And now they got scary-ass attack robots to go after you when ya fuck up.
Doctor_Who
I don’t mind evil robots. As a nerd I’ve always known I would one day face evil robots one day.
But I never in a million years thought they would try to make me use Google+ to comment on youtube videos. I thought they’d stick to harmless stuff like launching nukes.
Doctor_Who
I said “one day” twice. I has a dumb.
Ourorboros
The Grammar Police have been notified. Expect their enforcement drones shortly.
I understand they can be distracted by a teenager with a smart phone.
Robin
“Next time, I’ll be deadly serious next time!”
“What?”
“Never mind!”
fogel
Call the Department of Redundancy Department
fogel
And the next time she was.
Tunaro
I wonder which would actually be harder to take down, a zombie horde or evil robots attacking.
Bill
The robots. Unless you’re in Voodooland, zombies are make-believe.
If you tell anyone I said this, I’ll extra-crispy you with the fusion cannon.
Cybersnark
Fire retardant foam.
John
Robots, definitely. Even leaving aside the fantasy nature of the zombies themselves, the whole zombie apocalypse scenario is really implausible. The thing is that, as predators, humans in their natural state suck hard. We’re slow, weak, have no natural weapons or defenses to speak of, and our senses are all near-useless (except our daylight vision, which is excellent). But we’re the planet’s number one badasses, and the reasons for that are thinking, talking, and tool use. And a zombie is a human with all those things that make us the planet’s top badasses taken away, leaving it just our frankly crap basic capabilities.
Yeah, infectious bite, takes more killin’ than an ordinary human, but those don’t really matter, because it won’t take long for us to figure out what’s going on, get the word out about it – in a world where pretty much everyone carries a camera connected to the internet on their person at all times, the only question is how long before the first lolzombie is posted – and bring the incredibly effective tools we use for killing the planet’s top badasses – each other – to bear on the problem. And there is absolutely jack shit a zombie can do to a tank, or an APC, or an attack helicopter, or a UAV…
Robots, on the other hand, we’ve been doing our best to make better at those things than we are ourselves, and more capable in all those other respects as well, and, though we’re still having trouble with some aspects of the thinking, we’ve largely succeeded on the other fronts. It’s not the zombies we have to worry about; it’s the drones we built to kill them turning on us.
(Yeah, I’ll just talk about the zombie/robot apocalypse because it’s way less depressing than the strip.)
Actually, as natural predators we’re not that bad because we can outrun everything else over time. Quadruped animals need to time their breathing to their rhythm of running, which means when they get hot they can’t pant and overheat – they can run very fast, but not for long amounts of time. Bipeds (us) don’t need to worry about timing our breath to the way we run, and not only that – we have sweat glands! So sure we’re a lot slower, but we can keep going and going, forcing the animal we’re chasing to also keep going until they basically overheat themselves to death.
Of course, in a zombie chasing human situation this doesn’t apply, because we’re also bipeds. And, y’know, we got cars.
kagato23
Zombies have the endurance but not the healing. A broken leg won’t kill a zombie, but it will let you outrun it. And with no ability to heal eventually all zombies will, simply by moving around long enough, be crawling, then just sort of flopping around like fish. We can outlast them as a race, even if they take out a lot (and they probably won’t)
Robots we’ll have to go matrix and blot out the sun. Even when we win, that’ll suck.
BlackCatGodess
Humans as predators weren’t meant to take prey down quickly, like a wolf or big cat. Humans are the kind of predator who can injure an animal and then follow, for days if need be, until the prey wears itself down or dies. Not only that, but humans are remarkably resistant to injury, heal fast, can walk for days on end with little or no sleep, and are intelligent enough to follow tracks. So even though we aren’t as fast as the big predators, we are just as deadly. Particularly because things like broken limbs don’t entirely stop us like they do for other animals.
Even with all that though, robots would probably be worse.
Pinja
Depends how the infection spreads. In most zombies stories it get around the world before anyone really knows what is happening.
If it is that sort then it’s a real problem because humans number so many and by extension, so will the zombie hordes. If only a fifth of, say, London turned into zombies during the first phase before people know what is going on that’s over a million people, more people than are in the entire US armed forces.
Even if they can’t get to you, how many people have guns and enough ammo to clear a way free of a safe location to get somewhere with food and water once supplies run out? Even if they have gun, most Americans have only handguns, not noted for their accuracy or ranged ability, and not that much ammo.
And if you’re in a safe location (Any building with the first set of stairs taken out is pretty safe, anywhere with two sets of stairs taken out is practically impregnable) how many of us have food and water to last more than a few days? I’d imagine very little and less so without power to cook or freeze it.
This leads onto the next problem, which is for most of us food is something delivered to their town. With zombies everywhere production and delivery will cease. The stuff in any urban location would last the population of that location only a few days even if shared out evenly, not counting supermarkets and suchlike impossible to get to because they are filled with the walking dead. And going out to get it would be asking for trouble because under pressured conditions like that, most people can’t shoot for shit and every gunshot will draw more zombies all around you.
Heck, many entire countries produce less food that their population needs, of less types and in the wrong seasons depending on when this starts.
You also have to factor in the human element: People won’t know what is wrong with zombies until they get bit. They won’t want to kill infected or zombified relatives and may well fight to protect them. They’ll fight each other for supplies. They’ll cause accidental fires that could spread like crazy without a fire service to stop them. They’ll generally panic all round and make bad decisions. They’ll waste tons of ammo firing wildly, and they’ll flee along roads when they should stay home and stay home when they need to move.
Also most people lack the very basic survival skills they need and even people with advanced skills will find themselves limited. Sure a doctor has a lot of training, but he relies on many other people making his drugs and equipment, never mind how little he can do without power, or that hospitals will be the worst place to be. Even the army, which has everything you need to survive, will have trouble. How many soldiers will want to stay on base when their families are in danger half a country a way? And can they really move fast enough to save the rest of the population from starvation and being overwhelmed?
In the long run my money is on the humans too, but most people dying in the process is not unrealistic.
ProfessorZoot
Human cooperation is the only one of the characteristics listed that is a strong element of human survival techniques. Humans primary advantages are physical endurance (name another land species that can run continuously for over twenty-five miles; hell, there are running competitions that cover one hundred miles), language (which is not a technology but an inherent and defining characteristic), and environmental displacement (in Africa where we evolved megafauna is relatively prosperous having evolved side by side with humans,on other continents where humans migrated, we hunted them to extinction).
That’s the real problem with apocalypse fiction, they tend to posit that the basic human character is selfish bastard, if that were true we would have been extinct long ago, humans, instinctively, are cooperative. Of course the evidence seems to indicate we aren’t really a species . . .
thomas0comer
Zombies might be harder to take down, but you can just wait them out. They’re really not all that effective at surviving.
– Their food source is their method of reproducing
– They lack the higher brain functions required to prevent them from injuring themselves or to help them pathfind, putting them in the same boat as robots
– They are still physically susceptible to the exact same kind of harm as humans- blunt trauma, temperature, dehydration, etc; even if they just ignore the damage it’s still there
Maybe some depictions of zombies show them as smart, or capable of feeding on other things, or somehow more durable, but by that point they kind of stop being zombies and start being vampires.
thomas0comer
And that’s only comparing zombies to humanoid robots.
Batman
Now, there’s a pervasive misunderstanding here, and I blame it on movies like “The Walking Dead” and Vincent Price’s masterful “Last Man on Earth.” Zombies are commonly portrayed now as the victims of a bizarre virus that ruins one’s eating habits and sense of hygiene. That’s not a zombie, that’s a medical tragedy.
Zombies are corpses reanimated by Voodoo magic. That’s the proper use of the term, and it reduces the danger considerably. After death, the period of greatest danger from reanimation is about three hours, after which rigor mortis will prevent the revenant from chasing anyone. Rigor mortis does wear off eventually, but only because autolysis – the process of cellular breakdown into fluids – makes the muscles into a sort of mush which is incapable of of significant movement.
So imagine the day of the waking dead. The only real threat is posed by corpses on autopsy tables and in morgues, the fresh few that are dead but not yet stiff. The buried dead, even if their tissues are not already decayed beyond use, have to overcome a sealed casket and six feet of dirt before they can pose any threat at all. The effort is beyond most healthy adults, as shown by the many failed attempts by escape artists and magicians to escape a buried casket; for the zombie to work its way out will take a severe toll on its already weakened physique.
Those living within a hundred yards of a graveyard may be overcome by the stench, and morgue workers might have to put down an occasional escapee, but on the whole the most obvious sign of a zombie rising would be these occasional trails of organ parts radiating out from the graves of the disintegrating dearly departed. The living dead might get about fifty feet or so before falling apart.
Now, Black Lantern rings are another story, but that’s kind of a touchy subject so we won’t go there.
gangler
Both are valid uses of the term. You can pretty much just divide it into sci fi zombies and fantasy zombies.
Try one of loyal sidekick Rat’s Heartstopper Bacon Bacon Bacon Cheeseburgers with Bacon. We only eat them during deer/elk season when we’re running around the mountains with packs and rifles, and they are assembled thus:
1) Prepare ample bacon. One pound per person, minimum.
2) Cook, over open fire, those big half-pound burger patties with the cheese and bacon mixed into the patty.
3) Fry the buns in the leftover bacon grease.
4) Assemble: Lower bun, a layer of bacon, the cooked burger, more bacon, a layer of cheese, bacon, toppings to suit, another layer of bacon, then the top bun.
5) Place on plate with bacon side dish and a bacon garnish.
6) Accompany with the adult beverage of choice.
There are few things better on a clear, cold night on the mountains, while sitting around a roaring fire, unwinding after a long, hard day of pursuing wild ungulates.
Social anxiety/social avoidance is NOT the same thing as autism.
And with a father as controlling and abusive as Blaine is, it’s also pretty damn natural for Amber to have some issues with others’ potential judgment.
My girlfriend has similar issues (though her parents are nowhere near as bad as Blaine) and I had issues like that in my own past as well.
Heavensrun
It’s especially understandable since Blaine probably rides her about “embarassing” him in public.
dimblecon
It turns out having a parent who spends all their time with you coming up with arbitrary reasons why you’re terrible shit will give you problems when interacting with other people.
Shocking, I know!
Rose
Exactly.
Autism means you have trouble picking up on social cues and understanding other people’s emotions.
Anxiety means you can empathise with other people but become overwhelmed and don’t know how to act. So you’re left thinking; What do I do? What if they laugh at me? What do I do? What if I hurt their feelings? What do I do?
gangler
Specifically an inability to decipher facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language is generally viewed as the definitive characteristic of autism.
The social cues and empathy issues are derived from that cause.
Arkantos
Wait so does that mean Dina actually is autistic?
Dr. Worm
Yes.
Dina is on the autistic spectrum, and very high-functioning. She likely has Asperger Syndrome.
gangler
I’m pretty sure official statements on the subject are that we don’t know, since she’s never seen a doctor about it.
I personally am hesitant to bandy about diagnoses, but from my limited experience with the subject I know that the doctors diagnose by counting the number of symptoms you have. You need like 9 out of 14 or some weird number like that for the doctor to hand out a diagnosis, so if she were to go to a doctor her answer would just be based on that number count. Despite the nonverbal communication thing being considered the definitive characteristic it’s still only 1 symptom when the doctor starts counting.
I don’t say that to indicate that she’s not autistic, merely that it’s not necessarily as cut and dry as it may seem.
Alex Stritar
No wonder I relate so well with her, then. (High functioning Aspergers right here)
True. Like, the bullying autistic people get can and does cause social anxiety, there’s a decent bit of overlap where autistic folks have social anxiety TOO, but I don’t think that’s how Amber got her anxiety.
I don’t read her as autistic as much as social anxiety, but that doesn’t mean she’s *not.*
We do have word of god that no one’s diagnosed as autistic, which is a different statement from no one being autistic. (Women, PoC, and even more so WoC because they’re in the intersection of those two categories, have a tendency to get missed, and suprisingly many people think that all autistic people had a speech delay.)
331 thoughts on “Twinkies”
Jen Aside
Nooo, traumatized by Twinkies!
and Clerks
…shit, *I* was traumatized by Clerks =p
Tunaro
Dude, Clerks was awesome.
Except that Buffalo Bill dance.
Wack'd
That scene did not age well.
Doctor_Who
37?!
carl320
You know who I can do without? I can do without the people in the video store.
qka
Seeing as most video stores are going out of business, your problem is solved.
Aeron
The world is one step ahead of you. We’re inside a year of not even having video stores.
Jay Eff
In a row?
Rachel Roth
Great, five more to come. XP
lejwocky
Goodbye horses…
dracorotor
Now I need the clerk to be randal. Or Silent Bob.
Simian Bros
Dude, I was named after the Dante from Clerks
Pretty sure I win the traumatized thingy hands-down
Gordon Blvd
pretty sure you do, bro …………..
Khrene Cleaver
man…
Jen Aside
*beaten*
TheOthin
And now we have the NSA so we know they know already!
Ourorboros
Google already knows – they also know everything you dream of doing with Twinkies. All your searches, Twinky slash-fic, & fetishes.
Tunaro
And now they got scary-ass attack robots to go after you when ya fuck up.
Doctor_Who
I don’t mind evil robots. As a nerd I’ve always known I would one day face evil robots one day.
But I never in a million years thought they would try to make me use Google+ to comment on youtube videos. I thought they’d stick to harmless stuff like launching nukes.
Doctor_Who
I said “one day” twice. I has a dumb.
Ourorboros
The Grammar Police have been notified. Expect their enforcement drones shortly.
I understand they can be distracted by a teenager with a smart phone.
Robin
“Next time, I’ll be deadly serious next time!”
“What?”
“Never mind!”
fogel
Call the Department of Redundancy Department
fogel
And the next time she was.
Tunaro
I wonder which would actually be harder to take down, a zombie horde or evil robots attacking.
Bill
The robots. Unless you’re in Voodooland, zombies are make-believe.
Megatron
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but even if zombies were real, robots would be wickedly easy to take out.
If you tell anyone I said this, I’ll extra-crispy you with the fusion cannon.
Cybersnark
Fire retardant foam.
John
Robots, definitely. Even leaving aside the fantasy nature of the zombies themselves, the whole zombie apocalypse scenario is really implausible. The thing is that, as predators, humans in their natural state suck hard. We’re slow, weak, have no natural weapons or defenses to speak of, and our senses are all near-useless (except our daylight vision, which is excellent). But we’re the planet’s number one badasses, and the reasons for that are thinking, talking, and tool use. And a zombie is a human with all those things that make us the planet’s top badasses taken away, leaving it just our frankly crap basic capabilities.
Yeah, infectious bite, takes more killin’ than an ordinary human, but those don’t really matter, because it won’t take long for us to figure out what’s going on, get the word out about it – in a world where pretty much everyone carries a camera connected to the internet on their person at all times, the only question is how long before the first lolzombie is posted – and bring the incredibly effective tools we use for killing the planet’s top badasses – each other – to bear on the problem. And there is absolutely jack shit a zombie can do to a tank, or an APC, or an attack helicopter, or a UAV…
Robots, on the other hand, we’ve been doing our best to make better at those things than we are ourselves, and more capable in all those other respects as well, and, though we’re still having trouble with some aspects of the thinking, we’ve largely succeeded on the other fronts. It’s not the zombies we have to worry about; it’s the drones we built to kill them turning on us.
(Yeah, I’ll just talk about the zombie/robot apocalypse because it’s way less depressing than the strip.)
Frances
Actually, as natural predators we’re not that bad because we can outrun everything else over time. Quadruped animals need to time their breathing to their rhythm of running, which means when they get hot they can’t pant and overheat – they can run very fast, but not for long amounts of time. Bipeds (us) don’t need to worry about timing our breath to the way we run, and not only that – we have sweat glands! So sure we’re a lot slower, but we can keep going and going, forcing the animal we’re chasing to also keep going until they basically overheat themselves to death.
Of course, in a zombie chasing human situation this doesn’t apply, because we’re also bipeds. And, y’know, we got cars.
kagato23
Zombies have the endurance but not the healing. A broken leg won’t kill a zombie, but it will let you outrun it. And with no ability to heal eventually all zombies will, simply by moving around long enough, be crawling, then just sort of flopping around like fish. We can outlast them as a race, even if they take out a lot (and they probably won’t)
Robots we’ll have to go matrix and blot out the sun. Even when we win, that’ll suck.
BlackCatGodess
Humans as predators weren’t meant to take prey down quickly, like a wolf or big cat. Humans are the kind of predator who can injure an animal and then follow, for days if need be, until the prey wears itself down or dies. Not only that, but humans are remarkably resistant to injury, heal fast, can walk for days on end with little or no sleep, and are intelligent enough to follow tracks. So even though we aren’t as fast as the big predators, we are just as deadly. Particularly because things like broken limbs don’t entirely stop us like they do for other animals.
Even with all that though, robots would probably be worse.
Pinja
Depends how the infection spreads. In most zombies stories it get around the world before anyone really knows what is happening.
If it is that sort then it’s a real problem because humans number so many and by extension, so will the zombie hordes. If only a fifth of, say, London turned into zombies during the first phase before people know what is going on that’s over a million people, more people than are in the entire US armed forces.
Even if they can’t get to you, how many people have guns and enough ammo to clear a way free of a safe location to get somewhere with food and water once supplies run out? Even if they have gun, most Americans have only handguns, not noted for their accuracy or ranged ability, and not that much ammo.
And if you’re in a safe location (Any building with the first set of stairs taken out is pretty safe, anywhere with two sets of stairs taken out is practically impregnable) how many of us have food and water to last more than a few days? I’d imagine very little and less so without power to cook or freeze it.
This leads onto the next problem, which is for most of us food is something delivered to their town. With zombies everywhere production and delivery will cease. The stuff in any urban location would last the population of that location only a few days even if shared out evenly, not counting supermarkets and suchlike impossible to get to because they are filled with the walking dead. And going out to get it would be asking for trouble because under pressured conditions like that, most people can’t shoot for shit and every gunshot will draw more zombies all around you.
Heck, many entire countries produce less food that their population needs, of less types and in the wrong seasons depending on when this starts.
You also have to factor in the human element: People won’t know what is wrong with zombies until they get bit. They won’t want to kill infected or zombified relatives and may well fight to protect them. They’ll fight each other for supplies. They’ll cause accidental fires that could spread like crazy without a fire service to stop them. They’ll generally panic all round and make bad decisions. They’ll waste tons of ammo firing wildly, and they’ll flee along roads when they should stay home and stay home when they need to move.
Also most people lack the very basic survival skills they need and even people with advanced skills will find themselves limited. Sure a doctor has a lot of training, but he relies on many other people making his drugs and equipment, never mind how little he can do without power, or that hospitals will be the worst place to be. Even the army, which has everything you need to survive, will have trouble. How many soldiers will want to stay on base when their families are in danger half a country a way? And can they really move fast enough to save the rest of the population from starvation and being overwhelmed?
In the long run my money is on the humans too, but most people dying in the process is not unrealistic.
ProfessorZoot
Human cooperation is the only one of the characteristics listed that is a strong element of human survival techniques. Humans primary advantages are physical endurance (name another land species that can run continuously for over twenty-five miles; hell, there are running competitions that cover one hundred miles), language (which is not a technology but an inherent and defining characteristic), and environmental displacement (in Africa where we evolved megafauna is relatively prosperous having evolved side by side with humans,on other continents where humans migrated, we hunted them to extinction).
That’s the real problem with apocalypse fiction, they tend to posit that the basic human character is selfish bastard, if that were true we would have been extinct long ago, humans, instinctively, are cooperative. Of course the evidence seems to indicate we aren’t really a species . . .
thomas0comer
Zombies might be harder to take down, but you can just wait them out. They’re really not all that effective at surviving.
– Their food source is their method of reproducing
– They lack the higher brain functions required to prevent them from injuring themselves or to help them pathfind, putting them in the same boat as robots
– They are still physically susceptible to the exact same kind of harm as humans- blunt trauma, temperature, dehydration, etc; even if they just ignore the damage it’s still there
Maybe some depictions of zombies show them as smart, or capable of feeding on other things, or somehow more durable, but by that point they kind of stop being zombies and start being vampires.
thomas0comer
And that’s only comparing zombies to humanoid robots.
Batman
Now, there’s a pervasive misunderstanding here, and I blame it on movies like “The Walking Dead” and Vincent Price’s masterful “Last Man on Earth.” Zombies are commonly portrayed now as the victims of a bizarre virus that ruins one’s eating habits and sense of hygiene. That’s not a zombie, that’s a medical tragedy.
Zombies are corpses reanimated by Voodoo magic. That’s the proper use of the term, and it reduces the danger considerably. After death, the period of greatest danger from reanimation is about three hours, after which rigor mortis will prevent the revenant from chasing anyone. Rigor mortis does wear off eventually, but only because autolysis – the process of cellular breakdown into fluids – makes the muscles into a sort of mush which is incapable of of significant movement.
So imagine the day of the waking dead. The only real threat is posed by corpses on autopsy tables and in morgues, the fresh few that are dead but not yet stiff. The buried dead, even if their tissues are not already decayed beyond use, have to overcome a sealed casket and six feet of dirt before they can pose any threat at all. The effort is beyond most healthy adults, as shown by the many failed attempts by escape artists and magicians to escape a buried casket; for the zombie to work its way out will take a severe toll on its already weakened physique.
Those living within a hundred yards of a graveyard may be overcome by the stench, and morgue workers might have to put down an occasional escapee, but on the whole the most obvious sign of a zombie rising would be these occasional trails of organ parts radiating out from the graves of the disintegrating dearly departed. The living dead might get about fifty feet or so before falling apart.
Now, Black Lantern rings are another story, but that’s kind of a touchy subject so we won’t go there.
gangler
Both are valid uses of the term. You can pretty much just divide it into sci fi zombies and fantasy zombies.
Yotomoe
I think you’re better off. Twinkies are gross as heck.
LiaHansen
Yo, Ding Dong man. Ding Dong, Ding Dong yo.
Wolfe
strawberry shortcake all the way
Plasma Mongoose
Careful, if you eat enough Ding Dongs, your shadow will weigh 42 pounds.
RP
You ain’t fat, you ain’t nuthin’!
Cholma
[shoves burger into LiaHansen’s face] Yo, eat this man, it’s good for you.
Wolfe
man a regular burger won’t do if we really want her eating healthy it needs to be a double bacon cheeseburger on a donut!
mrmudkip
Sounds good, I’ll take twelve
bibulb
Actually, I’m thinking a Twinkie Wiener Sandwich would hit the spot right now.
Animal
Try one of loyal sidekick Rat’s Heartstopper Bacon Bacon Bacon Cheeseburgers with Bacon. We only eat them during deer/elk season when we’re running around the mountains with packs and rifles, and they are assembled thus:
1) Prepare ample bacon. One pound per person, minimum.
2) Cook, over open fire, those big half-pound burger patties with the cheese and bacon mixed into the patty.
3) Fry the buns in the leftover bacon grease.
4) Assemble: Lower bun, a layer of bacon, the cooked burger, more bacon, a layer of cheese, bacon, toppings to suit, another layer of bacon, then the top bun.
5) Place on plate with bacon side dish and a bacon garnish.
6) Accompany with the adult beverage of choice.
There are few things better on a clear, cold night on the mountains, while sitting around a roaring fire, unwinding after a long, hard day of pursuing wild ungulates.
Animal
Oh, and for dessert: A really good cigar is recommended.
Plasma Mongoose
I tried one of those Twinkies a few years ago, they were… OK I guess but I couldn’t see the big deal about them myself.
Tunaro
Cupcakes are where it’s at, bongoes.
timemonkey
Yeah, and they lead to even worse food. One day it’s Twinkies, the next you’re eating Taco Bell. Someone must stop the madness.
Ghostforge
your gravatar is hexadecimal fro the cartoon Reboot, correct?
Tom Speelman
Woah, woah, woah, don’t you be railing on Twinkies or Taco Bell. Especially the latter; the wrath of Willis might befall you.
Bill
We have Taco John’s up where I live. Beats the stuffin’s out of Taco Hell.
Dr. Paul
I miss Taco John’s. Taco Tuesday was the best.
Ourorboros
That rejection by Ethan gets worse.
Whatever
Is Amber autistic or something
Yotomoe
Naw, she’s just a TURBONERD.
Totz the Plaid
Social anxiety/social avoidance is NOT the same thing as autism.
And with a father as controlling and abusive as Blaine is, it’s also pretty damn natural for Amber to have some issues with others’ potential judgment.
My girlfriend has similar issues (though her parents are nowhere near as bad as Blaine) and I had issues like that in my own past as well.
Heavensrun
It’s especially understandable since Blaine probably rides her about “embarassing” him in public.
dimblecon
It turns out having a parent who spends all their time with you coming up with arbitrary reasons why you’re terrible shit will give you problems when interacting with other people.
Shocking, I know!
Rose
Exactly.
Autism means you have trouble picking up on social cues and understanding other people’s emotions.
Anxiety means you can empathise with other people but become overwhelmed and don’t know how to act. So you’re left thinking; What do I do? What if they laugh at me? What do I do? What if I hurt their feelings? What do I do?
gangler
Specifically an inability to decipher facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language is generally viewed as the definitive characteristic of autism.
The social cues and empathy issues are derived from that cause.
Arkantos
Wait so does that mean Dina actually is autistic?
Dr. Worm
Yes.
Dina is on the autistic spectrum, and very high-functioning. She likely has Asperger Syndrome.
gangler
I’m pretty sure official statements on the subject are that we don’t know, since she’s never seen a doctor about it.
I personally am hesitant to bandy about diagnoses, but from my limited experience with the subject I know that the doctors diagnose by counting the number of symptoms you have. You need like 9 out of 14 or some weird number like that for the doctor to hand out a diagnosis, so if she were to go to a doctor her answer would just be based on that number count. Despite the nonverbal communication thing being considered the definitive characteristic it’s still only 1 symptom when the doctor starts counting.
I don’t say that to indicate that she’s not autistic, merely that it’s not necessarily as cut and dry as it may seem.
Alex Stritar
No wonder I relate so well with her, then. (High functioning Aspergers right here)
andmangrewproud
You can’t spell TURBONERD without “boner!”
Tenn
Which leaves… “turd”?
I don’t like where this is going.
Wolfe
dude there is a big difference between autism and social anxiety
Alyssa
True. Like, the bullying autistic people get can and does cause social anxiety, there’s a decent bit of overlap where autistic folks have social anxiety TOO, but I don’t think that’s how Amber got her anxiety.
Alyssa
I don’t read her as autistic as much as social anxiety, but that doesn’t mean she’s *not.*
We do have word of god that no one’s diagnosed as autistic, which is a different statement from no one being autistic. (Women, PoC, and even more so WoC because they’re in the intersection of those two categories, have a tendency to get missed, and suprisingly many people think that all autistic people had a speech delay.)
Plasma Mongoose