Scotty

I wonder if any of this will affect Susan, as she's pretty much as guilty of judging someone by label, and by that I mean cheerleaders . Seriously, we've seen 2 negative reactions to Diane being a cheerleader, and just like Ashley suggested that Diane's idea of what a nerd was could have come from a bad experience, we have an idea of where Susan got her idea about the kind of people cheerleaders are, either the woman Susan caught her dad with was a cheerleader herself, or Susan's mom called the woman a cheerleader as an insult, either way it would have had an impact on how Susan viewed cheerleaders in general. Of course Susan also saw men in general negatively, but she's since dropped the "all men are pigs" attitude so I wouldn't doubt that she'd also eventually get over the idea that all cheerleaders are homewreckers.

She wants to believe that renouncing her monkhood and becoming a melee hero was her choice. For the most part it was her choice, but there's the underlying thoughts of "I wouldn't have done this if Susan didn't show up so maybe it was fate that we met".

Chad's need to show off his skills in a video game is something that a lot of elitist gamers are prone to do, they'll flaunt their ability and judge anyone who don't get on their level. One panel doesn't necessarily mean that Chad is one of those gamers of course, but it does show a symptom and potential for him to be one.

It's about as airborne as someone coughing in your face.

I'm curious what kind of bad experiences Diane's had that lead her to associate nerds with elitist jerks, though this moment from "Legend of Diane" (last panel) does come to mind as a possibility. Behaviour such as Chad's can lead to more elitism, and if some of Diane's dates were like that, it could contribute to not only her definition of nerd, but also her jadedness and her own jerky behaviour.

They're comedy shows, but of the satire variety so there's expected to be some truth in what they're saying, well at least for the two Johns, never heard of Larry or Trevor. Up here in Canada we have "This Hour has 22 Minutes", but there was also "Royal Canadian Air Farce" back in the 90's early 00's.

There was also this one for Nanase but I had her figured as more of a Doctor Strange type wizard in that (the colour scheme is that of Doctor Strange as well). Out of Rhoda, Sarah and Ashley, Rhoda is canonically the most powerful of the three, which is why I had her figured as the leader. Sarah does have motherly qualities, so I guess that makes Ashley the maiden.

Unless he had more elsewhere, we didn't see any run away with him so I assumed Rhoda kicked their asses. Susan did believe he'd be a recurring inept villain though, I've known of games with similar inept villains that kept trying to get you.

I mentioned on discord that this one would go along with the Witch Sarah milestone Dan did a few years ago, but then someone mentioned that it takes 3 witches to make a coven, so my headcanon went to Rhoda the Sorceress as being the leader of the coven.

Obvious guess: that cult guy that ran away from Rhoda. I would not be surprised if he'd be stalking her waiting for the opportunity to strike.

It's probably similar to autism in that there can be severe cases and barely identifiable cases. Just like Susan has been suggested as being on the autism spectrum (also Tedd, Grace, and Noah) yet she can function fairly normally in society, Tedd's potential ADHD symptoms seem relatively minor and can be mitigated simply by being aware of it, as One Way Road showed, Tedd's resolve to try to balance their work with their friends likely reduced the number of times Tedd got lost in hyperfocus. Personally, I was diagnosed with ADD (before it was rebranded as ADHD) I wasn't really hyperactive, I'd just lose focus sometimes, or something that seems more interesting to me would drawn my attention away, but if I found something that interested me a lot, I'd end up shutting everything else out, kinda like Ashley in a bookstore. Most of the time something will catch my attention and all go into "ooh what's this" mode and look at it until my curiosity was satisfied, happens mostly when walking by the TV. From grades 3-8 I was prescribed ritalin which I'm honestly unsure whether it actually did anything for me, I do remember later on there were a number of talk shows that were like "was ritalin actually bad for my kid?" or "studies show that x% of children in the 1980's were misdiagnosed" which initially had me worried.

Snow day here, got about 5-6 inches, had to shovel out the parking spaces anyway though but it wasn't too heavy. Mostly just blowing snow right now.

Right, there's different levels of detail that people can focus on, and you can have casual nerds, hardcore nerds, and anywhere in between. Diane's definition would probably cover the kind that are near the hardcore level but also have a "know it all" attitude, don't want to admit they're wrong or will beat you over the head if you happened to get a detail wrong. Also these past few comics put a new light on Diane's reaction to Nanase warning her that liking to talk about and listen to others talk about movies was how nerds get started. Diane would be scared of becoming the kind of nerd that was a jerk about it, though Diane was already known to be a jerk about other things.

Probably a good way to put it is like this: There are people who enjoy movies, many will talk about how good the actors were, and how well the story was told. Then there are those who will talk about the special effects and music score. And then there those who will dive into whether or not someone could survive an explosion or drop from 30 feet, and also look for other inconsistencies like prop placement, makeup blunders, and then take specific frames to make memes from.

Yeah, sure, if you wanna go with that.

I'd probably have to agree with the response that it's another way of saying "lots of", in context of the comic, Susan could also say "showing lots of abs" instead of "abs for days". Of course Susan's showing abs too, but you can see they're not as defined as Rhoda's so Susan unfortunately doesn't have abs for days. She makes up for it by being Susan though.

Volunteer work probably counts, though if you're expecting to get paid, then probably not.

Also if Susan had a Nanase-like figure.

Can we all just appreciate how Susan called Rhoda a "small, adorable woman with abs for days"?

Considering the epic slapfights between Tedd and Susan in regards to sci-fi stuff, both can be very nerdy. Also, Justin is not immune. But Diane's probably thinking of more extreme cases like Rich and Larry. Dan even confirmed that Diane treated Charlotte as one of the bad nerds until Charlotte saved her life, so my guess is the reason Diane doesn't think Justin, Susan, Nanase, etc are nerds is because they've shown themselves to be selfless and cool. Also, why I think Diane treated Charlotte that way was because her state of mind at the time was too focused on Elliot, and she went into jerk mode when Charlotte questioned it. Earlier that night though, the two of them seemed to get along well enough and were pretty in sync when it came to theorizing how Fox worked.

Rhoda was also not very good in the social category, and Diane wanted to help her, I'd imagine she'd have tried to get Grace into the group if Grace wasn't already with Ellen, Nanase and Justin, and it's probably good that she didn't try, Justin could handle being called a "defective male", not sure how Ellen would have taken to Diane pulling something similar while attempting to recruit Grace. So while Diane's tactfulness on the subject leaves a lot to be desired and is probably still a remnant of her jerk phase. The desire to help boost people's self esteem and confidence seems run at least as far back as when she was helping Lucy with her issues. I don't think she'd have used "socially inept" if she'd never gone through the jerk phase.

Diane: "You all can't be nerds, you're not socially inept!"

Diane's most likely thinking of nerd as in the stereotypical "George McFly" sense, but it's much broader than that and can even apply to herself.

But hkmaly specifically said "two-Graces-kissing-Tedd", there's only one Grace kissing Tedd in that link. Or rather, Tedd's kissing 'Grace'.

There were 3 potential hoodlums planning on taking advantage of Rhoda, up until they overheard her mention her proficiency with large hammers. So she can still be a deterrent without realizing it.