Yeah, I think she has aspergers. Not sure Willis meant it that way though.
Annie
I could have sworn Willis has said before that he didn’t intend her to have any specific condition or diagnosis. That she’s just Dina. She is who she is.
But, I could have imagined that or he could have said it but has since given her character more definable circumstances.
Someone
I think I remember that know, he did say that at one point I think.
He’s absolutely said she’s not diagnosed, but given just how late women on the spectrum get diagnosed… I think she’s still below the median age for girls anyways, it’s *totally realistic* for an autistic lady in college to have no diagnosis.
(I’m autistic and Dina is miiiiine, dammit. I am keeping my actually decent autistic characters, even when they’re not diagnosed- especially when, because the diagnosed ones are usually one dimensional stereotypes of autism instead of proper characters.)
Regalli
Agreed with Alyssa. And isn’t there a racial component in diagnosis too? I could definitely see Dina being able to slip under the radar until college if she’s able to talk and either doesn’t have or was able to hide things like stimming at school.
@Regalli: Yeah, there is a racial component. I have friend who is mixed, 1/4 each Mongolian and Japanese, 1/2 white. Whenever she went to the doctor with her white parent, she was autistic. Whenever she went with her Asian (and also autistic) parent, she was suddenly undiagnosed. Because apparently not making eye contact is 100% because Asian, even though she and the parent were both born and raised in the USA.
I didn’t know about the racial aspect. That’s rather sad.
I wondered if it had to do with an ability to do well in school. When I was in school (and I know for a fact that this is still a problem in the large local school district) if a kid did well academically, even if it took enormous effort from the student and/or if he/she struggled socially, the powers that be would be reluctant to have the student tested.
I was one of those kids, though my issues were relatively minor, so it wasn’t a huge deal that I didn’t get diagnosed or get extra help, but it *was* very frustrating. I also knew several kids that truly, truly needed the help, but as long as they weren’t failing any classes and their behavior wasn’t a distraction, they were put on the back burner.
So, if Dina did well in school I’d imagine that she was probably brushed off as being “quirky.” Especially considering the race issues you mentioned.
Aeron
Stop with the spectrums!
MeghanTheWorldEater
But don’t you know, everything is a spectrum.
(That’s not a joke either I mean it is [a bad one] but it’s also true)
Annie
When I was in college (ASL interpreting and some Deaf Education classes) we used to say that deafness occurs on a continuum. Or, at least, that’s how the sign was usually translated.
I have no idea, though, if that term is used in general when it comes to deafness/hearing-impaired-ness/hard-of-hearing-ness or if it was just my particular instructors that used it.
It also occurs to me now that I have NO EARTHLY IDEA what the difference between a spectrum and a continuum are or whether one is more apt than the other.
MeghanTheWorldEater
Based on a quick check on dictionary.com spectrum is very very slightly more appropriate because it implies that there may be some level of overlap between the items in the set, whereas continuum just implies there is a set.
So in other words they differ to no significant degree.
Thank you very much for that, Meghan. Truly. I tried looking it up, but ended up with those kind of definitions that use the word you’re trying to define in the definition. I just kind of got frustrated and overwhelmed and stopped trying to figure out the difference for the time being.
I’m still not sure which is more appropriate when it comes to hearing vs. deafness, but it is good to know that the sign we used for “continuum” is perfectly acceptable to use in place of, or interpret as “spectrum.” I’m not an interpreter any more, but it’s still good to know.
MeghanTheWorldEater
No problem ^_^
Rycan
There’s a difference. A continuum is, well, continuous – there are no gaps in the set, so to speak. But a spectrum isn’t necessarily continuous – electromagnetic radiation, or light, is a spectrum, and yet it’s quantized (read: not continuous).
So, spectrum is a safe bet (as if using ‘continuum’ would somehow be unsafe).
AgentKeen
It’s somewhere on the joke spectrum.
(I’m sorry)
MeghanTheWorldEater
If it makes you feel better I’m such a dork that I actually laughed at that.
Kelly
Nice
Rycan
Hey, some things are binary – such as the answer to a good yes/no question:
“Does a triangle have three sides by definition?” “Are ‘their’ and ‘there’ interchangeable in English?” “Will the Toronto Maple Leafs ever be a good hockey team?”
Rich
The tricky part is defining the question narrowly enough. Triangles represent a bounded area and therefore have an inside and an outside. The English spellings of ‘their’ and ‘there’ are interchangeable if you’re testing for words that start with ‘th’ and contain five letters, two of which are vowels. The Toronto Maple Leafs are a good (nay, excellent) hockey team if you’re looking for someone to bet against.
Deanatay
But everything is a spectrum! The world is full of them! It’s a SPECTRUM of SPECTRUMS!!
Kennerly
But how does she handle ever being in public? Surely there are more faces in an average classroom than there are currently in Joyce’s room.
Or has she been taking online classes this entire time?
Azmi
She probably doesn’t usually have to be in close quarters to them. She must feel that she should pay attention to them because she was invited or something
But normally they’re not normally facing in her direction.
Ghola
Stay in the back of the class, come right at the start to avoid the rush of people, and you’re in a class of mostly the backs of heads.
Which is a good way to limit the stimuli. She’d also have the lesson to focus on, which could help her tune out the faces.
Right now she’s just in a tiny room of talking, emotional, hormonal heads.
Gangler
Could be she also hides a certain amount of it.
Personally I used to go to a school with pretty crowded hallways. I managed well enough, but I spent a lot of time dazed and confused, staving off panic while moving from place to place. Often would have huge holes in my memory by the end of the day.
Could recontextualize that time she sort of accidentally wandered along with a group of strangers on a beech trip. Came home with a frightening story of abduction.
Howard
“Stay in the back of class…you’re in a class of mostly the backs of heads”
It works the other way–sit up front. It’s just you and the teacher and some disembodied voices behind you.
That’s how I survived, anyway.
Ghola
See, I would be freaking out more, because I would think everyone was staring at me. I”m one of those “people are laughing over there.. it must be at meeee” types.
timemonkey
When just in public she doesn’t have to care what anyone else is saying ro doing. This is a party she’s trying to be active in so following the conversations is important and things are getting very emotional. And to top it off she’s not really close to anyone here since Amber’s not here yet so she has no comfort zone.
That Damn Rat
It’s probably that previously she just didn’t pay attention to them at all, with Amber’s encouragement she’s trying to understand facial ticks, but she has to consciously concentrate on actively doing something that is instinctive to most people, and it’s probably over-taxing her.
Jenny Islander
DINGDINGDINGDINGDING
“Over-taxing” is the word!
It’s like–there’s a piece of software that comes pre-loaded in most brains. This piece of software is primed to look for expressions (visual and vocal), load acquired knowledge about what they mean, and build a giant database of expressions which is used to filter and interpret incoming data. This software runs in background mode almost constantly. Some of us are born without it, so we have to write our own programs. But programming know-how is not pre-loaded either…
It gets tiring. It tends to cause the Blue Screen of Death.
I relate to this so much except it’s auditory for me, rather than visual.
In a noisy place or simply if I’ve got a lot going on mentally the things people say stop making any sense to me.
It’s not the same as it being loud and noisy and the person next to you shouting sounds like low mumbling. It more that the background noise can be at a low enough level that I can understand the person next to me, but I can’t. I hear the words, I understand the words, but those words put together in the way I’m hearing them makes no sense whatsoever. I then have to concentrate really hard on what’s being said to understand it. I can’t allow any distractions, which is hard in a crowded, loud, stimulating place.
After a while it’s like it becomes so taxing that the words stop making any sense either, so everyone is speaking this language that I don’t understand but fully expects me to not only understand it, but respond in a meaningful way.
It’s so. incredibly. stressful. Not to mention it’s just exhausting. I get so mentally exhausted that I start feeling physically exhausted and as such, I often get irritable.
It gets to where I feel like I’m going to have a panic attack if I can’t get somewhere that’s safe, quiet and pretty much devoid of people. Even people on a tv show or movie will add to the stress and confusion.
Sometimes I can kind of mentally disconnect (dissociate, maybe?) and keep the stress to a minimum, but when I do that I understand very little of what’s said (or even other auditory stimulus like alarms, music, phones ringing, etc) and remember even less of what happened.
I can relate to Dina in a big way here, except instead of saying “stop the faces,” I’d be covering my ears saying “shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!”
StClair
I tend to think of it more as a hardware issue, but similar – that a computer with no fancy video card can render at least some of the polygons and particles and eye candy that the card would (if present), but it’s much, much harder on the CPU (and slower).
It could also be stress related. I get sensory overload easily, but it tends to be a lot more extreme when I’m nervous or upset. (Ex. Strong smells normally are irritating, but make me downright ill when I’m in a crap mood.)
So, Dina could be nervous about the social situation making things a lot harder than normal for her.
Ibaimendi
I don’t know if Dina is like me, but if she is like me, then the difference with this situation is that she knows the people involved. For me, when I know people, it is easier to see them. So then I focus on them more and I receive more information from them. People I don’t know, on the other hand, tend to fade into the background.
As a result, people I don’t know are much easier to ignore. Being around a lot of people I know is harder. That’s why it’s so much more awkward to be in a room full of acquaintances than a room full of total strangers!
Kate
My own experience is that faces existing around you is often different from so many faces that you feel like you’re expected to pay attention to and interact with. Granted, I’m not a huge fan of crowds either, but I’ll take an anonymous crowd over a too-large group of people I’m supposed to be interacting and socializing with any day.
These days, I’m more used to having friends, so “too-large” can start at anywhere from 6-10 people depending on how well i know them and how well I’m doing that day. But when I was Dina’s age and just starting to find people who didn’t judge me for being “weird”, the most I could comfortably handle was about 3-4 people I knew really well.
I prefer the term Cheezeburgers when it comes to describing character who have possible but undiagnosed autisms/disorders.
Björn
It doesn’t have to be any diagnose, she can just have an introvert personality. I know exactly how she feels. (Well, *almost* exactly, I think she is a bit more introvert than myself.)
Kate
Honestly, as an autistic person, I’m willing to put money on her being on the spectrum based on her appearance in this comic, and she did describe herself as neurodivergent in Walkyverse when she appeared at the end of Shortpacked!. While Walkyverse and Dumbingverse have some differences, major character traits have clearly been kept, and I assume Dina’s neurodivergence (most likely being on the autism spectrum) is one of those things.
Or just not used to dealing with people. Large groups are overwhelming for anyone not used to them and even worse when you’re bad at communicating/understanding people.
Overstimulated and unable to process, stated quite clearly in the comic. Third panel pretty explicitly and with a fair amount of detail, with meltdown in the last panel.
She can look down at the bowl/table and tune out those around her. At this party, especially because it’s such an intimate party, she’s expected to interact and respond not only to what people are saying, but their non-verbal cues too. In the cafeteria or classroom or hallways she can look down, focus on other things (her food, the lesson, etc) or she can kind of disconnect mentally and go on auto-pilot. In a room of people she likes and wants to interact she can’t really do that.
Agreed. I’m primarily noise-sensitive, but I can manage in cafeteria settings by just focusing on my food, sitting off on my own and not trying to process all the other people – sound just turns into one big “crowd noise” for me rather than in classrooms where three or four people talking at once sends me into overload.
302 thoughts on “Boy-fling”
Jen Aside
they feel her pain
or SOON WILL
Plasma Mongoose
If only there was a door she could hide behind…
LiaHansen
and who is that kawaii little waifu in today’s icon?
Plasma Mongoose
You not recognise Miss Brown? 😛
MeghanTheWorldEater
Plasma! Shame on you that face is too much for Dina!
Doctor_Who
That’s probably what Dina thinks all these people look like.
Yet_One_More_Idiot
Sorry Dina! I shall attempt to stop having a face so that you will feel more at ease.
…have I stopped having a face yet? xD
legobil
is what Dina wants everybody to look like.
GreyTheDefender
Your avatar fits your comment.
Doctor_Who
Her mouth doesn’t contain a single gigantic tooth plate, and her blue pupils aren’t the size of saucers.
podian
…there needs to be a version of LOL meme with a triangle smile 😛
podian
There, fixed it: http://i.imgur.com/Itn2Vpm.png
Someone
Now that your gravatar has changed, the readers of the future will be very confused
podian
…Dammit!
DarkoNeko
I WILL STOP YOUR FACES !
otusasio451
You heard Dina! STOP THE FACES!!!!
Inconsiderate.
Azmi
Having so many facial expressions and using them! Those heathens.
Screwball
Didn’t you hear her? She said stop the faces, so stop the faces already… *starts covering faces…*
Azmi
Is she drunk?
Khantalas
Probably merely somewhere on the autism spectrum.
Azmi
Probably just Asperger Syndrome
Khantalas
Which is still on the spectrum.
Azmi
Yes
Someone
Yeah, I think she has aspergers. Not sure Willis meant it that way though.
Annie
I could have sworn Willis has said before that he didn’t intend her to have any specific condition or diagnosis. That she’s just Dina. She is who she is.
But, I could have imagined that or he could have said it but has since given her character more definable circumstances.
Someone
I think I remember that know, he did say that at one point I think.
Alyssa
He’s absolutely said she’s not diagnosed, but given just how late women on the spectrum get diagnosed… I think she’s still below the median age for girls anyways, it’s *totally realistic* for an autistic lady in college to have no diagnosis.
(I’m autistic and Dina is miiiiine, dammit. I am keeping my actually decent autistic characters, even when they’re not diagnosed- especially when, because the diagnosed ones are usually one dimensional stereotypes of autism instead of proper characters.)
Regalli
Agreed with Alyssa. And isn’t there a racial component in diagnosis too? I could definitely see Dina being able to slip under the radar until college if she’s able to talk and either doesn’t have or was able to hide things like stimming at school.
Alyssa
@Regalli: Yeah, there is a racial component. I have friend who is mixed, 1/4 each Mongolian and Japanese, 1/2 white. Whenever she went to the doctor with her white parent, she was autistic. Whenever she went with her Asian (and also autistic) parent, she was suddenly undiagnosed. Because apparently not making eye contact is 100% because Asian, even though she and the parent were both born and raised in the USA.
Annie
I didn’t know about the racial aspect. That’s rather sad.
I wondered if it had to do with an ability to do well in school. When I was in school (and I know for a fact that this is still a problem in the large local school district) if a kid did well academically, even if it took enormous effort from the student and/or if he/she struggled socially, the powers that be would be reluctant to have the student tested.
I was one of those kids, though my issues were relatively minor, so it wasn’t a huge deal that I didn’t get diagnosed or get extra help, but it *was* very frustrating. I also knew several kids that truly, truly needed the help, but as long as they weren’t failing any classes and their behavior wasn’t a distraction, they were put on the back burner.
So, if Dina did well in school I’d imagine that she was probably brushed off as being “quirky.” Especially considering the race issues you mentioned.
Aeron
Stop with the spectrums!
MeghanTheWorldEater
But don’t you know, everything is a spectrum.
(That’s not a joke either I mean it is [a bad one] but it’s also true)
Annie
When I was in college (ASL interpreting and some Deaf Education classes) we used to say that deafness occurs on a continuum. Or, at least, that’s how the sign was usually translated.
I have no idea, though, if that term is used in general when it comes to deafness/hearing-impaired-ness/hard-of-hearing-ness or if it was just my particular instructors that used it.
It also occurs to me now that I have NO EARTHLY IDEA what the difference between a spectrum and a continuum are or whether one is more apt than the other.
MeghanTheWorldEater
Based on a quick check on dictionary.com spectrum is very very slightly more appropriate because it implies that there may be some level of overlap between the items in the set, whereas continuum just implies there is a set.
So in other words they differ to no significant degree.
Annie
Thank you very much for that, Meghan. Truly. I tried looking it up, but ended up with those kind of definitions that use the word you’re trying to define in the definition. I just kind of got frustrated and overwhelmed and stopped trying to figure out the difference for the time being.
I’m still not sure which is more appropriate when it comes to hearing vs. deafness, but it is good to know that the sign we used for “continuum” is perfectly acceptable to use in place of, or interpret as “spectrum.” I’m not an interpreter any more, but it’s still good to know.
MeghanTheWorldEater
No problem ^_^
Rycan
There’s a difference. A continuum is, well, continuous – there are no gaps in the set, so to speak. But a spectrum isn’t necessarily continuous – electromagnetic radiation, or light, is a spectrum, and yet it’s quantized (read: not continuous).
So, spectrum is a safe bet (as if using ‘continuum’ would somehow be unsafe).
AgentKeen
It’s somewhere on the joke spectrum.
(I’m sorry)
MeghanTheWorldEater
If it makes you feel better I’m such a dork that I actually laughed at that.
Kelly
Nice
Rycan
Hey, some things are binary – such as the answer to a good yes/no question:
“Does a triangle have three sides by definition?” “Are ‘their’ and ‘there’ interchangeable in English?” “Will the Toronto Maple Leafs ever be a good hockey team?”
Rich
The tricky part is defining the question narrowly enough. Triangles represent a bounded area and therefore have an inside and an outside. The English spellings of ‘their’ and ‘there’ are interchangeable if you’re testing for words that start with ‘th’ and contain five letters, two of which are vowels. The Toronto Maple Leafs are a good (nay, excellent) hockey team if you’re looking for someone to bet against.
Deanatay
But everything is a spectrum! The world is full of them! It’s a SPECTRUM of SPECTRUMS!!
Kennerly
But how does she handle ever being in public? Surely there are more faces in an average classroom than there are currently in Joyce’s room.
Or has she been taking online classes this entire time?
Azmi
She probably doesn’t usually have to be in close quarters to them. She must feel that she should pay attention to them because she was invited or something
Plasma Mongoose
But normally they’re not normally facing in her direction.
Ghola
Stay in the back of the class, come right at the start to avoid the rush of people, and you’re in a class of mostly the backs of heads.
Which is a good way to limit the stimuli. She’d also have the lesson to focus on, which could help her tune out the faces.
Right now she’s just in a tiny room of talking, emotional, hormonal heads.
Gangler
Could be she also hides a certain amount of it.
Personally I used to go to a school with pretty crowded hallways. I managed well enough, but I spent a lot of time dazed and confused, staving off panic while moving from place to place. Often would have huge holes in my memory by the end of the day.
Could recontextualize that time she sort of accidentally wandered along with a group of strangers on a beech trip. Came home with a frightening story of abduction.
Howard
“Stay in the back of class…you’re in a class of mostly the backs of heads”
It works the other way–sit up front. It’s just you and the teacher and some disembodied voices behind you.
That’s how I survived, anyway.
Ghola
See, I would be freaking out more, because I would think everyone was staring at me. I”m one of those “people are laughing over there.. it must be at meeee” types.
timemonkey
When just in public she doesn’t have to care what anyone else is saying ro doing. This is a party she’s trying to be active in so following the conversations is important and things are getting very emotional. And to top it off she’s not really close to anyone here since Amber’s not here yet so she has no comfort zone.
That Damn Rat
It’s probably that previously she just didn’t pay attention to them at all, with Amber’s encouragement she’s trying to understand facial ticks, but she has to consciously concentrate on actively doing something that is instinctive to most people, and it’s probably over-taxing her.
Jenny Islander
DINGDINGDINGDINGDING
“Over-taxing” is the word!
It’s like–there’s a piece of software that comes pre-loaded in most brains. This piece of software is primed to look for expressions (visual and vocal), load acquired knowledge about what they mean, and build a giant database of expressions which is used to filter and interpret incoming data. This software runs in background mode almost constantly. Some of us are born without it, so we have to write our own programs. But programming know-how is not pre-loaded either…
It gets tiring. It tends to cause the Blue Screen of Death.
Annie
I relate to this so much except it’s auditory for me, rather than visual.
In a noisy place or simply if I’ve got a lot going on mentally the things people say stop making any sense to me.
It’s not the same as it being loud and noisy and the person next to you shouting sounds like low mumbling. It more that the background noise can be at a low enough level that I can understand the person next to me, but I can’t. I hear the words, I understand the words, but those words put together in the way I’m hearing them makes no sense whatsoever. I then have to concentrate really hard on what’s being said to understand it. I can’t allow any distractions, which is hard in a crowded, loud, stimulating place.
After a while it’s like it becomes so taxing that the words stop making any sense either, so everyone is speaking this language that I don’t understand but fully expects me to not only understand it, but respond in a meaningful way.
It’s so. incredibly. stressful. Not to mention it’s just exhausting. I get so mentally exhausted that I start feeling physically exhausted and as such, I often get irritable.
It gets to where I feel like I’m going to have a panic attack if I can’t get somewhere that’s safe, quiet and pretty much devoid of people. Even people on a tv show or movie will add to the stress and confusion.
Sometimes I can kind of mentally disconnect (dissociate, maybe?) and keep the stress to a minimum, but when I do that I understand very little of what’s said (or even other auditory stimulus like alarms, music, phones ringing, etc) and remember even less of what happened.
I can relate to Dina in a big way here, except instead of saying “stop the faces,” I’d be covering my ears saying “shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!”
StClair
I tend to think of it more as a hardware issue, but similar – that a computer with no fancy video card can render at least some of the polygons and particles and eye candy that the card would (if present), but it’s much, much harder on the CPU (and slower).
Yevie
It could also be stress related. I get sensory overload easily, but it tends to be a lot more extreme when I’m nervous or upset. (Ex. Strong smells normally are irritating, but make me downright ill when I’m in a crap mood.)
So, Dina could be nervous about the social situation making things a lot harder than normal for her.
Ibaimendi
I don’t know if Dina is like me, but if she is like me, then the difference with this situation is that she knows the people involved. For me, when I know people, it is easier to see them. So then I focus on them more and I receive more information from them. People I don’t know, on the other hand, tend to fade into the background.
As a result, people I don’t know are much easier to ignore. Being around a lot of people I know is harder. That’s why it’s so much more awkward to be in a room full of acquaintances than a room full of total strangers!
Kate
My own experience is that faces existing around you is often different from so many faces that you feel like you’re expected to pay attention to and interact with. Granted, I’m not a huge fan of crowds either, but I’ll take an anonymous crowd over a too-large group of people I’m supposed to be interacting and socializing with any day.
These days, I’m more used to having friends, so “too-large” can start at anywhere from 6-10 people depending on how well i know them and how well I’m doing that day. But when I was Dina’s age and just starting to find people who didn’t judge me for being “weird”, the most I could comfortably handle was about 3-4 people I knew really well.
Plasma Mongoose
I prefer the term Cheezeburgers when it comes to describing character who have possible but undiagnosed autisms/disorders.
Björn
It doesn’t have to be any diagnose, she can just have an introvert personality. I know exactly how she feels. (Well, *almost* exactly, I think she is a bit more introvert than myself.)
Kate
Honestly, as an autistic person, I’m willing to put money on her being on the spectrum based on her appearance in this comic, and she did describe herself as neurodivergent in Walkyverse when she appeared at the end of Shortpacked!. While Walkyverse and Dumbingverse have some differences, major character traits have clearly been kept, and I assume Dina’s neurodivergence (most likely being on the autism spectrum) is one of those things.
timemonkey
Or just not used to dealing with people. Large groups are overwhelming for anyone not used to them and even worse when you’re bad at communicating/understanding people.
Shrugs
I think she’s just overstimulated.
Opus the Poet
Overstimulated and unable to process, stated quite clearly in the comic. Third panel pretty explicitly and with a fair amount of detail, with meltdown in the last panel.
Blue
No, just overloaded, I think.
Cattleprod
Vicarious face palm.
JessWitt
Double Face Palm! 2HKO!
OnarReshana
Makes me wonder how she ever handled eating her cereal in the cafeteria
Lone Wolf
By focusing on the cereal and not the people around her.
Annie
She can look down at the bowl/table and tune out those around her. At this party, especially because it’s such an intimate party, she’s expected to interact and respond not only to what people are saying, but their non-verbal cues too. In the cafeteria or classroom or hallways she can look down, focus on other things (her food, the lesson, etc) or she can kind of disconnect mentally and go on auto-pilot. In a room of people she likes and wants to interact she can’t really do that.
Regalli
Agreed. I’m primarily noise-sensitive, but I can manage in cafeteria settings by just focusing on my food, sitting off on my own and not trying to process all the other people – sound just turns into one big “crowd noise” for me rather than in classrooms where three or four people talking at once sends me into overload.
Kris
Seriously guys calm down with the faces already! Panel after panel, comic after comic.
Doctor_Who
We need a comic where people don’t have faces.
Catullus
That’s what xkcd is for!
Doctor_Who
I could actually see Dina being a fan of that one. Lots of science humor.