17-07-18 SDB-Was it hard

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brasca
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Re: 17-07-18 SDB-Was it hard

Post by brasca »

Opus the Poet wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 9:34 pm
brasca wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 1:51 pm
That’s a good point about Dillon and his gaydar. It seems like Andy knows what to do and wouldn’t object if asked. Wonder what his quirk might be.
Maybe Andy is Ace? We've seen every other sexual orientation in-comic, so that makes ace the place they never went to. The Ultimate Perversion, no sexual activity at all. :))

But seriously, it looks like Andy is Ace.
Are you referring to Eerie Cutie's Ace because I think he's a good example of magical gender fluidity?

On some level I can relate to Andy. I was out at a gathering where there weren't many people my age except this one girl and we chatted for most of the time there. I didn't hit on her since it wasn't really the venue for it and she appreciated that, but by the end of the night she was dropping hints about getting some "recreation." By this time the rec center was closed which I mentioned until she spelled it out for me. Now I'm not as clueless as Andy, but it's difficult to read people and he already made a mistake before albeit from faulty information so perhaps he wants to play it safe.

Personally, I think we'd all be better off if we were upfront about this kind of thing and I'd never judge anyone if they were, but society still operates under outdated notions so I can understand why Ruby is reluctant to be more businesslike about the whole thing.

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Spidrift
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Re: 17-07-18 SDB-Was it hard

Post by Spidrift »

“Ace” is short for “asexual”. As I understand the hep talk which kids today use.

And openness and straightforwardness are good, but I can completely understand Ruby’s discomfort. On the one hand, she doesn’t want to feel cheap or crude, and the degree of bluntness that Andy seems to require seems not far short of handing him her knickers and grabbing his crotch. And on the other hand, she’s a bit of a romantic at heart, or at least human enough to want to feel desired; if the guy doesn’t show a bit of passion and initiative, it’s going to take a lot of the actual fun and joy out of the sex.

And let’s face it, she came onto him by wearing a sexy black dress and dropping fairly broad innuendos about “dessert”. Most people would get that hint.
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Valkog
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Re: 17-07-18 SDB-Was it hard

Post by Valkog »

Yeah, I get the feeling that Ruby could give Andy a naked lap dance and he'd still miss the point. He's about as dumb as Mark from The Room, except without all the sexual assault.
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Spidrift
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Re: 17-07-18 SDB-Was it hard

Post by Spidrift »

Leaving the question of how she’s failed to notice that she’s dating a total dimwit.

We haven’t actually seen much of their dates (though to be fair, we don’t see much of the time that any Ma3 universe couples spend when out together); perhaps there were a lot of “companionable” silences. But this reinforces the feeling that there’s very little emotional compatibility between these two. Ruby got bounced into this relationship, and is now sticking with it because she’s horny and Andy is a genuine hunk; Andy seems to be dating because it’s assumed to be the norm for a time-warped 1950s cartoon teenager. It may lead to Ruby getting her rocks off and Andy finding out what those bits are for, which would be good for both of them, but I doubt it has long-term staying power.

(Okay, and my evil side wouldn’t mind seeing Ruby attempt a naked lap dance. It’d either be hilarious, very hot, or strangely embarrassingly cute. Probably all three.)
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Spidrift
"Brevior vita est quam pro futumentibus negotium agendo."
-- Motto of Hogshead Publishing of fond memory, and wise words to set your Foes List by.
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Error of Logic
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Re: 17-07-18 SDB-Was it hard

Post by Error of Logic »

Spidrift wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 10:49 pm
One question, by the way. Ruby has been dating Andy for weeks. Why has she not noticed yet that she’s hanging out with a complete dimwit?
She's a bundle of nerves and really bad at interpreting other people's signals.
Remember the professor who tricked her into wearing short skirts and bending over a lot? Dillon, himself no intellectual giant but much more at home with matters emotional and sexual, had to point that out to her.
The more nervous Ruby gets, the worse I expect her ability to analyze other people's behaviour becomes.

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Spidrift
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Re: 17-07-18 SDB-Was it hard

Post by Spidrift »

Maybe, yeah. Though I got the impression that she was at least somewhat relaxed around Andy by now. She's prepared to consider going to bed with him, after all. And this isn't so much about interpreting signals as noticing his failures to do so.

Sigh. I know. I'm over-thinking comedy.

Anyhow, I wonder if we're about to get a string of flashbacks either showing their dating history as an hilarious communications clusterfuck from start to finish, or explaining a bit about Andy's background. Did Ruby actually get to meet his family that evening? One does wonder what history could produce Andy.
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"Brevior vita est quam pro futumentibus negotium agendo."
-- Motto of Hogshead Publishing of fond memory, and wise words to set your Foes List by.
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brasca
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Re: 17-07-18 SDB-Was it hard

Post by brasca »

Error of Logic wrote:
Wed Jul 18, 2018 8:58 am
Spidrift wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 10:49 pm
One question, by the way. Ruby has been dating Andy for weeks. Why has she not noticed yet that she’s hanging out with a complete dimwit?
She's a bundle of nerves and really bad at interpreting other people's signals.
Remember the professor who tricked her into wearing short skirts and bending over a lot? Dillon, himself no intellectual giant but much more at home with matters emotional and sexual, had to point that out to her.
The more nervous Ruby gets, the worse I expect her ability to analyze other people's behaviour becomes.
Good points. As much as I'm rooting for Ruby to get laid there's really no chemistry between her and Andy. What we briefly saw with Jung and Ramona is more chemistry than the entirety of Andy and Ruby's relationship.

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worldshaking00
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Re: 17-07-18 SDB-Was it hard

Post by worldshaking00 »

Not that there has to be direct parallels to Ma3, but chemistry has nothing with getting laid. There's been plenty of nookie without much of a connection... before or after coitus. However should the creative team want to distance themselves from Gary's particular virginal predicament, going about Ruby losing her V-card should be different than how Gary had to struggle to develop as he has.

Pre-deflowered Gary and Ruby have similar issues/pasts, if one chooses to deconstruct the characters. In fact, one could argue they are polar parallel opposites experiencing roughly the same problems because of their natures. One 'was' obsessed with lesbian porn while the other is mad about yaoi. Both are classical stereotypes of classic geekery, just from different ends of the spectrum. One sought advice from Matt and the other from Dillon (although Dillon has helped Gary out too, to be fair). One idolized Amber-Amber for her porn career and the other despised her for it. I'm sure there is more should one dig for it.

If these two were orbiting celestial bodies, I would expect them to collide into one another.
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Spidrift
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Re: 17-07-18 SDB-Was it hard

Post by Spidrift »

Emotional chemistry has little to do with sexual attraction (or actual, you know, screwing) in the Ma3 universe, to be sure, what with most of the characters being sex mad and a bit irresponsible. One might have expected the issue to arise with Ruby, given that she seems to care more than most about her dignity and not feeling cheap, but the hormones are kicking in hard there, so it's not too surprising to see her going for somebody based on ... well, the hardness of his abs, I guess. Andy is certainly drawn as athletically attractive, though Ruby hasn’t actually offered even that as an explanation of why she wants to screw him in particular. He’s just what’s available, so far as I can see.

Chemistry does seem to be important for long-term serious relationships even in this setting, though. Witness Gary realising that most of his encounters to date have been kind of meaningless, and wanting someone he can actually relate to (and Zii doing the same, with more of a struggle). So if Ruby and Andy’s thing is ever described as long-term or romantic, I’m crying foul.

I’ve said before that Ruby is Gary done right, to a large extent — though I describe her as primarily a nerd, whereas Gary is a geek, in modern terms. (Gary has a whole bunch of geeky pop culture obsessions, but no particular academic record that he’s mentioned; Ruby has actual academic qualifications which she considers important, acquired at the expense of a social life, but has only recently got into contemporary pop culture — classically “nerdy”.) When Gary first appeared, he claimed to have had an emotionally traumatic upbringing, and to have problems relating to the opposite sex, but we never heard any more of the former, and he actually got on just fine with a lot of women once he was over the nosebleeds; with Ruby, we’ve actually seen her being a sad loner at school, and seen her dealings with the opposite sex being difficult and confrontational.*

I guess Gary is the geek who geeks want to be — cute, “troubled” but not in any way that actually causes him visible problems, and instinctively amazing in bed once women get over their silly disinterest in Transformers and get him there. Ruby is more realistic; spiky, emotionally clumsy, and introverted, so even though she is Giz-cute it doesn’t always do her a lot of good, and if she does turn out to be good in bed it’ll be because she puts a lot of effort and thought into it, rather than because of a magic swirly.



* Hmm. If Ruby is becoming a nerd who gets dates, I believe that makes her a wonk. Wonks usually go into politics, but she does otherwise fit the pattern. So — Ruby Larose for mayor of Montreal, 2040?
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Spidrift
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Re: 17-07-18 SDB-Was it hard

Post by Spidrift »

brasca wrote:
Tue Jul 17, 2018 1:51 pm
That’s a good point about Dillon and his gaydar. It seems like Andy knows what to do and wouldn’t object if asked. Wonder what his quirk might be.
A technical quibble occurs to me. Dillon doesn’t think that Andy is gay, because he doesn’t respond to Dillon’s flirtations — but we now have even more evidence that he doesn’t respond much to women either. And Ruby established a while back that Dillon isn’t as clever on these matters as he thinks he is. So, if Andy isn’t ace — and he’s too interested in dating, in principle, for me to buy that — we’re logically back to “he could be either”. And he did show fascinated interest in Dillon and Jerzy kissing...

I don’t actually believe it — the plotting isn’t pointing that way — but I could argue that logically, the most likely assessment for Andy would be “very heavily repressed homosexual”.
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Spidrift
"Brevior vita est quam pro futumentibus negotium agendo."
-- Motto of Hogshead Publishing of fond memory, and wise words to set your Foes List by.
Avatar misappropriated from the wonderful XKCD.

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