Webcomic / Craving Control

Lalia enjoys a small snack.

Craving Control is/was a webcomic published on Drunk Duck.com in 2007. It followed a beautiful young freshman named Lalia, as she attempts to survive college with her roommate Jane. The twist was that Lalia had a massive appetite, often with the gut to show it, which is the entire point of the series.

Created by an artist only known as Arthur, the series has had a surprisingly eventful publication history, starting out in 2007 as a simple Web Comic prone to Schedule Slip, before moving to deviantArt for a time with a tremendous shift in tone and irregular updates. The focus shifted away from story telling and focussed purely on Lalia's increasing gluttony. After quietly releasing three new pages in 2016, the series was a second revived by fetish artist Adjective Noun Combo, collaborating with Arthur to expand on the existing story and give it an official conclusion.

Adjective Noun Combo has since deactivated his gallery, leaving the series completed, but once more without an immediate home.

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This work provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc:
  • Notably averted in one case. The original run tried setting up Jane and Trevor, but ended before it could go anywhere. This was brought back in the ANC era.
  • The series originally ended with Lalia having shirked her college responsibilities to go on a luxury cruise, and the last we see of her is a page of her indulging in a massive stack of pancakes. The Double Dip storyline picks up after the cruise, with the events left unexplained.
  • Arthur drew a single page for a prequel series that would have followed a teenage Lalia developing into the familiar gluttonous bombshell. Unfortunately, there was controversy in regards to her age, and the story was abandoned.
• Abusive Parents: The only thing we see of Lalia's mom was a flashback of her punishing her daughter for eating her birthday cake past her bedtime, grounding her for every inch her belly had swollen. Judging by other comments Lalia's made about her, she defintiely had serious issues when it came to policing her daughter's eating habits.
• Adaptation Expansion: Of an unique sort. Coming Apart At The Seams was originally just a collection of Lalia's gluttonous antics that culminated in her winning her cruise ticket. Much, much later, Adjective Noun Combo added new pages were to be inserted in between them, turning it into a flowing story. When he and Arthur started collaborating, even more pages were added.
• And the Adventure Continues: The series ends with Lalia getting her Cravings under Control after almost betraying Jane. She's still a shocking glutton, but nowhere near as self-destructive.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: Played for Drama. Lalia almost sleeps with Trevor after getting good and drunk.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Trevor is head over heels for Lalia. For most of the series, she hasn't even spoken to him.
• Alpha Bitch: Kim was essentially set up to be Lalia's enemy before the cancellation of the original.
• Ambiguous Ending: The ending is mostly straight forward, but it's never addressed if Lalia and Jane still live together, stayed friends, or even stayed in touch. They're never seen together after Lalia meets up with Clyde Ryde at the festival.
• Art Evolution: There is a noticeable improvement in the art between the old series and revival.
• Art Shift: For a brief period, the series was illustrated by a completely different artist to get it out of a hiatus. The art is fine, but the change is extremely jarring.
  • The ANC revival goes to lengths to avoid this, but being a recreation, the artist's normal style does bleed through in places.
• Artifact Title: After the Thanksgiving Special, Lalia gives into her appetite, something which sticks throughout the rest of the series. In other words, there is no more focus on he attempting to Control her Cravings.
  • On the other hand, see Meaningful Name below.
• Author Appeal: What do you think?
• Balloon Belly: The entire point of the series is to enjoy seeing the gorgeous redhead blow up like a balloon after pigging out time and time again.
  • Jane falls victim to this as well during Thanksgiving, and later while studying at an ice cream bar. Lalia's eating habits might finally be rubbing off on her...
    • And a third time, albeit in a hallucination of Trevor's where he sees Jane in dominatrix wear sporting a much larger, fatter gut than the ice cream bloat she showed off previously.
• Berserk Button: When Lalia shows up to Thanksgiving Dinner already stuffed to the brim, and having eaten a pie baked specially for the day by Jane, the usually quiet roommate finally loses it, and Lalia is clearly worried. Of course, it doesn't amount to much.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Jane goes ballistic when she sees the mess Lalia has made trying to eat one hundred boxes of cereal, and proceeds to angrily stuff the last few down her gullet. Not that Lalia minds.
• Big Beautiful Woman: Thanks to being a buxom redhead, Lalia's hot even when she starts packing on the pounds due to her unrestrained gluttony.
• Big Eater: As one character put it, Lalia is a thunderous glutton.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Clyde Ryde, a popular vlogger who interviews Lalia on her rise to fame on social media. He acts very supportive, even sponsoring her to visit a food festival, but it's clear he's only using her for views and doesn't care much about her at all. The moment he's done livestreaming, he ditches her to schmooze with some more conventionally attractive girls.
• Bittersweet Ending: ANC’s reboot ends with Trevor and Jane breaking up with the former extremely ashamed how he treated his girlfriend and letting himself go, though in the end they part amicably. Lalia also realizes how much her indulgence has hurt her friends and changes her ways to being a much more reasonable glutton, now finally in control of her cravings.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Technically. In one page of the ANC revival, Jane gets a bloody nose after Lalia accidentally falls on her.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: More like, Brilliant but Hungry. Lalia is smart, but her appetite tends to get in her way. The "lazy" side gets more prominence in the series as Lalia becomes increasingly concerned with stuffing herself over study, etcetera.
• Characterization Marches On: Lalia and Janes' interactions in the initial run were a little more indifferent, with both being polite to each other and Lalia frequently trying to force her presence on Jane. Come the Thanksgiving Special (technically about a year later), the two are pretty much best friends, though still with the same gripes as before.
  • Jane comes off as much less of a stereotypical nerd in Double Dip.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Everyone but Lalia and Jane disappeared after the initial run on Drunk Duck. The ANC revival brings some of them back.
• Clip Show: Played for Comedy in a single strip when Lalia is completely dumbfounded by her slight weight gain, and Jane offers her an explanation.
  • A Very Lalia Thanksgiving mixes some older panels with new artwork to retell the Thanksgiving special from her perspective.
• Continuity Nod: After getting stuck while trying to avoid her teacher, Lalia starts desperately promising God that she'll never overeat again. She made a similar, equally empty promise when she was hiding in Kim's room.
• The Corrupter: Clyde Ryde, who eggs on Lalia's skyrocketing gluttony in the name of views. When he livestreams her shenanigans at the food festival, she makes an ass out of herself by doing whatever he says.
• Denser and Wackier: The original had a a few goofy moments, but was mostly just a quirky story about a girl trying to get through college with a big appetite. The retool instead embraced cartoon physiques, with Lalia eating until she became trapped in doorways, or her stomach was larger than the rest of her body.
• Determinator: Lalia needs to collect one hundred tickets from one hundred cereal boxes to win a free cruise an offer that expires the next day, and the sun has already gone down. She makes it happen.
• Extreme Omnivore: During the Christmas Episode Lalia accidentally swallows Jane's house keys. She's clueless to this, however, and ends up believing that the jingling sounds coming from inside her stomach are just Christmas bells from the shopping mall. She eventually hiccups them back out without ever noticing she had eaten them.
  • She also unknowingly eats her dates' wallets when they angrily try to force-feed her.
• Fat and Proud: While not technically fat, Lalia has nothing but love for the enormous belly hanging off her hips.
  • She does become this in the final chapter.
• Fat Slob: Again, while not technically fat until the finale, on at least two occasions Lalia's binges have left both her surroundings and her own massive stomach absolutely covered in an absolute mess of crumbs/leftovers.
• Fetish: While pretty obvious by The Lap of Luxury, the new editions to ''Coming Apart At The Seams' make it very clear that Lalia gets off on eating.
  Lalia: I prooobably love food more than sex?
• Flanderization: Lalia starts the series struggling to live a normal life despite her appetite and desperately attempting to control her cravings. After the first story, she becomes a simple glutton who only cares about gorging herself as often and as massively as possible, taking blatant pride in how big a Balloon Belly she can give herself.
  • The series itself follows suite. The original run had a full cast and a developing story, while the revival is more or less a showcase of Lalia's binges. Arthur explained that he had lost interest in the story and instead wanting to focus on what he considered the fun stuff.
• Food Porn: Though food is rarely on screen long before vanishing behind Lalia's face, on occasion we can see some food that has every right to make Lalia such a glutton.
• Force Feeding: Jane does this to Lalia after finding the apartment trashed. Her dates do the same when they find out she's using them for a quick meal. It fails spectacularly both times.
• Forgotten Childhood Friend: Christina, Lalia's pal from the prequel series, has only come up once since.
• Freudian Excuse: Lalia's mother was very strict about diets, and would punish her daughter harshly for overeating. It has permanently made her feel that she has no self control.
• Genre Blindness: Jane starts force feeding Lalia cereal in a fit of rage, which she (Lalia) immediately starts to enjoy. Possibly justified, since she's angry, but wouldn't actually want to hurt her.
• Gone Horribly Right: Jane makes Lalia promise that she will only eat what is offered to her at Thanksgiving Dinner. Jane's mother proceeds to offer her more than she's ever eaten.
• Growling Gut: In later comics, Lalia's stomach tends to growl a lot. Sometimes it's due to hunger, but mostly it's because of the ludicrous amount of food she keeps gorging on.
• Halloween Episode: Lalia goes out Trick Or Treating and ends up cleaning out the neighbourhood before the kids could get to it. The resulting belly is large enough to cause a Wardrobe Malfunction when it makes Lalia's costume burst open.
• Hiccup Hijinks: Lalia, frequently, as a result of her constant overeating. She never sees them as an inconvenience, mind you, and at one point they actually came in handy when Lalia unknowingly swallowed Jane's house keys.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Jane, for entrusting Lalia, whose defining character trait is her love of eating, with delivering her pies to Thanksgiving dinner. Lalia brings this up in A Very Lalia Thanksgiving. Only possibly because her appetite was far more restrained until this point.
• Hypocritical Humour: An imaginary Lalia makes fun of Trevor's eating habits and how he has no self control.
• Improbable Food Budget: How the hell isn't she broke?
• Inappropriate Hunger: Lalia completely fails to recognise receiving pizza delivery through the window as disruptive to her class.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Though she does flaunt her curves, Lalia probably doesn't realize how attractive some find her engorged stomach.
• Jerkass: The clothing store clerk who, ahem "helps" Lalia find some fitting clothes after she finally manages to gain weight.
• Love Triangle: Trevor pines for Lalia, but is dating Jane. Lalia barely knows Trevor, but is clearly affectionate for her Instagram admirer, Tgainz. Jane is caught in the middle.
• Meaningful Name: The title of the webcomic actually has a couple of different readings, which border on Fridge Brilliance:
  • One way it can be read is "control over one's cravings", the complete lack of which is basically Lalia's defining trait.
  • An alternative way to read it is "craving to have control (over one's cravings)", which is one of Lalia's traits in the initial stories, before in later stories she simply blithely gives in to her gluttonous impulses.
  • A third reading of the title would be a reference to how Lalia's cravings have such control over her, leading to the eventual shift in motif.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: On a much smaller scale, with no death involved. Lalia's obliviousness has at times caused considerable destruction around her, at one point burning down a sorority house.
• Mood Whiplash: A major criticism of ANC’s version is that this tends to happen quite a bit. It is especially prevalent in the finale, we go from Jane bitterly breaking up with Trevor, to his bedroom where a drunkenly Lalia marches in, her stomach the biggest it ever gets in the comic, and she and Trevor start making out... Then the humor and eroticism ends abruptly when Lalia finally notices who she is cuddling with and has a huge Heel Realization. This then leads to the surprisingly somber scene of Trevor and Jane parting ways... Then we end on the reformed but still gluttonous Lalia making out with a pizza guy.
• Ms. Fanservice: Lalia is a sex symbol both in-and-out of universe, and a lot of focus is put on her big boobs and for the intended audience, her even bigger belly.
  • Jane has also developed into this over time.
• My God, What Have I Done?: When she starts drunkenly making love with her best friend’s boyfriend, Lalia inevitably realizes what she is doing and is utterly horrified. This gives her a major Heel Realization and finally starts cutting down on the food, though naturally she remains a glutton.
• Oblivious to Love: Lalia has no idea about Trevor's existence. Trevor is also completely unaware that the object of his desires is a glutton beyond comprehension.
• Odd Friendship: Lalia, a pretty, glamorous redhead with the appetite rivaling some species of whale, and Jane, a geeky, shy and very sensible worrywart.
• Off the Wagon: All it takes is one Thanksgiving to send Lalia off the deep end.
• Once an Episode: Many, many, MANY strips consist of Lalia doing something gluttonous, and Jane reacting negatively.
• Only Sane Man: As the series has gone on and on and Lalia's binges have gotten bigger and bigger, Jane seems to be one of few people to react to Lalia's extreme eating. Even her own mother is barely fazed by her ten foot girth which proceeds to crush the damn table!
• Overly-Long Tongue: Appropriately, Lalia's tongue at multiple points is shown to be almost cartoonishly huge. It gets to a point where she uses it to slurp up whole pies in the Thanksgiving comic.
• The Peeping Tom: Trevor watches Lalia change through a hole in the wall. An imaginary Lalia calls him out on it.
• Porn with Plot: Fanservice With Plot: The series has always zigzagged on how much plot it has, but it has always been framed around pictures of a busty redhead stuffing herself to absurdity.
• Prequel: The Early Warning Signs series was intended as this, but only received a single strip before being quietly cancelled.
• Retcon: Relatively minor, but the comic originally began in 2007. Lalia is now depicted having an Instagram account.
• Serial Escalation: Thought Lalia's gut was big at the start of the Thankgiving Special? Just wait until page four. This is only later exceeded in the climax for Double Dip where Lalia's belly eventually grows TWICE as big!
• Sanity Slippage: Trevor starts seeing an imaginary Lalia talking to him, poking fun at his shortcomings. This eventually culminates in him both her and an imaginary Jane fighting for his attention.
• Title Drop: Lalia's Instagram account is called Craving Control.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Trevor goes from harmlessly pining over Lalia to afar, to peeping on her while she changes and manipulating Jane - his actual girlfriend - to spend more time watching her eat. His deplorable actions catch up with him when Jane catches on.
• Two-Timer Date: Lalia sets up three dates, who all buy her very expensive meals. She does seem to genuinely enjoy their company - but they're not as forgiving.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Jane's mother is completely unfazed by Lalia's colossal, ten foot tall girth in the Thanksgiving Special.
• Vacation Episode: The unfinished series Lap of Luxury is based around this.
• Valentine's Day Episode: Lalia scores a big meal by going on three expensive dinner dates at the same time.
• Wardrobe Malfunction: Happens to Lalia in the Halloween two-parter, after her candy-stuffed belly causes the corset of her vampire costume to tear open, leaving her completely topless.
  • And again in the last page of the cancelled "Lap of Luxury" series, where Lalia's six-foot tall gut from eating a literal buffet of pancakes causes her nightgown to pull completely away from her chest.
• Would Hurt a Child: Lalia ends up pushing over a child when one of her followers dares her to steal food from the next person she sees. She hesitates until they throw in money for drinks. In her defense, she was drunk at the time.

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