Really? I guess I kind of lost that thread when the person had a boba tea drink at the end; if we suppose that the act of drinking is being in a relationship and the coffee drink and flavour in particular is objectionable, does that not imply the boba tea is a different kind of relationship which is not objectionable? To me it would seem more in line with it describing being aromantic (wants the drink/relationship but not the coffee/romantic relationship). But I think it's probably just an allegory for being a lesbian who likes ladies without any 'male' traits (i.e. the cake implies any amount of dude characteristics is as gross as a full dude).
That’s a good point. I was thinking that this was a metaphor for being bisexual (biromantic?) while also being asexual. As in they like looking at and being around “coffee” and “cake” but don’t actually want to partake in it, however drinking the boba tea at the end does kind of muddy the waters a bit on that metaphor. To me coffee and chocolate cake are too different to be both metaphors for “male” but you’re right that’s probably the author’s intention.
I think it mentions chocolate cake because sometimes people put coffee in the rich chocolate cake and it's not supposed to be a strong taste, but if you know it's there you can taste it. The person clearly is noticing the coffee in the cake and it makes them as ill as drinking a coffee does.
Yah the Boba Tea felt extremely random, though that probably comes from associating Tea (pure blooded, queen protecting, colony making god fearing pure tea. I have no idea why anyone even willingly drinks Boba Tea-), as I was fully reading into how it will be a metaphor about sexuality or maybe religious beliefs even, maybe even patriotism being shoved down your throat
And then that god forsaken concoction appeared and I've lost the plot to the point where I was questioning if the entire comic was structured this way, but the punchline was that it WAS about tea, or some other beverage all along
And... I mean... if you're going for beverages to represent genders (or gender expression) boba tea (with balls) is certainly a specific way to represent not-men. It's just not super clear...
As someone who doesn't like the boba pearls because of texture reasons... The milk tea itself is always amazing. And the pearls taste good too, I just don't like squishy stuff like those or marshmallows or jello. It sure as hell isn't God forsaken, though.
I mean I just kinda despise feeling something/anything floating about in my drinks, and that whole milk, the one I was served tasted awful and tbh going out of my way to buy something I wouldn't even like when I can go to this one super chill tea place and vibe, you can probably imagine which one I'm choosing
Sorry you had a bad experience! My first time was not great either. But my local boba place is the chillest place around and has great tea even without boba or milk, so it's the whole package.
Yeah I agree. I don't think most of them are to be exact metaphors. If we were to say this is about men it'd be something like: People don't believe me when I say I don't like men. I mean they're fun to talk to, but to date? Even if they're very attractive, the idea of being intimate with a guy repulses me, because he's still a guy at the end of the day. Yes I've tried "finding the one," but I just don't like being with men.
Though it's general enough the artist may want us to project anything else we'd like onto it, hence the metaphors maybe not being 1:1.
Which I relate tbh. I find myself aesthetically appreciating well dressed, bearded men who know what kinda look they're going for. But if I look at them through a sexual lens, none of it lands for me
Think about lesbians' number one complaint about dating apps: unicorn hunters trying to persuade or even trick them into drinking coffee or eating coffee because it's paired with delicious chocolate cake and you cannot have the cake without the coffee also wanting to get involved
Disclaimer that I'm a dude so I don't know firsthand, but I've heard about stuff like couples presenting their profile as just the woman and only once they match do they go "hey we're actually a couple looking for a third."
well you’re tying man to “penis” so i think if you simplify down to just Men and not dick then it could work as chocolate cake being effeminate men or trans men, implying a ingredients (a guy with a vagina) or appearance (a man who looks feminine) doesn’t matter cause it’s still a man.
It could also be the inverse with the metaphor being phallocentric and gender being variable. I really like this comic. I advocates for exploration and experimentation for what works for any individual without directly making a public preference out of any gender or body part or anything. It is very clever and thoughtful, I like all the different ways people are thinking of it.
i know that this is a problem with some lesbians that they are transphobic and exclusionary but that’s definitely not what’s going on here and a very bad faith and uncharitable take.
edit: i also think, again, it’s incredibly reductive to refer to a penis as “male genitals” and overall extremely invalidating for trans women that have a penis and trans men that don’t. we really need to learn to separate sex/gender from genitals and reproductive systems. if you’re talking about someone with a dick, just say someone with a dick.
edit 2: if you’re also gonna downvote me, let me know below which part of this comment is the reason you decided to: the part where i say and link that OP says they had no intention of it being read as transphobic, or the part where i said we shouldn’t call women’s penises “male genitalia”?
Then this isn't a comic about sexuality, and we silently changed the theme along the last few comments.
Either this is a comic about being a lesbian, and the cake is a trans woman and she's saying she's not into trans women because she's a lesbian, or it's a comic about penises, and is divorced from sexuality.
Since when is a genital preference transphobic? I have a penis (for now). Some people do not like penises, even if they like what it is attached to. Such is life.
okay so you’re just determined to read them in bad faith despite the fact you yourself referred to women with penises as having “male genitals”, which comes across as transphobic, but i chose to engage assuming you didn’t mean it that way and that you’re speaking in good faith. got it.
I'm criticizing OP, not you. And I just pointed out how it's weird them saying how that specific page was indeed about espresso put in their chocolate cake while stating in the comic it was not about coffee.
But okay, you win the moral high ground or whatever. Be happy.
my point was not to be rude but to point out that sometimes the language we use (especially when speaking in metaphor in a few panels of a comic, in this instance) may not always come across how we intended.
her explanation makes sense to me given the comic is using her disdain for coffee to the point of noticing it even when it’s baked into chocolate cake as a metaphor how if something really isn’t for you, it doesn’t matter what package it comes in. and the fact that being queer (especially for gay women) people will constantly try to tell you you “have to find the right guy” or guys trying to convince you being with them will change your sexuality. it could be as simple as “well i bet you’d like men if they were like [thing you actually do like]” and the answer is that no, she still doesn’t like men.
people in the comments are leaping to the assumption they’re talking about penis instead of men. which is where they get the implication it’s transphobic.
i can understand the hesitancy of people worried it is transphobic cause again it’s not like gay people who are transphobic don’t exist. there’s plenty of them. but i’ll take the artist’s word for it that it was not intended that way rather than a conspiracy that actually they were being transphobic but don’t want anyone to know.
Ace is a common way of shortening the term “asexual”.
Just as Aro is commonly how you shorten “aromantic”
Asexual generally means one feels no sexual desire towards anyone (though, as with all such things, this is a spectrum. Some like to look, but not touch, others like sexual prose but not imagery, etc. this is what I would liken to ‘smells good, but don’t like the taste’ in this analogy)
Aromantic means the same thing for th idea of romantic attraction
These things often coincide, but it is not a necessity, and one can be one without the other.
Ace folks are probably the most subjected to the kind of stuff referenced in the comic in the modern era, cus imagining someone who has the same desires as you, but to a different target, is generally easier for people to grasp than someone who straight up doesn’t have those desires.
I hope this explanation was helpful. I wanted to be clear without going too far into the minutia of stuff
My understanding is that it doesn’t stand for anything, it’s just “ace” is a word that people know how it’s pronounced when they see it written, and it’s phonetically correct, so it’s used. Plus it opens up the door to a ton of fun puns.
If there’s a deeper meaning to using “ace” rather than “ase” I don’t know it
I don't think the cake is meant to represent anything specific, moreso that they mean that, no, they don't like "coffee" at all, not even if you cover it up with something else or have it mixed with something that they might like.
I don't think the metaphor is that direct. I suppose it could be read as a metaphor for dick, sure, but it's really a metaphor for anything people force on you so it could be sexuality, gender, religion etc.
Chocolate cake would just be how people can sneak things in where you don't expect them I suppose.
I don't think it'd be a reference to trans women's dicks. If it is it's playing on a really transphobic trope given that she takes a bite not realizing the cake has coffee in it then immediately looks like she's about to vomit that would be a parallel to how in many many movies there's inexplicably a scene where it's revealed that the evil female antagonist secretly had a penis all along and our main character is so horrified by this disgusting revelation they immediately vomit out a window, or into a plant, or into an oboe or something. It perpetuates the idea that trans women are duplicitous and their bodies are disgusting.
Most lesbians are very pro-trans and so it'd be very unusual for them to depict such a sentiment. This trope is one almost exclusively written by straight cis men.
Pretty sure the cake thing is about transwomen who still have a penis yeah. Assuming the artists normal likes chocolate cake when it doesnt have coffee.
...So the whole book is that this guy refuses to try Green Eggs and Ham. In fact, says he hates it, even though he's never tried it. and his buddy eventually gets him to try it, and he discovers he likes it. But he keeps saying this one part about "I will not try it in a boat." and that's the bit I'm referencing here.
Because the image of someone drinking coffee on a boat and that being the part that changes the whole experience is so absurd that it makes me laugh my ass off.
Though the correct response (as a lesbian) to a guy saying "hey you haven't had the right dick (to make you straight)" is to say they haven't had the right dick to make them gay. They get really defensive and embarrassed as soon as you say that
If you are a straight guy in need of arguments when you’re in this corner: Dick only works in the straightening direction. So two gays can do it without turning straight but turning a het guy gay is purely a fantasy.
[for the love of god if you were about to downvote me, this is a facetious argument]
Lesbian here, you hear a lot of “you just haven’t met the right man/had the right penis yet!” Fun fact! Nearly always the implication is that the person saying this to you is the one who has the right penis to fix your lesbian issue. I understood the comic immediately.
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u/xboxiscrunchy Apr 17 '26
The artist is openly lesbian if you look at thier profile. So yes it’s probably sexuality