A young woman pursued by bad luck is witness to the murder of the Fairy Queen of Summer. Can she get to the bottom of this mystery?
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Sleepless Domain
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
In a world where magical girls and their battles are commonplace, loss has become all too common as well.
Saint for Rent
Ru Xu
Saint Halliday runs an inn for Time Travelers. Unfortunately, he seems to attract other supernatural "guests," too.
Novae
KaiJu
A historical romance with a touch magic and a dash of astronomy. It chronicles the romantic adventures of Sulvain, a sweet tempered necromancer and Raziol, a passionate 17th century astronomer.
Peritale
Mari Costa
A fairy godmother with no magic tries her best to successfully fulfill a Fairytale and win the respect of her peers.
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Augustine
Winter Jay Kiakas, Windy
August and her ragtag group are just like everyone else, simply surviving in the treacherous Crater... When they stumble into what may be an artifact of the ancient past, their lives are thrown into a much bigger loop as they trifle with bounty hunters, monsters and gods.
Monster's Garden
Ash G.
Champion pit fighter Kilo Monster was content to spend the rest of his days tending to his quiet garden alone... until he met a curious robot girl and her human family.
Lies Within
Lacey
Lysander's aimless and carefree life is turned upside down when he accidentally discovers that the cute boy next door, Simon, is a literal monster
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
Three Panel Soul
Matt Boyd, Ian McConville
It's a pretty rigid format but we keep the content loose, you know?
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
The Messenger
indui
In a ruin-abound town cursed with bad luck, Kai and Kalla--a young boy and a fledgling dragonbird spirit--take on a quest in hopes the reward will solve all of their problems.
Empowered
Adam Warren
A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
Ozzie the Vampire
Eric Lide
Ozzie and her best friend Kimmy are your average everyday normal art students – except one is an immortal vampire with superpowers and the other possesses a magic talking grimoire. Also they have to save their town from a demonic invasion.
The Golden Boar
Magnolia Porter Siddell
A young woman joins a group of summoners who call forth Guardian Beasts to protect their isolated magical island. Unfortunately, her Guardian Beast is nothing like she'd imagined, and he's about to change her life, and everything she thought she knew about herself...
Sakana
Mad Rupert
Our heroes must navigate a hazardous dating scene, overcome personal anxieties, and wrangle unruly seafood in order to find love, peace of mind, and a paycheck.
Heroes of Thantopolis
Izzy Strontium Hall
A living boy fights to save the City of the Dead.
Nigh Heaven & Hell
Scotty
Heather Vodihn is on a simple mission: find her father. However she becomes entangled with two strangers with mysterious powers being stalked by a group with bizarre demands. Heather must learn to trust her new traveling companions, even if she is untrustworthy herself.
Darkling Bright
Chris Hazelton
Kieran Bright is a college student home for the summer and roped into an online reunion with his old neighborhood friends in the most recent update of their favorite childhood MMORPG.
At least, he was, and that was the idea...
Join Kieran and his friends as they are pulled into another reality that may or may not be real and are forced to confront their own identities, the nature of simulated universes and reality itself.
Edison Rex
Chris Roberson
The adventures of the world’s greatest villain who, after defeating his superheroic nemesis, decides that he’s the only one left to defend the world.
Stand Still, Stay Silent
Minna Sundberg
A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
ARISE, YE SKELETON KING
Brian Clevinger, Escher Cattle, Lee Black
A troupe of wandering "adventurers" down to their last silver "acquire" a map only to find the real treasure was the fiend they dug up along the way.
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Angel's Orchard
Harry Bogosian
After the events in Demon's Mirror, Gerda has accepted her role as a Demon Hunter, and Cezar has traveled back to the Demon City. Demons have existed alongside humans for millennia, so things begin to return to normal. But an impossibly powerful Relic has been taken by one of the Demon Masters, and a silent war enters its final stages.
Little Tiny Things
Clover
What are the little things that move us? The simple joys that warm our bodies and hearts? The micro life of insects that influence our world more than we think? The tiny steps we make everyday to have a happier tomorrow?
Not Drunk Enough
Tess Stone
Logan Ibarra is possibly the unluckiest repairman in the world. A late night job should not have landed him in the middle of a mad scientist's squabble, but he soon finds himself surrounded by monsters and further madness with little tools to get out.
Freakshow
Scotty
A festival of broken people, blood flows in the center ring. Come one and come all, to the greatest show in all of Paris.
Barbarous
Ananth Hirsh, Yuko Ota
A crummy wizard and an anxious monster have to get over themselves and bring order to an apartment building full of misfits.
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That’s why you don’t take calls between soaking cereal in liquid and eating it. Duh.
Or one could just answer the phone and chew cereal at them noisily. Though, now that we all have cell phones, though, it’s also possible to multitask using the mute button and still be a little polite. Wait, what did you say? I was chewing my cereal on mute. Could you repeat that again? I pressed mute and took another bite after asking you to repeat yourself the first time.
…
That’s probably not that polite, either. Better just let it go to voice mail.
In every proper world, I’d imagine. I mean, once you get your cereal poured, you’ve got to wait a couple of minutes for it to start getting nice and soft before you start actually eating it.
Respectfully and with my utmost sincerity, you, sir, are a heathen and I find your appetites vulgar and unsettling; however, they do no harm and I support your freedom to engage in your abominable sacrilage.
The best way to avoid soggy cereal is to never put milk in the bowl. Keep Milk in the glass. Eat some cereal. Drink some milk before swallowing cereal. If they wanted cereal wet? It would have come that way in the box. CRUNCHY CEREAL FOREVER!
Maybe they’ve taken a small break? I admit it is unusual to not see their comments first thing after the strip. I almost treat their comments as an unofficial second alt-text.
It’s happened plenty of times before, and it feels much weirder to see people pressuring them about it. Sometimes Ana has other stuff to do at 12:04 ET.
I respect your right to not like milk, even if I think eating cereal without milk is a half-baked experience. Unless you are just snacking on cereal, then it is fine dry.
And try to convince the toddler that she doesn’t need to add on an extra 5 minutes to something’s microwave cooking time, or change it from high to defrost (although if she were to do both it might actually work)…
Also I love how the count for which we are mad at Willis for the most keeps swaying back and forth between “Ruth and Billie are broken up” and “Mike’s dead.” It’s interesting to see that it’s so close.
I have made some truly abominable cereal mixes in my day. Dangerous things happen when you finish off the last dregs of the cereal boxes in your pantry.
I could’ve sworn Willis said that she might have Aspergers at some point. Maybe I’m wrong and Willis didn’t say that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Dina does have it. I’ve never been diagnosed, but I’m pretty sure I have most of the symptoms of Aspergers, and I often find Dina’s behavior very relatable.
As I recall the Word of Willis has long been ‘she’s never been formally diagnosed with anything,’ which is a very distinct answer from no. Additionally, over in Shortpacked when ‘surplus diversity’ caused an anomaly that brought Dina to the store, she listed neurodivergence alongside being non-white and non-heteronormative as things that could further strain the fabric of reality, and her realization that she diverged from that norm in multiple ways immediately preceded the Soggie Invasion. Willis said over on Tumblr that Circumstances from earlier in the Walkyverse gave Dina plenty of time for reflection. Listing neurodivergence specifically alongside two things Dina definitely fits kind of implicitly suggests she is of some variety.
Additionally, I don’t have a direct source but someone’s mentioned Willis had discussed how they’re neurodivergent of some vague variety and Dina’s a good outlet for strips about those experiences? But I have seen that when the comments go into ‘wait is Joyce autistic or is her need for order and rigidity from growing up in such a restrictive environment’ Willis tends to Tweet something to the effect of ‘yeah I ask that question about myself a lot, let me know if you figure it out.’
But yeah, a lot of us on the spectrum have been reading Dina as one of us specifically for years. By now I think Willis is consciously writing her with a few more direct autistic things as well, the way AmbG’s plurality has been written. And the strip last storyline where Dina inverts her elbows to get a dinosaur arm posture accurate kind of suggests joint hypermobility, which frequently co-occurs with autism for reasons we don’t understand yet. (At least, all of us who had hypermobile joints all went ‘honestly this isn’t that tricky.’)
Yeah, I definitely discovered another way my joints are strange when a whole bunch of people were like “HOW DOES SHE DO THAT?!” And I was like, “wait, that’s supposed to be hard?”
Also yes I have headcannoned Dina as Autistic since literally her first appearance because she’s basically younger less hyper me when I was a freshman (imagine Becky’s hyperactivity and impulsivity crossed with Dina’s social awkwardness and inability to read social cues and obsessive tendencies about stuff she loves, add in Joyce’s problematic upbringing and like somewhere between Zaph and Malaya’s discomfort with assigned gender roles and lack of language for the experience and Joyce’s people pleasing tendencies and you’ve got 17YO uni freshman me. I relate to a lot to a lot of them.)
It’s my impression that having something like hypermobility inherently makes one need to be a little neurodivergent. My ex has hypermobile EDS (formerly classified as type 3), but isn’t autistic or borderline autistic (formerly Asperger’s syndrome). That said, she’s near borderline autistic.
However, it seems like most of her spectrum features are rooted in the fact that she’s physically different from most other people, and so she needs to be able to adapt to those differences. She doesn’t have enhanced senses and doesn’t stim.
She’s very good at reading people. She does have a flattened affect, but is pretty good at simulating a normal affect on demand. Put her in a room full of people with EDS or Marfan syndrome (and me), and she seems pretty normal – more normal than most of them.
To be fair, her mother and grandmother, who also have/had hypermobile EDS, do/did demonstrate the same sort of just a bit off the beaten path. My ex’s father is clearly on spectrum, but not diagnosed. So there’s certainly a genetic potential for her to be on spectrum. It’s just that her on spectrum features all seem like adaptations to her condition.
Joyce was raised in a restrictive environment because her parents were autistic and at least one of them’s a bit crazy as well. We haven’t seen enough of that parent to give a proper Internet diagnosis, but there’s certainly a list of possibilities.
My headcanon has the other parent going along with the crazy church because “this simplifies things to a point I can deal with stuff. It’s wrong, but at least I can deal with it.”
Dina is DEFINITELY coded as autistic, from her, uh, unconventional sense of humor to her difficulty with social cues (such as eye contact) to her need for consistency to her nerdy vocabulary to her dinosaur special interest etc, etc.
I like how in this strip Dina disproves another assumption about people on the autism spectrum, namely that we all have food mixing issues (at least that’s how I interpreted Amber’s comment, ‘I always had pegged you as AGAINST mixing food.’). No, she just has certain standards. Contrast that with Joyce’s obvious food issues (she may be neurodivergent as well but it could very well be the environment she came from; Willis seems to leave this intentionally vague). The biggest assumption Dina disproved so far was the assumption that autistic people are childlike and sexually undeveloped; this was back when she kissed Becky as a sort of f— you to everyone else.
I ALSO think that the way she uses language is not only a sign of neurodivergence but also a sign of her being a first-generation American (because I totally speak like that too).
Back when I used to eat cereal for breakfast, I liked to mix Applejacks, Honey Nut Cheerios, Fruit Loops, and Lucky Charms together. Nowadays I usually don’t have time for that, so I just heat up Poptarts in the toaster.
It’s been years since I’ve had cereal for breakfast or even wanted it. Although I will occasionally fry, scramble, or omlet eggs, usually I’m enjoying some combination of breakfast burritos, and TexMex hot from the microwave. Cereal, soggy or not, just won’t cut it.
I haven’t had cereal in years either, but for a completely different reason. About a decade ago I developed an allergy to dairy, and milk/cream affects me the worst. I’ve tried cereals with soy and other types of milk, but it just doesn’t taste the same. :/
I thought at first that the gestalt Dina was referring to was one comprised of a mixture of cereal and social media, like Kellogg’s Frosted Flakebooks or Twitter-O’s
Me too. Or a quiet but social two person gathering where they both enjoyed their various breakfasts of cjoice together. Mixing the two cereals was the third thing that occurred to me…
Frosted Flakes are Frosties, right? The one with Tony the Tiger? I think that and Lucky Charms are the only cereals mentioned in comic or discussion that exist on this side of the pond. (Although it’s been a long time since I had a “cartoon mascot” cereal, so I could be wrong.)
IME M&S Maple and Pecan Flakes go well with Kelloggs Crunchy Nut, but Weetabix Minis take so long to soften even slightly that they shouldn’t be mixed with anything (least of all full-size Weetabix).
Yes to FF=Frosties and Lucky Charms. The only one from your second para over here
I think, is Weetabix, and that maybe just in Canada, though come to think of it I havent seen them in a while.
I am 100% here for Autistic Dina with sensory food texture issues!
Seriously the sludge of soggy frosted flakes is indeed an abomination (likewise soggy shredded, bleurgh).
About the only thing worse is the slight slimyness of boiled dumplings combined with their glory texture or the stringy-hard-soft of old celery. Regular celery is also an abomination bit old celery is the King Abomination.
(Though probably stinking hard tofu or taleggio cheese are a bit worse than old celery but that’s because smell and taste get into it and they’re basically a whole big ball of NOPE for me. On texture alone, old celery is The Worst).
Hey, no one’s judging you over food texture issues. Heck, I have certain foods whose textures make them inedible for me, and I’m (pretty sure I’m) not neurodivergent, so I can definitely relate.
A more practical question – HOW is she going to combine them? She has two bowls, each of which is filled to overflowing with cereal. I suspect she will need a third bowl at some point… unless she has an XOR gate for cereal…
I’m a few years late to the party, but elf seems a lot like a zork reference to me. The bird is a treasure, the sword is the first weapon in the game, and you are, without variation, an elf.
But with respect to the elf, my mind went back to those old Middle Earth MUDS and the birds were Eagles. Not going as far back as Zork, but still old enough to be unlikely.
I am with Dina. I can’t eat any flake based cereal anymore, the time between adding milk and it turning into disgusting glorp is measured in nanoseconds. I ate Cheerios for a while, now I eat Harvest Crunch, that stuff takes a while to get soggy.
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This is foreshadowing. Soggies may rule.
they’re back
*dramatic flourish of classical brass instrument blasts*
Soggies exist across dimensions. They’re already here.
The signs warned us they would return
I don’t think so. Even the soggies are avoiding 2020.
Soggies are time travelers and can thus enter our universe at any point, even after it’s destruction, and not be inconvenienced.
I thought Multiversal Singularities had been written out?
How do you expect to outsog them…
Soggies will never dab.
I wouldn’t mix either of those combos but you do you, Dina.
What about cocoa puffs and reese’s puffs? Or cocoa puffs and cookie crisp?
Cocoa Puffs and Peanut Butter Crunch makes a less sickly-sweet Reeses Puffs.
Back in the day, I’d have mixed Rice Krispies Treats cereal with Cinnamon Mini Buns…
Dina continues to prove that she is the wisest member of the cast.
That’s why you eat your frosted froot loop flakes in four minutes or less Dina.
Yeah, in what world is any properly served bowl of cereal lasting a full five minutes.
One where you misjudge the time it takes for your coffee to be prepared… or where you must carry bowls from the food place to your room
Well, there may be interference: https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1967/02/26
That’s why you don’t take calls between soaking cereal in liquid and eating it. Duh.
Or one could just answer the phone and chew cereal at them noisily. Though, now that we all have cell phones, though, it’s also possible to multitask using the mute button and still be a little polite. Wait, what did you say? I was chewing my cereal on mute. Could you repeat that again? I pressed mute and took another bite after asking you to repeat yourself the first time.
…
That’s probably not that polite, either. Better just let it go to voice mail.
In every proper world, I’d imagine. I mean, once you get your cereal poured, you’ve got to wait a couple of minutes for it to start getting nice and soft before you start actually eating it.
Respectfully and with my utmost sincerity, you, sir, are a heathen and I find your appetites vulgar and unsettling; however, they do no harm and I support your freedom to engage in your abominable sacrilage.
The best way to prevent soggy cereal is to eat it fast enough that it doesn’t have time to get soggy.
The best way to avoid soggy cereal is to never put milk in the bowl. Keep Milk in the glass. Eat some cereal. Drink some milk before swallowing cereal. If they wanted cereal wet? It would have come that way in the box. CRUNCHY CEREAL FOREVER!
Honestly have never understood this. You hate it when your cereal gets soggy? Why on earth are you pouring liquid on it?!?
I remember nerds cereal. it didn’t get soggy so much as it got…slimy.
a sensible policy
Ana, where are you!? I am terrified of this new world order where you are not the first thing I see after reading the new comic.
This ^^
Maybe they’ve taken a small break? I admit it is unusual to not see their comments first thing after the strip. I almost treat their comments as an unofficial second alt-text.
Same here!
It’s happened plenty of times before, and it feels much weirder to see people pressuring them about it. Sometimes Ana has other stuff to do at 12:04 ET.
Yeah, but those other times weren’t in the year 2020.
I get the concern but honestly, she just gets busy sometimes. Or, this time, fell asleep xD
Eh, any mixture is fine, as long as it’s dry. But any cereal with milk is disgusting.
I respect your right to not like milk, even if I think eating cereal without milk is a half-baked experience. Unless you are just snacking on cereal, then it is fine dry.
THANK. YOU. Milk in a glass, cereal in the bowl, and never the twain shall meet!
Well, until they’re both in your stomach. Never the twain shall meet, on your tongue.
This is the way.
Get back in the comic, Joyce.
…i eat cheerios and frosted flakes together
It’s ok to admit you are wrong, the first step is admitting you have a problem.
I actually really like mixing different Cheerios togethers specifically. My favorite’s Honey Cinnamon Nut, but I also like Frosted Apple!
If the textures match perfectly you can barely tell you’ve mixed them beyond the flavors being kind of different.
Oh god Amber no, social media for breakfast is like starting the day with a hearty bowl of rat poison.
(hypocrisy on full display here, I tend to start my days by reading news stories, which is also pretty toxic)
But on the plus side, we probably end it by reading webcomics.
Unless I go to bed early, in which case I start the day with webcomics!
Probably still healthier than eating a bowl of processed sugar first thing in the morning.
I like to mix my cereals too, like cocoa puffs and reese’s puffs or cookie crisp and oreo o’s.
Too long ago, too far apart
She couldn’t wait another day for…
The Captain of Her Heart!
Not only for a cruise, not only for a day…
I mix the chocolate and cinnamon varieties of Special K together a lot.
Don’t @ me, they stay crunchy longer and taste good.
Spiced chocolate is delicious so I can sign up to this
Dina is 100% right.
That’s the basis of cooking really.
Understand the ingredients and what compliments each other or what might cause an unpleasant interaction.
And try to convince the toddler that she doesn’t need to add on an extra 5 minutes to something’s microwave cooking time, or change it from high to defrost (although if she were to do both it might actually work)…
It took until I moved into my own place to understand that a low heat means it’s cooked more thouroughly but takes more time.
Also I love how the count for which we are mad at Willis for the most keeps swaying back and forth between “Ruth and Billie are broken up” and “Mike’s dead.” It’s interesting to see that it’s so close.
Clearly, there’s voter fraud going on. The Mike crowd will be demanding recounts.
We ‘Halloweeners’ must be a third party.
Skipping Halloween is the only one of the three that was objectively a bad thing though smdh
Exactly. Maybe we can do a GoFundMe to get pictures of everyone in costume.
Our time will come! WE. WILL. RISE.
They are all within a 4% window right now. Usually a three-way choice doesn’t give results that tight.
Ranked choice!
Mixing cereal is all fun and games, until you get busted for miscegenation…
I don’t know what it is, but this is my favorite strip for a while.
Dina is right and she should say it.
I eat my cereal dry, so I never have an issue with sogginess!
Cereal is one of those foods I’ve never mixed types together … and I feel like I’m missing out on this silly endeavor.
Never cocoa puffs and froot loops. That is all.
Sounds cursed.
Tastes cursed, too, IMHO.
Also ditto for cocoa puffs and apple jacks, same reason.
I bet Dina and Joyce could have a constructive discussion on this topic.
Would Joyce eat cereal with milk? Would Joyce eat cereal at all? Were certain cereals forbidden based on the mascots? Inquiring minds want to know!
JUSTICE!
is my breakfast
Dina is so kyoot here.
I appreciate her argument.
I am still against mixing cereals, but I appreciate her argument.
I have made some truly abominable cereal mixes in my day. Dangerous things happen when you finish off the last dregs of the cereal boxes in your pantry.
Various flavors of processed sugar passing as a normal breakfast is the real abomination, Dina.
Yes, I thought the same thing. So much sugar…
Finally, something Joyce and Dina have in common and can bond over!
Does Dina have Aspergers? she has all the symptoms…of an extremely untreated Aspi
I could’ve sworn Willis said that she might have Aspergers at some point. Maybe I’m wrong and Willis didn’t say that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Dina does have it. I’ve never been diagnosed, but I’m pretty sure I have most of the symptoms of Aspergers, and I often find Dina’s behavior very relatable.
As I recall the Word of Willis has long been ‘she’s never been formally diagnosed with anything,’ which is a very distinct answer from no. Additionally, over in Shortpacked when ‘surplus diversity’ caused an anomaly that brought Dina to the store, she listed neurodivergence alongside being non-white and non-heteronormative as things that could further strain the fabric of reality, and her realization that she diverged from that norm in multiple ways immediately preceded the Soggie Invasion. Willis said over on Tumblr that Circumstances from earlier in the Walkyverse gave Dina plenty of time for reflection. Listing neurodivergence specifically alongside two things Dina definitely fits kind of implicitly suggests she is of some variety.
Additionally, I don’t have a direct source but someone’s mentioned Willis had discussed how they’re neurodivergent of some vague variety and Dina’s a good outlet for strips about those experiences? But I have seen that when the comments go into ‘wait is Joyce autistic or is her need for order and rigidity from growing up in such a restrictive environment’ Willis tends to Tweet something to the effect of ‘yeah I ask that question about myself a lot, let me know if you figure it out.’
But yeah, a lot of us on the spectrum have been reading Dina as one of us specifically for years. By now I think Willis is consciously writing her with a few more direct autistic things as well, the way AmbG’s plurality has been written. And the strip last storyline where Dina inverts her elbows to get a dinosaur arm posture accurate kind of suggests joint hypermobility, which frequently co-occurs with autism for reasons we don’t understand yet. (At least, all of us who had hypermobile joints all went ‘honestly this isn’t that tricky.’)
Yeah, I definitely discovered another way my joints are strange when a whole bunch of people were like “HOW DOES SHE DO THAT?!” And I was like, “wait, that’s supposed to be hard?”
Also yes I have headcannoned Dina as Autistic since literally her first appearance because she’s basically younger less hyper me when I was a freshman (imagine Becky’s hyperactivity and impulsivity crossed with Dina’s social awkwardness and inability to read social cues and obsessive tendencies about stuff she loves, add in Joyce’s problematic upbringing and like somewhere between Zaph and Malaya’s discomfort with assigned gender roles and lack of language for the experience and Joyce’s people pleasing tendencies and you’ve got 17YO uni freshman me. I relate to a lot to a lot of them.)
It’s my impression that having something like hypermobility inherently makes one need to be a little neurodivergent. My ex has hypermobile EDS (formerly classified as type 3), but isn’t autistic or borderline autistic (formerly Asperger’s syndrome). That said, she’s near borderline autistic.
However, it seems like most of her spectrum features are rooted in the fact that she’s physically different from most other people, and so she needs to be able to adapt to those differences. She doesn’t have enhanced senses and doesn’t stim.
She’s very good at reading people. She does have a flattened affect, but is pretty good at simulating a normal affect on demand. Put her in a room full of people with EDS or Marfan syndrome (and me), and she seems pretty normal – more normal than most of them.
To be fair, her mother and grandmother, who also have/had hypermobile EDS, do/did demonstrate the same sort of just a bit off the beaten path. My ex’s father is clearly on spectrum, but not diagnosed. So there’s certainly a genetic potential for her to be on spectrum. It’s just that her on spectrum features all seem like adaptations to her condition.
Joyce was raised in a restrictive environment because her parents were autistic and at least one of them’s a bit crazy as well. We haven’t seen enough of that parent to give a proper Internet diagnosis, but there’s certainly a list of possibilities.
My headcanon has the other parent going along with the crazy church because “this simplifies things to a point I can deal with stuff. It’s wrong, but at least I can deal with it.”
Dina is DEFINITELY coded as autistic, from her, uh, unconventional sense of humor to her difficulty with social cues (such as eye contact) to her need for consistency to her nerdy vocabulary to her dinosaur special interest etc, etc.
I like how in this strip Dina disproves another assumption about people on the autism spectrum, namely that we all have food mixing issues (at least that’s how I interpreted Amber’s comment, ‘I always had pegged you as AGAINST mixing food.’). No, she just has certain standards. Contrast that with Joyce’s obvious food issues (she may be neurodivergent as well but it could very well be the environment she came from; Willis seems to leave this intentionally vague). The biggest assumption Dina disproved so far was the assumption that autistic people are childlike and sexually undeveloped; this was back when she kissed Becky as a sort of f— you to everyone else.
I ALSO think that the way she uses language is not only a sign of neurodivergence but also a sign of her being a first-generation American (because I totally speak like that too).
Mixing Cap’n Crunch and Reese’s Puffs would be fine, but Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch is superior to any of these options. Don’t @ me
And then Soggies May Rule
Back when I used to eat cereal for breakfast, I liked to mix Applejacks, Honey Nut Cheerios, Fruit Loops, and Lucky Charms together. Nowadays I usually don’t have time for that, so I just heat up Poptarts in the toaster.
Look at you, with the patience to wait for the toaster. I just nuke mine for 10 seconds.
I don’t think social media for breakfast is a good way to eat your words for sustenance.
You eat Alpha Bits for that.
Mixing Cookie Crisp + Oreo O’s = Cookie madness
It’s been years since I’ve had cereal for breakfast or even wanted it. Although I will occasionally fry, scramble, or omlet eggs, usually I’m enjoying some combination of breakfast burritos, and TexMex hot from the microwave. Cereal, soggy or not, just won’t cut it.
I haven’t had cereal in years either, but for a completely different reason. About a decade ago I developed an allergy to dairy, and milk/cream affects me the worst. I’ve tried cereals with soy and other types of milk, but it just doesn’t taste the same. :/
Goat milk too?
It’s definitely not the same, but since so many cereals mix nuts, I tried Almond Milk and found it different but acceptable with cereal.
Breakfast is something you unwrap and maybe pop in the microwave. Pop-Tarts, granola bars, homemade Egg McMuffins prepared ahead of time…
Cereal’s a supper thing for me. Even then, it’s a glass of milk and a pile of dry cereal. That way, nothing gets soggy, and the soggies may not rule.
I thought at first that the gestalt Dina was referring to was one comprised of a mixture of cereal and social media, like Kellogg’s Frosted Flakebooks or Twitter-O’s
Me too. Or a quiet but social two person gathering where they both enjoyed their various breakfasts of cjoice together. Mixing the two cereals was the third thing that occurred to me…
With all the flakes on social media, I didn’t think it would need to be combined with anything else.
In a pinch, Trix mixed with regular Cap’n Crunch is a usable substitute for Crunch Berries.
I like none of these things, but the science is irrefutable.
Sounds delicious to me.
Ah, a variant of Joyce on that
she’s right, soggy cereal is an abomination
Abominations may rule.
Dina gets it, food sensory-wise.
Frosted Flakes are Frosties, right? The one with Tony the Tiger? I think that and Lucky Charms are the only cereals mentioned in comic or discussion that exist on this side of the pond. (Although it’s been a long time since I had a “cartoon mascot” cereal, so I could be wrong.)
IME M&S Maple and Pecan Flakes go well with Kelloggs Crunchy Nut, but Weetabix Minis take so long to soften even slightly that they shouldn’t be mixed with anything (least of all full-size Weetabix).
Yes to FF=Frosties and Lucky Charms. The only one from your second para over here
I think, is Weetabix, and that maybe just in Canada, though come to think of it I havent seen them in a while.
I am 100% here for Autistic Dina with sensory food texture issues!
Seriously the sludge of soggy frosted flakes is indeed an abomination (likewise soggy shredded, bleurgh).
About the only thing worse is the slight slimyness of boiled dumplings combined with their glory texture or the stringy-hard-soft of old celery. Regular celery is also an abomination bit old celery is the King Abomination.
(Though probably stinking hard tofu or taleggio cheese are a bit worse than old celery but that’s because smell and taste get into it and they’re basically a whole big ball of NOPE for me. On texture alone, old celery is The Worst).
Yes I have Feelings about food texture, shut up.
Hey, no one’s judging you over food texture issues. Heck, I have certain foods whose textures make them inedible for me, and I’m (pretty sure I’m) not neurodivergent, so I can definitely relate.
A more practical question – HOW is she going to combine them? She has two bowls, each of which is filled to overflowing with cereal. I suspect she will need a third bowl at some point… unless she has an XOR gate for cereal…
Eat half of each (at the same pace, alternating spoonfuls) until there’s enough room to dump them into one bowl.
If you don’t get the sogginess correct then the Soggies will show up and they may rule.
I totally do this when mixing cereal.
I never saw what Dina’s major is, but she really should try interning at General Mills when the time is right.
Huh. Looks like soggies made rules.
I, for one, am shocked and appalled at how political this comic has become.
Are you reading it on a PC or a Mac?
lol, pegged
Cuz I’m a child
I mean, that’s just Peanut Butter Crunch cereal. It’s an actual product.
Just as well DinaXJoyce isn’t a thing. Breakfast time would be a nightmare.
I’m a few years late to the party, but elf seems a lot like a zork reference to me. The bird is a treasure, the sword is the first weapon in the game, and you are, without variation, an elf.
I always figured that was World of Warcraft, but it could also be a zork reference! I was thinking WoW because playing an elf is an option (but not the only option) and Amber has made previous references to being in the middle of a raid https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/04-the-bechdel-test/raid/ and killing spiders https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/02-uphill-from-here/amber/ . There are likely other references I can’t find as quickly.
I remember those strips. It was just before Jennifer finally figured out that Sal was AmaziGirl.
But with respect to the elf, my mind went back to those old Middle Earth MUDS and the birds were Eagles. Not going as far back as Zork, but still old enough to be unlikely.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-2/01-pajama-jeans/elf/
In five minutes you should have finished your cereal.
Okay but how the hell does a single bowl of cereal survive five minutes
probably sugar coating
I guess that would put me off of eating the damn stuff, but most people just eat it all the same
Five minutes is a long time for a bowl to go uneaten
It’s the chemical cereal varnish that Clark Griswold imvented. Also, *giant* bowls of cereal.
I am with Dina. I can’t eat any flake based cereal anymore, the time between adding milk and it turning into disgusting glorp is measured in nanoseconds. I ate Cheerios for a while, now I eat Harvest Crunch, that stuff takes a while to get soggy.