but he ate them anyway. Then he pranked his buddies by telling them about the incredible new taste sensation he had discovered.
You can have the same story about cheese, wine, beer and so on. I’m a vegetarian but I know that meat has to be “forgotten” a bit to taste better. Let’s wonder how people got this idea.
Then take butter, buttermilk, or whatever take processing. Same wonder.
Then take oysters, chesnuts, crabs, shrimps, or whatever has a shell. Same wonder.
In fact, if not for some kind of scientist back in the days, I don’t see how we have food at all.
That’s only true for some people (sure it’s a lot of them, but that’s the way our world is structured). For people normalized to slaughtering their own meat, there doesn’t seem to be any problem with consuming what they’ve slaughtered, even in short order. Some people even eat choice cuts fresh from the kill. (though that incurs some obvious risks)
Looks like Joyce has Booster figured out. If she wants to avoid them psychoanalyzing her, she can just play up a different one of her neuroseseseses instead of talking about her real problem.
Now we’ll get to see if Booster can tell she’s deflecting or if they have been sufficiently fooled.
As both part of Joyce’s inner circle, and homo, does this mean Becky is safest? Or will Joyce throw her efforts at the most perceived hetero around her, and rail against the pillar of Joe until it is reduced to paste?
[1] Yes it was jarring for me to write homo as well. It was rather a shock to see that the obvious pun on homo/hetero was so undermined by the cultural toxicity that had been applied to the diminution of the most clinical term. It leaves me curious how homo (in this context) has retained a perceived more derogatory stance, than other terms which have been ‘taken back’. Alternatively, it may have been that the structure of the pun objectified Becky’s character as being solely about her sexuality, rather than the deeper character we know. (or perhaps the combination?)
Sorry if my posting these hurt anyone. I thought of not doing so, but have chosen to post to share my thoughts on it and seek feedback from the community as there are so many here better educated than myself.
I very much think that “homo” is one such word worth taking back from the bigots. It’s because of homophobics that I can’t even type “Homo sapien” into Wikia’s comments section anymore!
Seeing as Ruth is no longer suicidal, I’d say she’s a pretty good argument for psychiatric medications sometimes being necessary! She’s not cured, because trauma and because longterm depression from an early age does a serious number on your thought patterns, and also depression tends to be cyclical, but ‘not suicidal’ is certainly an improvement.
yeah honestly, all things considered, Ruth is a poster child example of how much one med can do for you. The fact that she’s only had to switch once and it seems to have done a ton after only a couple of months is actually very amazing.
Yeah, but rational or not, most people in America tend to have at least mild distrust of psychiatrists (many psychotherapists even refer to them as “pill-pushers”).
This baggage only intensifies in manipulative religious communities, who tend to associate “worldly” medicine with “the work of the devil”.
With the combined forces of her fundamentalist upbringing and having witnessed a friend struggle a lot with her medicine before getting it right, I doubt she’ll be looking towards that kind of stuff in the near future.
Huh. I had some texture issues with things like wood. Basically, hating the feeling of wetting my clarinet reed before using it which made practice and performance kind of challenging and may be a major factor in why I ultimately switched over to piano in high school.
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“well it all sounds so great when you put it THAT way”
Soylent Green, not just people, it’s a homogenous paste with excellent taste!
I don’t care how good people tastes, this stuff is costing me more than Lobster, so we’re going back to fishsticks.
Now I am hungry at midnight.
Anything in particular you’re craving?
Joyce, i think you MIGHT have an eating disorder there. Might wanna see someone about that.
Is being exceptionally picky an actual eating disorder?
There’s being exceptionally picky and there’s being nauseated about different foods being chewed up at the same time by someone else. It seems like a textural type issue. One of many issues Joyce needs to see a therapist about.
I don’t keep up. Is neurosis not still a thing?
Short answer: Yes.
https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/eating-disorders/what-is-arfid
Long answer: Yes but diagnostically it’s at least somewhat superseded if there’s another sensory processing disorder in play. (Which is to say, in an edge case it might be considered part of your Sensory Issues Expansion Pack to autism/ADHD/OCD/insert specific neurotype here.)
Also, in this particular case it seems to be more on the anxiety/intrusive thoughts side of her issues than sensory, but like. One frequently begets the other.
And this is reason 517 why I relate to Joyce. There are some things I can’t even look at without setting off my Sensory Brain Issues.
Just to be clear, do you think anxiety/intrusive thoughts are distinct from GAD?
There are many, many things that qualify as anxiety disorders or have major anxiety components beyond generalized anxiety disorder. OCD, for example. Some forms of PTSD have the intrusive thoughts and anxiety as key parts. Eating disorders definitely seem to have an anxiety component, though I won’t pretend to understand any but my borderline-ARFID diet, which is deeply influenced by autism and GAD.
There’s definitely an anxiety disorder in play here, but you could make a case for anything I just listed and probably a few more besides.
Thanks for the info!
By the way, there’s something you wrote a while ago that’s been floating around in my brain for quite some time, so I guess I’ll just ask you now.
You wrote some time ago that “Autism Speaks is a hate group”. I’ve already known for quite some time that they have been engaging in some very dubious and even pseudoscientific practices, but them being a hate group is a new one on me.
Could you please elaborate? Who exactly do they hate?
Actual autistic people.
@King Daniel, Thanks? But I was actually asking Regalli.
King Daniel had the right of it. I could go into further detail, but this isn’t particularly obscure information once you go looking – you just have to know to Google with ‘controversies’ or ‘eugenics’ or, say, read through their Wikipedia page in detail – and I have neither the spoons nor the willingness to put seriously traumatic recaps at the top of the comments section. Especially not without spoiler capabilities, but like. I’m not subjecting MYSELF to a lengthy recounting of their history, either, nothing good can come of that one. Basically any autistic advocacy group run by actual autistics can give you an overview about the issues. You’ll probably also see a recent post in any US-based one calling out the Judge Rotenberg Center, which Autism Speaks supported for years. If they cut ties, it was only very recently and yes, that practice was going on then. No, I will not elaborate, because again: Not putting a lengthy discussion of ableist violence at the top of the comments section or making myself write it.
I may not mind doing periodic internet education about my neurotype, but it does take a fair bit out of me and this particular topic can get disturbing. Unfortunately, some of the most disturbing aspects are at the forefront of our collective community’s mind right now.
Wikipedia has a solid write up on Autism Speaks. Some fact checking is in order, but it doesn’t paint the organization or board members in a great light.
*looks up Autism Speaks and Rosenberg*
NOOOO!!!!! WHYYYYYY!?!?!?!?!?
So horrible…. I had no idea… I am so sorry…..
I live in the UK, so I’d never heard of them. Having now read up, I have to say, as the parent of an autistic son (and a teacher in schools for autistic students for many years), I’m horrified. Autism is a developmental condition, so far as our limited understanding of it tells us. It can’t be caught, it can’t be ‘cured’. The most us neurotypicals can ever hope to do is (a) understand, (b) try to give autistic individuals the means to develop a mental toolkit to help them deal with a world that is massively not designed for them, and (c) actively work towards changing that last thing I mentioned there in (b).
On a related note, my son’s favourite quote at the moment is, “Vaccinated children ARE more likely to get autism, because they’re still alive.”
It was so good that you took the time to write that here. Thank you!
And also, SOMEBODY please please for the love of Willis promote that quote like crazy on Twitter.
We need as many people as possible to vaccinate! The WORLD is counting on it.
Autism Speaks is terrible and doesn’t represent actual autistic people.
https://autisticmama.com/do-not-support-autism-speaks/
And for anyone who isn’t aware of it already, the Judge Rotenberg Center is evil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Rotenberg_Educational_Center
I don’t even think calling them “evil” could do any justice. I think a far more appropriate adjective to describe them would be “FASCIST”.
Short list of why:
1, making anti Autistic propaganda including: commercials portraying autism as a demon that will destroy your marriage, ruin your family and steal your real child (the “I am Autism” video) and lionizing parents who openly fantasize about killing their Autistic children, presenting these infanticidal fantasies as the inevitable result of having an autistic child (the “Autism Every day” video), among others.
2, promotion of pseudoscientific abuse of Autistic ppl including ABA (which by some metrics is actually less effective than placebo and is associated with long term serious negative side effects like increased risk of suicide, mental health issues and PTSD symptoms), so-called “Miracle mineral solution” (aka bleach) enemas, and whatever tortures dreamed up at the Judge Rotenberg Center
3, refusing to allow Autistic ppl in real positions of authority within the group while engaging in tokenism to give the appearance of inclusivity (this is in violation of ethical principles of disability issues which demand real inclusion of the directly affected population, not just their parents or siblings (does YOUR mum understand your body and preferences as well as you? Neither does mine and she shouldn’t speak for me when I am totally capable of speaking for myself. It is NOT the same to platform autism parents and call it inclusion).
4. Supporting eugenicist research and research aimed at forced normalization of Autistic ppl above and to the exclusion of research that benefits actually Autistic ppl.
5. Until very recently, eradication of autism and Autistic ppl was an explicit part of their mission. Most of us autistics don’t want to be eradicated.
That’s the short version.
Thank you, ischemgeek, for the rundown, and thanks to Keulen for the links of awful.
The sad part is I’m inured to things like ‘yeah they shock people into compliance at levels you legally can’t apply to animals.’ Once they started causing measles outbreaks because vaccines cause autism (they don’t) and therefore measles was preferable to that risk, even if it killed their kid? Once they published a video where a woman fantasizes about killing herself and her autistic child with said child in the room with her, and the only thing that stopped her was thinking about her non-autistic kid? Once ‘autistic children killed by their parents’ became so horrifyingly frequent, and the media narrative inevitably sympathized with the murderer, that it inspired an autistic with ASAN to found the Disability Day of Mourning, which now can only read the names added to the list since last year because so damn many disabled people are killed by their caregivers they have people on staff whose job it is to search news articles and update the list? (Some of them are from years in the past, some are not, yes it happens here and now. This doesn’t even include other forms of lethal ableist violence. Just ‘killed by a caregiver, usually a close family member.’) It doesn’t horrify me anymore. That implies surprise. It hurts, because society hates disabled people so damn much, but it does not surprise me. And because Autism Speaks has the best PR of the lot, and spends all their money on research into ‘detection’ and ‘prevention’ and ‘awareness’ and precisely none to anything that would actually help autistic people or their families with day-to-day life, this is just the background radiation of my life. Our ‘awareness month’ is frequently a source of dread.
Thanks for the info. I’m really picky but my ten year old (who has other sensory aversions and signs of spd not related to food as well), is wayyyyy more limited in his diet than me or Joyce.
Of course he’s only ten and didn’t really expand his diet much this year probably due to the pandemic turning everything topsy turvy and exacerbating anxiety… But before the pandemic he had recently started trying new foods occasionally. He eats plain cheeseburgers sometimes now!
I suspect it’s less an eating disorder and more like a sensory processing thing. Although I suppose the two aren’t mutually exclusive, the latter might be the cause of the former. I knew someone who couldn’t handle condiments in a similar manner, grossed out by them, barely able to look at them. Joyce reminds me of him.
Wait, isn’t it stated that Joyce likes some condiments, like ketchup and mustard?
Eclipsa isn’t saying that Joyce is grossed out by condiments – they were just drawing a parallel with their friend, who was grossed out by condiments, to Joyce’s weird thing about foods being combined.
Not liking condiments is one thing. Rather simple, really.
But I get the sense that Joyce’s food neuroses being against “foods being combined” is a major oversimplification.
I mean, isn’t ketchup still just tomatoes?
From how she’s described it, it ultimately seems to come down on whether she perceives the food as separate foods (such as cheese and bread, like on a charcuterie board or something) or a single one (such as a grilled cheese sandwich.) If the food meets her One Thing threshold, like a casserole, then it’s fine even if it’s technically a combination of several distinct ingredients. The act of putting the noodles in the cheese sauce makes them the acceptable Macaroni And Cheese. Mashed potatoes and peas, on the other hand, are two distinct foods, and therefore must be kept separate at all times. A condiment, therefore, CAN be okay if it’s part of The Food (like ketchup on a burger) or eaten separately but her brain nonetheless sorts it as part of The Food (ketchup and fries, dunno if Joyce is okay with that offhand but this is absolutely how I handle sauces and condiments.)
No, this isn’t a thing you can apply 100% rational thought towards. It’s the kind of thing that starts as a sensory issue and balloons into a massive ball of anxiety, especially when people don’t really know how to deal with your sensory stuff so they just… don’t, in one way or another.
@Regalli,Thanks for the overview! A+
I guess the unspoken need for there to be a defunct rational reason or past memory driving such a tendency is really more of a Freudian ideal, isn’t it?
There are very good reasons why Freud is discredited by modern psychology.
And I mean, in some ways there is a rationale – if this is historically a Safe Food that doesn’t trigger sensory issues, then no need to worry! If it’s not a safe food or it’s unknown, even if it’s things that are fine individually, then avoid at all costs. But what makes some foods acceptable and other foods not is a rich tapestry of scent, texture, flavor, and sometimes your brain just spontaneously decides this is no longer an Acceptable Food, don’t keep trying to eat it, you will gag.
I personally think that such tendencies could be diminished as long as one has strong enough incentive.
I myself used to be really finicky about my food (and to some degree I still am), sometimes due to texture or taste, but mostly due to incredible attention to nutrition in the interest of maximizing brain power.
I began being a lot less picky once I found out that foods I hated were actually essential ingredients in some of my favorite dishes (such as onions in mcdonald’s nuggets and pre-made potato soup). When I started to cook all kinds of food from manga that I thought looked amazing (like the Omiricu from Dragon Maid) I began cooking dishes from all over the world, and my excess of pickiness for the most part nearly diminished from there.
Also, sometimes I experiment with these supplements called Miracle Berries, which make things like lemons and mustard taste SWEET. Seriously those things are the key to unlocking a whole new UNIVERSE of flavors.
I’m just gonna leave it at ‘my incentives need to be incredibly strong indeed to overcome the anxiety wall.’ Again, Joyce is worryingly relatable.
If only the Krabby Patty existed in real life. If that couldn’t push past Joyce’s anxiety wall, I don’t know what can…..
…except the slim-to-none chance that she accidentally tries the carboxylated flower of a certain plant native to Central Asia.By the way, I have yet another bizarre question.
Just where did you get that avatar? It looks really nice!
Cartoon Network’s Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld shorts, from their short-lived DC Nation block. Back when I picked her, it was recent enough you’d sometimes see Young Justice fans who recognized it. These days I’m too attached to my AmeWHAT face to change it, even if it’s well past the point of common recognition.
That was a very fun series of shorts. Still kinda wish someone had picked up the video game magical girl concept for Amethyst and Gemworld somewhere.
The DC Nation short had the bad timing of existing around the same time that other Gem-themed show happened to take off.
Its profoundly weird to me that DC’s putting out all these kids-oriented OGNs like Superman Smashes the Klan and Shadow of the Batgirl, these really good comics that exist in their own continuity and just tell really good stories about these characters instead of whatever Crisis event is coming up, and they still haven’t twigged onto giving Amethyst her own, even though Amethyst was basically a Magical Girl/Fantasy comic a decade before that became a thing in North America.
The Gemworld shorts were a bit before Steven Universe (the GLTAS/Young Justice block ended in March 2013, SU’s first episode was in May, but I believe the Amethyst shorts were all in the first wave a year earlier,) but yeah, the time period where you could greenlight something without worrying about confusion by the time it aired was pretty much nonexistent.
Oh hey, Googling it DC DOES have an upcoming middlegrade Gemworld graphic novel! Shannon and Dean Hale on writing, Asiah Fulmore on art. Excellent.
Haha, I was just about to say since I found that out just now.
One for Shazam too, thank god. I’d seriously give up the entirety of DC’s ongoing, in-canon universe for these. They are exactly what I want out of superhero comics right now.
As someone who was extremely picky as a kid (I am autistic and at one point there was a total of about 10 real foods I would eat, plus a few condiments. Milk, Weetabix cereal, apples, bananas, beef, mushrooms and broccoli, lettuce, cheese and rice.) plus chocolate and cakes that had no nuts or raisins. Not saying this happens for Joyce but for some folks the more you get pressured into trying things too far outside of your comfort zone, the more your brain just goes NOPE.
I was at my pickiest around 8 (not coincidentally the same year I had an abusive teacher encouraging my classmates to bully me, was adjusting to a new school, house and town, experiencing horrible bullying from the aforementioned classmates, and starting to realize how different I actually was from my age peers). For me it wasn’t ever things touching (salads were fine as long as they didn’t have bad things, Frex) but texture/sensory stuff plus probably a whole heaping pile of too stressed out to have the mental bandwidth to push my food boundaries. I could do some Bad Foods if they were pureed so I didn’t have to feel them (blueberry compote was fine but blueberries themselves were bad).
In uni, I WANTED very badly to be able to eat more things (by then my ok foods had expanded to include cauliflower, beans, some types of pasta, pureed tomato sauce, and carrots) so I did something they call food chaining. Basically slowly working on my comfort zone to expand it at my own pace. In my case, there’s some things that are still very firmly a sensory NOPE (celery and other things with a stringy texture,, peach fuzz, dough boys and other types of dumplings with a slimy texture, and carbonated beverages to name a few) but so long as it doesn’t have a texture I hate I am now actually a very adventurous water – mainly because when I try new foods people aren’t watching and recording what I eat or judging me for eating that way or putting the pressure of their excitement to see me trying a new thing on me and I am allowed to not like it, throw it away or give it to someone else, and get something I can eat.
I dunno if my case would have risen to ED nowadays (in the 90s I was just called a picky brat). But I can say Booster’s apparent lack of judgement around Joyce’s food hangups is probably helpful to Joyce (and I wouldn’t be surprised if Joyce’s food issues have ramped up to 11 this year owing to the stress in her life right now – from someone who had adjacent issues, some of it is very much a coping mechanism. I don’t know what fresh hell is waiting for me at school but I DO know my Weetabix and banana with milk will be the Exact Same Every Time if I pick the Right Banana (bananas had to be the right stage of ripeness because overripe bananas are a big NOPE on texture for me, but my range of acceptable ripeness has expanded a lot). It was a source of stability when literally everything else was changing and life was chaos.
I think my grandfather would have done better in life if he could have accepted the thoughts expressed in your comment. But he was a picky thinker in much the same way as you’re a picky eater, and I don’t think there was any way anyone was going to be able to force the thought “trying to force someone to experience a food can make them more avoidant of that food” into his brain.
I expanded my food interests widely after escaping from his influence. Not that he ever found out, because I was still food avoidant in his house when my family came to a visit, because just so much nope.
In more recent years, I’ve even found a restaurant that has a seasonal dish that prominently includes one of the foods I most detest which is somehow still delicious. To be clear, I wouldn’t put the sandwich in my top ten, but it is still somehow good.
ehh, she can function in society so it’s fine.
(why, no, therapy did nothing for me, why?)
I’m sure someone has said this but it seems like she has a selective eating disorder! It’s a very bad thing to suffer from (I do) so I really like the…representation? that comes from Joyce. Never seen it in any other character before. Mine branches from autism.
Well this is certainly something to go to bed to.
so’s yer mom.
Go back to your grave, Mike, it’s past your burial
Oh hi Booster.
Y’know for someone who’s on the cast page we haven’t really gotten to know you that much.
Yeah, I know that Willis replaced Mike in part because they had trouble developing a cartoony asshole into a fleshed-out character in a more realistic setting, so I’m really hoping that Booster actually gets some of the development that they were created to get.
You know what they say: Meet the new Mike, same as the old Mike.
It’s early yet. We’re at the end of the first book post-skip and this is the first real focus Sal has gotten, for one. And Amber’s been dramatically out of focus compared to where she and AG were pre-skip.
https://imgur.com/a/b96a4i5
Someone requested Lucy Lingerie. Apropos of nothing Lingerie sounds like how pretentious people would pronounce laundry.
It means “washables” in French.
So Yoto was dead on the money.
Yup. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=lingerie
It doesn’t.
You could argue it meant.
But then I’d argue that https://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/lingerie
To elaborate for non french speakers:
wash=laver (see old french lavanderie which gave laundry)
linen=lin (root for linge then lingerie)
She looks very uncomfortable in that. Seems Lucy just doeen’t have any exhibitionist qualities.
Yeah I meant to have a speech bubble of her saying something like “I think it’s a little much for me”
I picture her being very “deer in the headlights”
Fair enough, though I wonder how that look would change if Walky gave her a compliment on said lingerie?
There’s a scene in One Punch Man where Saitama is on an alien ship and the navigator tells him to go one way instead of another, so he won’t reach the bridge. The face Saitama pulls a moment later is exactly what I imagine on Lucy.
It’s been a long time since I watched season 1, should do that again soon.
Lucy seems much more comfortable as NightGirl.
Too bad, because she looks both sexy and adorable.
Yet another fantastic piece by Yotomoe! Keep up the marvelous work!
Oh god not the babydoll nightie and garters. My one weakness…
Hey, I was re-reading part of Shortpacked! earlier, and I found a drawing to add to the imgur masterpost:
https://imgur.com/tkvXdbF
It’s supposed to be a (then-)hypothetical Leslie/Robin kid, originally posted on this strip.
I forgot I did this! It’s like an easter egg hunt.
Except that the eggs actually help us BURN calories and provide much more than just 10 seconds of pleasure!
For the love of our porn lord and savior Willis, somebody please PLEASE tell me that was funny!
Sometimes art is in the eye of the beholder. And that’s good enough.
Looking back, I guess what I wrote there was a little insecure. It’s just that I want to sport humor wherever I can, with the hope that it’ll reach someone, make their day, help them through tough times.
It’s just kind of hard to know if you’re heading in the right direction without any feedback, you know?
At least I took an opportunity there to make a neat pun!
But honestly, don’t you think it’s funny that these easter eggs make us burn calories instead of gain them?
‘Lucy Lingerie’ sounds like either a porn name, a superhero name, or possibly both.
Good artwork, and Lucy looks like she’s not used to wearing lingerie that sexy at all. Which seems about right for her character to me.
Looks like she is worried Walky won’t like it, or will think it is too much and decide she is uh, “too forward” or something.
Oh my god that’s so cute
…I mean, I’m not as picky as Joyce, but there are absolutely foods that I find more disgusting than poop
I can’t even be in the room if someone’s cooking eggs
Poop doesn’t bother me much either. I mean, yeah it smells bad and all that, but like, it doesn’t trigger my gag reflex like, say, spit does. *shudder*
I can’t eat tomatoes. Like, at all, they make me want to gag as soon as they’re in my mouth.
What about when they’re chopped up, like in Tostito’s salsa or something?
What about when shit is chopped up, like with with onions and peppers?
I wondered how long it would take us to go there.
I’ve heard of edible soil, but…. honestly, who would eat THAT without getting paid?
It’s a valid question though. Tomatoes gross me out. I can’t eat them straight. It’s hard to even dice them up without gagging.
But tomato sauces and salsas are fine. I still prefer the chunks to be small, but it’s nothing like eating a tomato. I’m not fond of fresh salsas though – still too tomatoey.
Yeah I’m with you on the fresh tomatoes. I’ve spent the summer growing cherry tomatoes and I had to force myself to eat 2. It uh. Did not go well. Which is a shame, because my cherry tomato plants are thriving.
Going to try to put them into a salsa… We shall see how that turns out.
I can’t eat raw celery, it just tastes like pepper. Cooked and mixed into something else? No problem.
Don’t like mushrooms, either. They’re slimy, spongy little things that taste like dirt.
This one is fun geographically, but I don’t like steamed clams. It’s mostly for the same textural reasons as mushrooms, but they just taste like the salty low tide sand they came from. Clam cakes are amazing though, especially when they’re made with fresh steamers.
FINALLY, somebody who understands my distaste for mushrooms! They have the same texture as RUBBER, come on, who thought these things were supposed to edible?
Bored or starving cavemen who found the things, I guess? Somebody had to figure out which ones are edible, send you on the trip of a lifetime, or insta-kill you from the inside out.
Starving cavepeople. Because that’s not the sort of thing that a properly misogynistic society would make a brave warrior do. Oh god, that lifetime.
At least it was short, and I don’t recall getting raped once during it. Although, I do have to admit, I only identified *one* that insta-killed me. I think there’s probably more of them that would’ve done that if given the chance.
Deadly mushrooms are only deadly once.
And few people identify more than one insta-kill.
If they have the texture of rubber, are spongy, or slimy they’ve just not been prepared correctly. Most people fry their mushrooms for too long, and I don’t mean by a little, but by like 2 to 3 times longer than they need to be cooked. I used to be neutral on mushrooms, ok taste but pretty bad texture. Then I found out how to prepare them properly and they got SO MUCH better.
On another note, without mushrooms we wouldn’t have bread or cakes, nor most alcoholic beverages, and many non-alcoholic beverages would also be impossible to make. Mushrooms have done a lot for humanity.
Now just how do you prepare them? I’m curious!
Assuming you just want to fry some champignons (also known as portobello) in a pan, and maybe make a sauce.
Slice them about 5mm thick, or just cut them into 1cm pieces. You need just a drop of oil or a very small amount of butter on high heat (about 7 out of 9). Put in the mushrooms and move them around a little so they don’t burn. Once they start losing moisture and shrinking, and have all been lightly browned they’re done. By the time they’re down to half their previous size they are definitely done. Then add some salt and whatever other seasoning you like.
That’s where so many people go wrong, they just keep frying them until they’re dark brown and the moisture has completely evaporated. That’s just way too long.
If you want to make a sauce with them, dust some flower over them if you are in a hurry, add cream and lower the heat _as_soon_as_ they start losing moisture. Then simmer at low heat to thicken the sauce and season it.
I know you can also make them whole in a sort of wok with almost caramelized onions and then you can leave them in there for much longer without the texture getting weird, but I haven’t tried making that myself yet. It’s only something I’ve eaten.
My general experience with mushrooms is that if you fry or bake them the timing very important. If you prepare them whole they’re a bit more forgiving, and they’re easiest to get right in soups or stews.
Thanks for the tip!
I wonder how they’d taste in an Omu-raisu….
Okay, now I won’t proclaim to be an expert on celery, disliking the texture of most vegetables, but are you sure you’re not allergic to celery? Allergies to food tends to make them taste spicy when they are not (if that is what you mean by them tasting like peppers, as I have seen people believe that *potatoes* are supposed to be spicy and not realising they are allergic).
… I don’t have any food allergies that I’m aware of (though plenty of intolerances), but that does sound consistent with the way soap tingles and dust causes a burning sensation. (I am definitely more allergic to one of those, even before trying to correlate the tactile sensation of each.)
It tastes like peppercorn seasoning pepper, not capsaicin hot peppers. I don’t think I’m allergic to it, because I can eat it fine if it’s cooked. The flavor and texture are unpalatable raw.
I’m also on team “cilantro tastes like soap”, so maybe that has something to do with it…
People allergic to tomatoes can sometimes still eat ketchup due to how it is processed without a reaction to my knowledge so I’d say that could depend on how it is prepared as it might be destroying the part you are having an initial reaction to when raw. Honestly to me, celery just tastes watery and like nothing else; my partner says it can vary between that, ‘good’ and very bitter for him.
Celery mostly tastes like crunch – which can be a nice addition in salads, even without much flavor of its own.
Hide the next week away from Maggie ˚—˚ or 3 days, tops
I see one of Joyce’s sensibilities is still here
Just thinking about it must be like pure TORTURE for her.
*plays “GangStar Torture Dance” by Yugo Kanno on Voxola PR-76*
I was going to suggest “Hungarian Goulash”, but that’s okay.
The A HREF=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ6zEEU2O7Y”>Alan Sherman parody version, of course.
The Alan Sherman parody version, of course.
Absolutely.
This remains Joyce’s weirdest quirk, and it’s not lacking for competition.
Basically how I feel about most veggies. I literally cannot get a single bite for most veggies, and yet some people love the taste. That’s the part that confuses me most. I don’t understand how people’s sense of taste can be so wildly different.
I’m sorta with you on the taste thing, sometimes. Texture though is its own beast.
On the basic biological level, this is how adaptation happens: little tiny random modifications to how everything works to see if it turns out well enough. Being incentivized to vary our diet makes it possible to adapt to pretty much any diet.
And then it’s possible to shift your taste preferences by deliberately changing your diet, too. And then there’s a mental component, where you can make something taste better because you’re starving, or because you tell yourself a story about how great it is.
It’s complicated.
You just reminded me of the story of how lobsters became synonymous with fancy food. Originally, it was considered the food of the poor, since it looks like a sea cockroach (which it pretty much is). There was literally, at least, one prison riot when they served lobster for too many days and were forced to change the rules to make that more humane. Finally a famous chef at the time decided to try to raise up the humble lobster, made it fancy, and drove demand up for it overnight. Thus why they are now considered fancy.
People will literally have or not have the right taste buds to taste some compounds, like the soapy taste in cilantro. Coupling these genetic variations with a mix of environment and habituation and it makes perfect sense that food tastes are as varied as, say, music tastes.
I love fresh vegetables. Of course, I grew up eating them straight from the garden.
I also can’t stand the taste of most veggies. There’s a few that I think are ok, but most taste terrible to me.
Because our brains develop organically. What we experience is vastly different from how other people experience it. There are some things that seem pretty consistent from person to person, but sense of taste doesn’t really seem to be one.
Tactile sense seems to be fairly consistent, apart from the degree to which one is sensitive, and the degree to which it may overlap with other senses. Texture is basically tactile sense, so we can agree that smooth muscles, like what chickens primarily have, have similar textures to most other creatures’ muscles. Ungulates and primates on the other hand mostly have striated muscles, which have a very different texture. Most people don’t eat ungulates or primates apart from cows and pigs, which gives rise to the ‘everything tastes like chicken, except for beef and pork.’ myth.
Actual taste, though, is quite different. My housemate can taste bitter, but doesn’t think that agave has any bitter taste to it. My other housemate thinks it has a very bitter taste, while I just feel like there’s a bit of bitterness in it. But we all agree that almonds taste bitter.
There are a few reference tastes that seem to be similar across the board, but thinking about it, it feels like that’s impossible to tell, because they’re the reference tastes. Sugar is sweet to just about everyone, because it’s frequently used as the definition of what sweet is. As such, whatever flavor sugar has, that is what we think of when we think ‘sweet as in taste’.
That’s weird to me mostly because “veggies” is such a broad category, with such a wide variety of tastes and textures.
Most of my adult life has been me trying to convince myself that the veggies I hated as a child are in fact pretty good. It’s worked well with peppers, onions, and cabbage, but mushrooms are still pretty much a hard no.
But fruits? No. I will hate 80% of fruits until I die, thanks.
To be fair, mushrooms are not vegetables, they’re fungus. It’s kind of weird that anyone eats them. (Disclaimer: I eat some mushrooms, but I think that’s kind of weird.)
*Tilts head*
Yeah okay this is a weirdness. Like this is coming from someone who eat’s his Fajita’s *separately* in a bowl with a fork rather then rolled up in a shell as is proper.
Still it’s nice to see Booster again. I had been wondering where they had went off to.
I wonder if this means Joyce makes sure to swallow every part of one type of food in her mouth before eating another type of food. Like swallowing all the chicken nugget before eating some french fries.
I thought we’ve seen her doing exactly that, so I believe it does.
Oh, Joyce. You blessed young lass. It’s not always homogeneous, kiddo. Not sharing more than that.
Without any details, yes it do be like that sometimes.
Oh corn.
Also, @Taffy, is there a story behind the new grav?
June 1, 2017. This grav was created the next day.
It’s always all about the corn, but nobody talks about the human capacity for perfectly replicating the complete layout of Hollow Bastion from Kingdom Hearts entirely inside our own digestive tract.
One of my favorite melodies/level themes of the entire series.
Wow, I think she may have just like. Completely disrupted Booster’s fuzzing. Yes I’m stressed but I don wanna share that with you fortunately I am stressed by a lot of intensely weird shit so here’s your fob-off hai douzo
Ewww.
Sure Joyce, that’s what’s bugging you. Absolutely.
The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Joyce can freak out about food and still be worried about the divorce. She’s good at multi-tasking.
And focusing on one thing is a good distraction from the other.
The greenish lighting in panel 4 really sells the horror of it in Joyce’s mind. Yet another primo Joyce face for the collection.
To be fair to Joyce, there are lima beans in it.
But yep, the coloring on panel four is a hoot.
Autistic here, so yeah, I get where she’s coming from to a degree.
It’s clear to me that unlike Daisy, Joyce doesn’t have IBS.
IBS is no joke. I can’t wait for that particular gene to kick in…
This neurosis has gotten way out of hand. She’s less grossed out by POOP guys.
Well, she’s not into coprophagia so …
I see Joyce’s hair is getting quite… full.
Whatever it is she’s reading on her phone, the stress is driving her to maximum floof.
She could be a Ghibli protagonist, now that I’m thinking about it.
…Joyce has never eaten corn, has she?
I think it’s more corn-and-lima-beans(gross)-and-everything-else that’s setting her off here.
I think that was more about her assumption that the poop was going to be a homgeninous paste.
I just had another
premonitionprediction. Booster is gonna mention that in the next strip.There will be a 33% chance of high-pitched screams and/or vomit showers.
Grab some earplugs and an umbrella.
Booster: “Huh, well, usually the neuroses require a bit more pulling of teeth and provocation, so thanks I suppose”
Booster, in a perfect vocal impersonation of John Redcorn: “She’s taking some of the fun out of this.”
Okay, Booster derailing that train was a good thing. Let’s just hope they don’t screw it up from here.
“Poop is an homogenous paste”
– someone who has never eaten corn
or, at least, never ever looked in the bowl afterward.
Old saying: Before I’d do X job, I’d pick corn out of shit with the birds.
So we all hate burrito bowls now ;_;
I like burrito bowls, just not the ones from Chipotle.
I got their stuff a couple times in the past, just to see what the fuss was about, and it did not settle well either time. I can get similar food from an authentic Mexican restaurant locally for the same prices, and that’s always fine. Even Taco Bell doesn’t bother me, so IDK what the problem was. (Maybe their famous salmonella and e.coli…)
Oh great a first year psych student will attempt to diagnose Joyce, I see no issues with this
Only a professional or at least a graduate student could provide anything close to an accurate diagnosis (as well as anyone could EVER do that with such limited information).
Even with a formal test, diagnostics are hardly exact science yet. It’s complicated but I get the sense that this may be due in part to the fact that the rigorous field is still relatively new.
To get a sense on this factor, between 1970 and 2000 the DSM went from listing just 47 to over 300 distinct mental disorders. This is still controversial even today, and at one point the APA was even accused of disease mongering. Whether or not they actually were is a whole can of worms I won’t be getting into now, but you get the point.
A great chance of all this going tits up is definitely on the cards, hilarity (and drama) is certainly on the cards
For what exactly?
Booster making things worse for Joyce
But they’re a first-year psych major! How could they possibly make things worse by intervening their expert skills?
/s
Well when you put it like that it does sound a bit silly 🙂
It is not only this: it’s Booster. They got some kind of third eye in any analyzis they did.
The elevator doors open to reveal Diogenes, proudly clutching a bowl of mashed chickpeas with a diploma sticking out of it.
“Behold! A hummus genius paste!” he declares, before being chased away by some angry naked chickens,
You mean angry men with long curved toenails, right?
I am sorely tempted to sic the pun-ninjas on you for that one.
I’m an autist and I cannot agree to that ew
I’ve had the quandary of realizing that everything on my plate is comparatively delicious. Then, I have to alternate bites of each until I’m left with the ultimate mouthful – and which should have that honor?
It’s some of the fastest maths I’ve ever done.
Buridan’s lunch.
Just take half bites of whatever remains. Then you never have to finish. This is known as Xeno’s Dinner Plan.
I mean I wouldnt call myself a picky eater (ive learned what i like and don’t like and i can try nee things) but ready mixed salads from my universitys students cafes will always disgust me
honeatly cant believe people exist who will eat THE WHOLE THING rather than picking their faves
They made an actually helpful comment?
Well, yes. But the interesting question is whether it was intended to be helpful.
It’s at this point that, all kidding aside, Joyce should have been in therapy a long time ago. I suspect that they will try to convince her to see someone just because it’s obvious that her undiagnosed conditions are making her miserable.
I am inter where this type of condition comes from because I can’t imagine some starving kid in a third world country being a picky eater
I do think that at some point real hunger will overcome most neuroses about food.
‘Twas a brave, hungry soul, that first ate an oyster.
It’s the things that are poisonous unless cooked that bother me. What’s the thought process there? “Bob ate one of these and died. Guess I’ll throw it on the fire and try it. What could go wrong?”
It might have been that Bob was from a tribe that hadn’t discovered cooking yet. Two hills and a river further southeast Charlie’s tribe had figured out that things in general tasted better if you heated them up and so they were all fine. When they later met they were able to exchange information and figure out that eating that thing raw was a really bad idea, but cooking it and then eating it was fine.
Clive Barkers Dread was pretty good at showing that (maybe good isn’t the right word, more like horrific)
Sure there are, but if its the only thing around you CAN eat, you figure out a way to make yourself eat it. I have roughly 15 million foods that make me gag on reflex, no matter how deliciously prepared, but if that’s all there is to eat, I can choke it down.
She’s got the excuse that therapy would have been resisted by literally her entire community for fear of seeing her as abberant, and them by extension. Human tribalism is weird, and it only gets worse with any tribe that has religious pinnings.
Yep. Remember, Joyce thought all Jennifer needed to cure her depression was faith in Jesus and maybe a boyfriend (but mostly Jesus,) and Ross frames Bonnie’s death as ‘Satan taking her’ from them. Mental illness can’t exist except as a lack of faith. Talking to a therapist who acknowledges their feelings are real and valid might give people the emotional processing to realize they aren’t happy with this, and that maybe fear of eternal damnation isn’t a good guiding principle for your theology, and maybe also gay people aren’t literal evil.
Joyce has made that particular break, but repairing the damage is going to take much, much longer.
“It’s at least homogenous paste.”
But she said there’s corn in that salad thing. Some of those kernels are going to sneak through intact…
Some people actually chew.
And take three hours to eat? Nobody’s got that kind of time!
Let’s be honest. How many people actually follow the Surgeon General’s chewing recommendations anyway?
Between the 9CL tweets and now having the idea of poop being a “homogenous paste” now in my brain, I might just need to take a week off…
…from life.
Has my avatar ever been more appropriate since I’ve been using it? I think not!
It’s been my general experience that above average intelligence and a strong tendency to neurosis correlate rather well. Exceptions abound, but still.
Tell me about it….
Graduate and PhD candidates have a disproportionately high tendency towards mental illness (Nature).
I love Booser’s aplomb during Joyce’s weird explanation. I… just can’t understand what’s the problem and I feel really sorry for Joyce.
Her brain associates this stuff with disgust. There is nothing she can do really since it’s an emotional reaction. Kind of like with a phobia, you understand that, say, a friendly cat, won’t hurt you but you can’t resist the fear.
I bet Joyce’s mental image in the green panel would’ve been right at home on Rugrats: a uvula’s-perspective view of chewing.
That was a weird show.
Agreed that that’s what’s going on, but this probably *is* something she could work on with a therapist if she ever had the desire to. My experience is with OCD (which is not that same kind of disgust, but there’s some disgust there I’m working through mixed in with the anxiety), but I’m *guessing* that this is something that very gentle exposure therapy could help her with this – maybe starting out with two things that she’s pretty okay being together, and gradually working her way forward until it doesn’t seem like such a big deal, and she’s found new things that she likes. This definitely doesn’t seem like it could work with the rip-the-proverbial-band-aid-off exposure therapy, though, since I think that would just trigger her feelings of disgust. That said, she’d have to want to do this.
Oh yeah she can definitely ease her way out of it with some therapy help. What I wanted to say was more like “She can’t do something Right this moment, she can’t force her way past her disgust”.
Bad news, Joyce. If there’s corn in there? It’s still going to be there in the poop. 😉
Unless you chew instead of swallowing it whole.
Chewing? What are you, a wild animal?
Given to proliferation of ruminant animals among domesticated species, the claim that a person is wild for chewing is demonstrably undermined. More accurate analogs may include: cow, pig, goat, buffalo, or (if one is inclined to imply that the act of chewing implies blind obediance) sheep.
“Don’t chew, sheeple!”
Corn in your poop is amusing though
I like how Joyce said she wasn’t gonna think about it and then immediately did think about it. In my experience that seems to be how it goes when you want to avoid thinking about something.
Oh noes, Joyce went full scathological here, and not in the biblical Apocalytic meaning…
Dang, I hope Booster doesn’t try to do the psych thing at Joyce.
Dang, I hope Sarge doesn’t kick Beetle in the ass.
Sufferin’ Succotash.
See, I was about to say something about that now being my headcanon for Sarah’s favorite food, and then you went and stole my comment. You comment-stealer you.
Did Booster just help someone get up higher?
Even if you don’t have Joyce’s/Willis’ issue . . . the whole process of eating food is REALLY gross if you think about it too much.
Is there anything that ISN’T gross if you think about it too much?
Algebraic topology, to pick an example at random.
Er, counterexample.
EW MATH!
…. okay, yeah, that’s an example of putting to LITTLE thought into it.
….
… but if you think about it, topology can get you asking questions like the curvature of space and whether the universe is curved. And as big-scale questions go, there are few as gross as that.
YES I DID OVERTHINK THAT THAT’S THE POINT!
No it really isn’t.
I find the more you think about it, the less gross it is actually because then I am just picturing the building blocks of food and not food any more and Biology is cool to me.
Tell me about it! The body, the way organisms work is just so fascinating!
Let me tell you guys about nattō. Somebody put some soybeans out to soak and then forgot about them. A starving beggar found them. They had half rotted into slimy goo, but he ate them anyway. Then he pranked his buddies by telling them about the incredible new taste sensation he had discovered.
You can have the same story about cheese, wine, beer and so on. I’m a vegetarian but I know that meat has to be “forgotten” a bit to taste better. Let’s wonder how people got this idea.
Then take butter, buttermilk, or whatever take processing. Same wonder.
Then take oysters, chesnuts, crabs, shrimps, or whatever has a shell. Same wonder.
In fact, if not for some kind of scientist back in the days, I don’t see how we have food at all.
That’s only true for some people (sure it’s a lot of them, but that’s the way our world is structured). For people normalized to slaughtering their own meat, there doesn’t seem to be any problem with consuming what they’ve slaughtered, even in short order. Some people even eat choice cuts fresh from the kill. (though that incurs some obvious risks)
Oh Joyce sweetie you are so neurodivergent
Also yay booster~
Looks like Joyce has Booster figured out. If she wants to avoid them psychoanalyzing her, she can just play up a different one of her neuroseseseses instead of talking about her real problem.
Now we’ll get to see if Booster can tell she’s deflecting or if they have been sufficiently fooled.
This is the beginning of Joyce’s supervillain origin story where she wants to reduce all to homogeneous paste.
As both part of Joyce’s inner circle, and homo, does this mean Becky is safest? Or will Joyce throw her efforts at the most perceived hetero around her, and rail against the pillar of Joe until it is reduced to paste?
[1] Yes it was jarring for me to write homo as well. It was rather a shock to see that the obvious pun on homo/hetero was so undermined by the cultural toxicity that had been applied to the diminution of the most clinical term. It leaves me curious how homo (in this context) has retained a perceived more derogatory stance, than other terms which have been ‘taken back’. Alternatively, it may have been that the structure of the pun objectified Becky’s character as being solely about her sexuality, rather than the deeper character we know. (or perhaps the combination?)
Sorry if my posting these hurt anyone. I thought of not doing so, but have chosen to post to share my thoughts on it and seek feedback from the community as there are so many here better educated than myself.
I very much think that “homo” is one such word worth taking back from the bigots. It’s because of homophobics that I can’t even type “Homo sapien” into Wikia’s comments section anymore!
Idk if I’ve said this before and sorry if I did but i got so freaked when I saw your comment bc i didn’t remember posting it lol
Fourth panel Joyce seems almost Lovecraftian – her face awash in unnatural unlight as hideous inhuman sensations skitter through her mind…
Glad there’s more Booster but I had hopes we would find out what was actually bugging Joyce.
To paraphrase Barenaked Ladies, “It’s been one strip”
You’re right. Hopefully we get more Booster tomorrow!
I’m almost certain it’s family drama, either concerning her parents’ divorce or something to do with Jocelyn.
All of that sounds a lot more interesting than ongoing food neurosis.
…Joyce, are you seeing anyone?
Not romantically, I mean like a therapist. Or maybe a psychiatrist. Or both.
You really think she’d be interested in taking medication? Especially after experiencing Ruth?
Seeing as Ruth is no longer suicidal, I’d say she’s a pretty good argument for psychiatric medications sometimes being necessary! She’s not cured, because trauma and because longterm depression from an early age does a serious number on your thought patterns, and also depression tends to be cyclical, but ‘not suicidal’ is certainly an improvement.
yeah honestly, all things considered, Ruth is a poster child example of how much one med can do for you. The fact that she’s only had to switch once and it seems to have done a ton after only a couple of months is actually very amazing.
Yeah, but rational or not, most people in America tend to have at least mild distrust of psychiatrists (many psychotherapists even refer to them as “pill-pushers”).
This baggage only intensifies in manipulative religious communities, who tend to associate “worldly” medicine with “the work of the devil”.
With the combined forces of her fundamentalist upbringing and having witnessed a friend struggle a lot with her medicine before getting it right, I doubt she’ll be looking towards that kind of stuff in the near future.
That face in panel 4. Absolute artistic genius.
Huh. I had some texture issues with things like wood. Basically, hating the feeling of wetting my clarinet reed before using it which made practice and performance kind of challenging and may be a major factor in why I ultimately switched over to piano in high school.
Joyce thinks Amber is cool and brooding.
Amber would be horrified by this.