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New strip! http://www.ma3comic.com/strips-ma3/i-over-competed/

Gary's sympathetic side showing. I can't help but think that it's like Spanish Fly to a woman in distress (q.v. Kiley).

While he did not make up for juggling Peggy & Maura at their date, he is 100% right. And while he's got a long ways to go to get square with Maura, I have a feeling it isn't too long of a walk to Gary's bedroom. Gary still needs to learn some date etiquette. TBH, I was hoping for a slap, but it looks like Maura caved in first.

Gary... And the legend continue...

Looks like someone's avatar may need to be updated again! ;)

Gotta love Peggy - in spite of some eccentricities, she is the most secure and understanding person of the series; well, the bar is pretty low for that, but even so, she seems considerate more often than not.

Wonder how this will progress? Will Maura jump back and apologise that she had an odd whim, which the resulting kiss may not have felt justifying? Will she go all the way? Whatever the outcome, Gary is one consistently lucky guy! Haha! Granted, some severe speed bumps and his own weaknesses cause him trouble, but his fortune seems to be worth any strife.

Honesty and sincerity with no ulterior motive - good man, Gary.

Gary appears to have been infected with the DiDi Effect. I mean yes, he said something basically nice and considerate there - but saying one nice and considerate thing doesn't usually suffice to get one laid. Especially when the nice thing was basically "you don't have to have sex with me".

When this happened with Kiley, the reason was explicitly that she was extremely stressed and desperate for relief. But Maura didn't seem that stressed, at least until this strip. This development is a bit too much of a plot contrivance for my taste.

(I'd also be asking what a wrestler's thigh muscles might do when the swirly is applied, but Gary survived a night with DiDi, so clearly he has a neck of steel. Though on the other hand, DiDi didn't climax.)

Let's do the time warp agaaaiiiiin!

Just like with Kiley, but a cuter version.

With Kiley was: "I have plenty of issues, a mountain full of them which i gladly share... And it's okay, you can hug me or kiss me or whatever"
With Maura is: "Cause you said something you shouldn't? i do that all the time. If you don't want to do what you said out there it's all right. What do you want to do?"

This is the Gary effect, it shows when women are vulnerable, he hits you with his sympathetic side and the next thing you know you're jumping his bones...

Also like i said in the previous comic, Peggy was not in the competition, she just wants to jump in the shower and rest, she has no time for shenanigans (like Murtaugh "she is too old for this s**t"), if she wants to peg Gary she says so...

Yeah, I guess we've had lesser examples of Gary's Magic Sympathy. It's just that I can't suspend my disbelief for that effect. If being a vaguely nice, sympathetic guy (between long stints of being an annoying dork) reliably got attractive women out of their knickers, the world would be full of happy (if exhausted) geeks. It just doesn't work that way; being sympathetic is at best a starting point, not a deal-closer.

(Kiley was, as I said, a special case. Gary had spent an hour or two being nice at her; it wasn't an instant effect.)

When he and Kiley banged it was normal for me because like you said, he was nice to her from the moment he met her. But now it makes me wonder if this is his superpower, if his magic sympathy is like Zii's "She's got this way of making you feel like the most desireable person in the room" or Didi's "She's a freaking goddess"... That's why i call it the Gary Effect... Of course the real world is not like that...

Maura got so deprived of any sort of attention or sympathy on that date that Gary showing the bare minimum when he heard he could get laid is gonna get him laid.

Overcompeting 0, Reverse Psychology 1.

rogermart wrote:When he and Kiley banged it was normal for me because like you said, he was nice to her from the moment he met her. But now it makes me wonder if this is his superpower, if his magic sympathy is like Zii's "She's got this way of making you feel like the most desireable person in the room" or Didi's "She's a freaking goddess"... That's why i call it the Gary Effect... Of course the real world is not like that...

I agree that Gary's beginning to look as supernatural as DiDi (I mean, he's already got the swirly - how many components of a great lover can one man possess while still being a hopeless dork?), but I don't put Zii in quite the same category. Sure, her success rate is implausibly high (though she has her share of failures), but she works at seduction, and that trick of making the other person feel like they're the most important person in their world is something that's often described in real-world successful seducers. It's nothing paranormal; it's just a matter of paying attention to the other person (without acting creepy) and giving off a lot of "you fascinate me" body language cues.

In fact, I don't blame Zii for being pissed off by Gary's effectiveness. She puts the work in, while he just achieves results in spite of being an idiot. It's the Amadeus plot.

Fair enough, so while Gary and Didi have superpowers, Zii has overdeveloped powers like Batman...

And i still say that we still don't know how effective was Matt's tutorial, so Gary has the Swirly, the Magic Sympathy and who knows what else... And like you say, he's still a hopeless dork... At least Superman acts when he is Clark Kent...

Oh, Gary may have learned some technical stuff from Matt. But meh, how much difference does that make? He already had the swirly. Knowing that he wasn't just a one-trick pony anymore might be good for his self-confidence, but lack of self-confidence never actually slowed him down much in the run of the comic; it just made him annoying.

(And do remember; Clark Kent is what Superman thinks is a typical Earth human being.)