26-09-17 Your luck just changed - end of book 9

[worldshaking00]

And another book ended. Thanks Giz & Dave. New Kickstarter!!!

Intriguing plot twist. I saw it as a potential, but dismissed it mainly because I have forgotten about the SDB cast, mostly. It is a clever way to get some deserved revenge on Zii. I expect Eric, Angel, and Sonya might have a lot to talk about. It might not be a healthy way for them to vent their anti-Zii feelings, but then it could also be an anti-Zii support group too. If any more people pop out of the woodwork that hate Zii, she might have to move town lol.

Angel might be sexually attracted to Sonya. If you compare Jerzy & Sonya side-by-side they have some similar features, and confidence looks good on just about anyone. I'm not sure if Angel's gender fluidity was mentioned to Sonya, but at this point I don't think Sonya'd care if she was trying to seduce Angel. In fact, Angel could very well be Sonya's 'happy place' since Angel could explain to Sonya that she can love whomever she wants regardless of gender identity. Angel could very well be the one who has Sonya accept that she isn't a lesbian (and burying that overused punchline), and is in fact just a human being in love with another human being.

Peggy's scolding Didi & Zii will be off strip from now on, I get the feeling. As rightly pointed out, the ramifications of her actions will be more meaningful than telling her off... and Didi doesn't have the attention span & moral compass. Frankly, I would assume two roommates argueing would be bad news and would cause unwanted stress in Gary's apartment. Didi does share some of the fault, but it takes two to tango and Zii could have chosen to be more open/less sneaky to Sonya in shagging Didi repeatedly in Sonya's home.

Yuki will be pissed at Sonya for being a traitor to Zii & the band. I can't help but think that Zii will try to spin this into a better light for her. Zii's selfishness & disregard for her past lovers, including Yuki, might come up when Yuki considers her own past with Zii. Hell, I could even see Izzy wanting to not idolize Zii once the dirty laundry gets aired. Maybe Gary & Zii are meant to be together, once he is the only person in Montreal who would give her the time of day. Gary gives until it hurts, and Zii is the ultimate user... they're on opposite sides of the spectrum. Weirder things have happened.

[Spidrift]

And another book ended. Thanks Giz & Dave. New Kickstarter!!!

There's supposed to be an SDB-related Kickstarter first...

I expect Eric, Angel, and Sonya might have a lot to talk about. It might not be a healthy way for them to vent their anti-Zii feelings, but then it could also be an anti-Zii support group too. If any more people pop out of the woodwork that hate Zii, she might have to move town lol.

Amusing though a Zii's League of Enemies might be, Erik strikes me as too laid back to join it. He was realistic about dropping her, but there've been no hints of bitterness since. Angel and Sonya are exceptions in that, for their own reasons. Hashtag NotAllZiisPastAcquaintances.

Angel might be sexually attracted to Sonya. If you compare Jerzy & Sonya side-by-side they have some similar features, and confidence looks good on just about anyone.

Actually, those who've seen the second gender-swap bonus comic know that Jerzy is the male Sonya, visually.

I'm not sure if Angel's gender fluidity was mentioned to Sonya, but at this point I don't think Sonya'd care if she was trying to seduce Angel. In fact, Angel could very well be Sonya's 'happy place' since Angel could explain to Sonya that she can love whomever she wants regardless of gender identity. Angel could very well be the one who has Sonya accept that she isn't a lesbian (and burying that overused punchline), and is in fact just a human being in love with another human being.

When last heard of, Angel had Jerzy as Supposed Lifetime Romance, and Richie as Guilty New Attraction. I don't think that Angel actually needs any more complications there. I could be wrong, but I think this kiss is a throwaway gesture.

Hell, I could even see Izzy wanting to not idolize Zii once the dirty laundry gets aired.

Nah; Izz has the basic adolescent tendency to see whatever an idolised figure does as self-evidently the correct thing to do.

[Error of Logic]

*facepalm*
Well, there goes a fair amount of the sympathy I had for Sonya.
She went straight for the drama jugular again.

[samtheman]

There's supposed to be an SDB-related Kickstarter first...

Be prepared to be disappointed.

[cheshire86]

The place where those auditions are being held must be one stout building... two Master Class Drama Queens in one room, and it's still standing!

[Spidrift]

Well, there goes a fair amount of the sympathy I had for Sonya.
She went straight for the drama jugular again.

She was Sonya. I don't see how you can find this surprising (except that she hasn't burned down Zii's house, or dusted Zii's spare panties with chilli powder so far as we know). She certainly wasn't going to retire with humiliating dignity and let this insult go unavenged - and going off to prove that she can have a music career without abasing herself by sticking with Zii's ego-trip project is actually quite constructive and smart so far.

I mean, the chilli powder will surely be on the menu eventually. But give the lady some points for letting her dish of revenge a la femme fatale cool a little out of the oven before she serves it.

[Error of Logic]

I thought she might finally have had enough of this vein of drama, at least, and gone to find something wholly separate.

[Treader]

I thought she might finally have had enough of this vein of drama, at least, and gone to find something wholly separate.

What's a dramasexual to do, when the chips are down, but fight drama with drama?

[uzivatel]

I thought she might finally have had enough of this vein of drama, at least, and gone to find something wholly separate.

Like what? gardening?

[Spidrift]

Well, we know she occasionally has cause to shovel compost.

Hidden depths, that woman - hidden depths.

[LegendaryKroc]

I see where you're coming from, but still I beg to differ. It did seem that Zii is starting to own up to her failings, but the way things ended the last time we saw them (Peggy saying that Sonya's hurt badly while Gary snarks about how no one cares that he's flat on his back with a cat on his face) to me feels like a poor way to end that scenario until we come back to it. (Yes, I did get a chuckle out of it but still.) Ending on a funny but irrelevant joke and and a Captain Obvious line just isn't a satisfying ending for me.

TCampbell said a while back that it's a basic principle of this comic that 80% of strips will end on a punchline. In other words, comedy first, drama second. Take it or leave it.

I wasn't annoyed that it ended on a joke, but that the joke was irrelevant to the rest of what was happening. Like, "We couldn't think of something funny about Zii and Peggy's conversation, so let's continue the joke from the last comic about Gary and the cat on his face!" What would have been better, I don't know, but it just seemed a bit out of nowhere for me.

Also, you're the one who said that DiDi's "It is ma faute!" doesn't mean anything if she can't maintain the remorse. If there's any chance to get her to consistently feel bad about recent developments and want to somehow fix them or at least change her own behaviour, it would be a moment like this.

I can't help thinking that it would take more than a few lines from Zii. Anyhow, Peggy is (justifiably) holding Zii responsible for Sonya's distress, and hence concentrating her fire there.

Zii would lose track of her calling-out the moment she was smushed into DiDi's bewbs. We have evidence to support this. And while Zii definitely has the lion's share of blame, she isn't the only one who needs to be called out.

And she does have an ability to understand people, albeit she's rudimentary at it at best. If she were truly unable to understand anyone and were the completely selfish person you apparently see her as (based on your past comments, tell me if I'm wrong), she wouldn't have made the decision to give Roxie her wallet back come Hell or high water despite having to go far away from her apartment to do so, or make the comment that maybe they should give Sonya some space after she found out they slept together. The problem is twofold: a) that her search for "l'orgamse" brings out the worst in her, but no less than Sonya's obsession with Zii does for her, and b) that her overall awareness and competence seem to be in constant flux, as the writers use her obliviousness for the punchline of jokes or to make plot developments plausible. The Rule of Funny isn't always a good thing.

I won't deny that the quest for a punchline sometimes makes the writers make these characters a bit inconsistent. That's Ma3, I'm afraid.

And "selfish" may be slightly the wrong term for DiDi, to be honest. Mostly, she's just horribly broken. She knows the basics of how other people work, in principle, and she has a sentimental attachment to doing the right thing, as she understands it and when she remembers. But as someone else said a while back, she believes that she lives on Everyone Loves DiDi World - so how can anyone really object to anything she does? At most, some people avoid her (most women she met, before the start of the strip, for a start), but that means she never actually gets confronted with why they dislike her presence.

And this has been going on for years - at least since puberty, and in some ways all her life, judging by what she told Kiley about her parents. That'll make it a hell of a job to fix.

I won't deny that DiDi can be selfish, entitled and oblivious to the point of idiocy, but all those things are not problems unto themselves - they're symptoms of a bigger problem, and that problem is that in many ways, she is still a child.

I think of DiDi as child-like. That is, I see in her aspects of someone who has not properly grown-up. She's high-functioning enough to have a passable grasp at social skills and have a job as a waitress, but is not socially-conscious enough to remember her boyfriends' names or prioritise going on dates with them, for instance. After her first girl-kiss, she was so stunned that she assumed she was a lesbian, suggesting ignorance in the sexual department too. Heck even her ideas about love and True Love™ are straight out of a child's fairy tale.

And why is she so immature in many ways? Simple. She never grew up because she never had to.

50% or so of lesson-learning in life probably comes from other people's criticisms or comments on your behaviour, unless you are a very introspective and self-deprecating person and can do that for yourself. I imagine DiDi as one of those children who was so cheerful, cute and all-around adorable that people could not help but fawn over her, and if she did something bad, couldn't bring themselves to rebuke too harshly because they'd feel bad to see her cry. Behaving maturely is a by-product of people not putting up with immature behaviour as you get older, or at least learning to hide your immature behaviour and put up a mature front. DiDi projects herself as pure woman and probably has since puberty, so her immaturity would only be visible from a purely objective point of view, which no one had in-universe. Boys would be so in love with her (or at least her breasts, ass and bubbly personality) that they'd not notice and if they did, they wouldn't care. Girls would fall into one of two categories: either they were attracted to her, in which case they'd have the same problems as the boys with the added bonus that DiDi wouldn't date them because she didn't know she liked girls yet, or they weren't, in which case they'd be massively jealous of her and shun her or just be too intimidated to say anything.

And of course, the matter of her not understanding that while love is not inexorably linked to sex and relationships, it can be a big part of both, and treating it as a completely casual thing one goes through the motions of is not the way to enjoy it. Hence her lack of orgasm and a big part of her characterisation etc.

Yes, trying to deal with and grow her out of her childishness will be an unenviable job, as I've said, but sooner or later the sticks will have to be pulled out of her head and her illusions shattered if she is to grow as a person. It won't be easy, it may well be thankless in-universe, but if we want her to have a satisfying send-off in the final number, it will have to happen sooner or later. I wouldn't want the job myself, but what can you do?

Finally, if anyone can get through the fluff and cotton wool in her brain to the underused reason stems within, my money is definitely on Peggy. And while it's an unenviable job, any satisfying ending for DiDi will require spring-cleaning of her conscious mind to remove the childishness and get her to grow the hell up. Not knowing what will happen next, for all I know they will never share a strip or even a panel in the next volume, which would ruin any chance of that happening. God knows we can't count on Zii to correct her moral compass.

Impressive though Peggy is, I don't think that she's that good. Kiley, whose brain-fixing skills are legendary round here, made a lot more systematic study of DiDi, and identified a lot of what was going wrong in her brain - and all that happened there in the end was that DiDi managed an orgasm and Kiley nearly ended up broken herself. All Peggy could do with a bit of shouting and sarcasm is make DiDi cry a bit until something else came along.

True, she may not be able to deal with the bulk of DiDi's issues, but in the absence of someone more qualified who else can we turn to but the best-known bastion of sense and reason in this comic? She was able to break her Operation: Jealous ZIi plan to Sonya simply by talking until her thick skull registered the message. Many people said her plan would fail in spite of her brilliance, and while it's been a long time since then and the issues involved are even bigger, I find it a bit arbitrary to be sceptical of her abilities again, especially after this strip.

Edit: Might I just say it's a pleasure to be able to have a disagreement and talk about it civilly without a screaming contest? Seems like many forums these days it's really hard to pull off.

[rogermart]

Now that we have 9 volumes and volume 10 will probably be the last, so i'm gonna do a cheesy good old fashioned "Find Out Next Time" for the strips to come...

Will Sonya get her sweet revenge?
What will happen with Zii and Didi
Will Izz play the guitar while Zii plays the bass?
Will Gary ever bang Zii?
Will Kiley and Matt be together again?
Will Yuki and Matt have a relationship?
Will Annie Conda bang Didi?
Will Maura pay Tess?
Will Didi be capable to play her part in Roxxie obtaining the belt?
Will Peggy move out?
Will Erik appear again?
Will Senna appear again?
Will Zoe (from Sandra on the Rocks) appear in Montreal and smack some sense to these people? (hey a guy can dream)

Find out next time in Ma3...

[Bat-dork]

Ok... So, Sonya, who is «not a lesbian» is now going to engage on a revenge romance with Angel, who is gender fluid. That kiss seems to hint the two of them going into bed is more of a «when» than an «If», so I think it will be fun seeing Sonya try to figure her sexuality in the face of Angel 's fluidity. My immediate guess is she will go the whole nine miles when Angel identifies as a male, and go into «not a lesbian» mode when Angel flows to female.

[rogermart]

"Could you not be a girl while we're together? You see, i'm not a lesbian..."

[brasca]

Well I'm pleasantly surprised by all this since it could mean more Sticky Dilly Buns cameos, but I don't think Sonya's approach is going to succeed, but she's working with what she knows.

It'll already be working; even if Peggy hasn't got through to Zii at all, she's down one bassist -- and Angel will be able to get some good solid gloating in next time they meet. Plus, Sonya is not only proving that she can survive emotionally without Zii -- she's set to prove that she doesn't need Zii to get herself a career in music.

Even if Zii patches things over with her and gets her back in the Troublemakers, Sonya is well placed to win this one. The only danger is, she's bitter and angry, and now hanging out with someone with even worse fixations than herself -- so she may well try too hard and make an even bigger mess. And -- two drama queens in one band? That's a recipe for harmony and agreement over everything, isn't it just.

When I say Sonya's approach I'm referring to her kissing Angel. Angel is gender fluid, but favors men so if Sonya is attempting to seduce Angel I don't think it will work. Now if this is just Sonya being playful and kissing someone who has a mutual interest in hating Zii then that's another matter. Seeing as how Angel needs a good bassist who happens to have mutual loathing for Zii Sonya is as good as in, but I still wonder if she can pull off the androgynous look.

Maybe Sonya will patch things up with Zii, but there's a thin line between love and hate and she's just crossed over into the latter.