Pixie Trix Comix & Hiveworks Community

New strip! http://www.ma3comic.com/strips-ma3/sdb- ... r-friends/

Perhaps Ruby should've toughed it out by further listening to Ramona and Jung - whether or not the advice would be applicable to her, it could provide her some perspective for own version of the advice. Definitely better to talk to a cat rather than Angel or Zii! (Though, wrong cat; Lita would be the wise one. Heh)
Despite fairly brief interactions, Ruby seems to have good insight on Angel and Zii; guess the irony is that she doesn't have insight of her own issues.

Help me, Minew. You're my only hope.

I'm surprised Ruby hasn't looked into relationship books, or sunk to picking up a magazine like Cosmo. She seems like the type of woman who'd also try to learn from all available sources, not just by word of mouth. Plus considering her newfound appreciation for yaoi, printed material might offer less awkward embarrassments during conversation.

Or maybe she should just, I don't know, take Andy by the hands, staring into his eyes, and talk with Andy that she'd like to have sex. Sometimes ripping the bandaid off is less painful than slowly working it off.

In my experience, if you take your partner by the hands and ask them to tell you, honestly, why they're avoiding having sex with you... Usually you end up hearing something you really don't want to hear, from someone you really don't want to hear it from. To give you an idea, I've been married fifteen years, it *still* embarrasses the crap out of me to find out from my wife that she's avoiding me because my breath has gone off or whatever.

Now we, the audience, know that Andy is just denser than the heart of a neutron star. Ruby does not know this. She's convinced the problem is herself, she's hoping she can fix it on her own. That way she doesn't have to hear exactly what's wrong with her from the guy she's sweet on.

Well, I’m glad to see that Ruby does at least remember the small matter of Zii’s past with Amber, that she’s never actually mentioned out loud as an issue. And yes, once again we see that she does inderstand these people all too well, in her own way. And she should get good advice from a cat. “It’s easy. Just wait until you’re in heat, then let him smell you, and he’ll pin you to the ground and use his spiked penis to keep you in place while you complain loudly.”

Shame that Ramona turned out to be a bit of a red herring, though I suppose that just having any sort of sympathetic ear helped pull Ruby out of the dark hole she was sliding into, which was better than the alternative. I guess that she’ll now just have to sort this out for herself, which presumably means actually talking to Andy, shock horror. I do wonder if she’s going to swallow her pride and talk to Amber, but Amber isn’t actually likely to say anything very useful that I can imagine.

Or maybe someone will have grabbed Andy by the throat and asked him why he was making Ruby so unhappy.

OllieOrOlly wrote: ↑

Sat Jul 21, 2018 9:30 am

Ruby seems to have good insight on Angel and Zii; guess the irony is that she doesn't have insight of her own issues.

But who does understand themselves as well as they understand other people?

worldshaking00 wrote: ↑

Sat Jul 21, 2018 11:51 am

I'm surprised Ruby hasn't looked into relationship books, or sunk to picking up a magazine like Cosmo. She seems like the type of woman who'd also try to learn from all available sources, not just by word of mouth.

It’d be her style, I guess — but few such sources are written for people as introverted as Ruby or as dim as Andy.

Good range of Ruby facial expressions, anyway.

Spidrift wrote: ↑

Sat Jul 21, 2018 12:51 pm

Shame that Ramona turned out to be a bit of a red herring, though I suppose that just having any sort of sympathetic ear helped pull Ruby out of the dark hole she was sliding into, which was better than the alternative. I guess that she’ll now just have to sort this out for herself, which presumably means actually talking to Andy, shock horror. I do wonder if she’s going to swallow her pride and talk to Amber, but Amber isn’t actually likely to say anything very useful that I can imagine.

The problem Ruby is having doesn't match Ramona's experience. She and Jung are still new to all this, but both are sexually interested in each other and don't have a problem communicating. Ruby equates being forward about sex with her sister and her former profession and the only way to really overcome that obstacle is to talk to Amber.

My first thought on the last panel was “a cat is fine too.”

I’ll stop but I won’t apologize.

Azrael wrote: ↑

Sat Jul 21, 2018 9:49 am

Help me, Minew. You're my only hope.

This is not the cat you are looking for

brasca wrote: ↑

Sat Jul 21, 2018 2:16 pm

The problem Ruby is having doesn't match Ramona's experience. She and Jung are still new to all this, but both are sexually interested in each other and don't have a problem communicating.

Yeah yeah yeah, got all that. But Ramona might have come up with some ideas despite the fact that they didn’t come direct from her own experience; it’s perfectly possible for someone to imagine stuff. But she didn’t. C’est la vie.

Ruby equates being forward about sex with her sister and her former profession and the only way to really overcome that obstacle is to talk to Amber.

The only way she can sort out the problem with Amber is going to involve talking with Amber at some point, sure. I’m not convinced that she needs to deal with that to resolve the Andy thing, though. She’s already gradually come round to the idea that sex might be fun, despite the Amber issue initially obstructing that idea, and she’s already tried a bit of sexual forwardness; the black dress and innuendo were actually a pretty good stab at flirtation, for a first-timer, and most people would have got the hint. Unless there’s something that we readers are missing or not being told, Andy is just being dense, and Ruby will just have to ramp up the forwardness another few notches — which will be hard work for the poor woman, and involve some gritted teeth, but only requires a difference in degree, not a real breakthrough.

Though it’s possible that Andy has some baroque Freudian excuse for his obtuseness, which Ruby will have to discover and bypass. Hopefully, we’ll see some forward movement on Tuesday.

Run, Minew. Run while you still can.

I'm wondering how much to read into Zii's (imaginary) appearance in this strip. There was always a logical characterisation gap with her and Ruby; before they met in the comics shop, Ruby had already realised that Zii and Amber had been having sex -- frequently -- all those years ago when Ruby was locked out of the room, and yet Ruby seemed to ignore the fact in her interactions with Zii. This implicates Zii in much of the grudge material that Ruby has against Amber -- Amber avoiding Ruby at the exact time when Ruby needed friends and a sympathetic big sister, and Amber's sexual profligacy -- and Ruby isn't one to forgive or forget all that easily. I can think of three ways to explain this.

(1) Ruby has fixed every ounce of possible blame on Amber, and regards anyone else's involvement with her as incidental. Zii offered her friendship, so obviously Zii is an okay person, and the fact that she had sex with Amber in the past is just weird trivia. The logical problem with that is, Ruby has now now chosen to make this an issue.

(2) Ruby has been running a massive case of denial and doublethink. Past-Zii was part of the Amber problem, but she was a different person to present-Zii, who's a friend. Thinking too much about this could lose Ruby one of her few friends, so Ruby has blocked that line of thought off. So, I suppose, having to ask for advice about sex forced Ruby to think about Zii's sex life, and the denial glitched.

(3) Giz has been winging the whole thing. The plot needed Zii to become Ruby's friend, so Ruby didn't worry about the Amber connection; now, the plot requires that Ruby NOT be able to talk to Zii about Andy, and this is the excuse. Consistency would just be inconvenient.

Being cynical, I have to guess that (3) is the most likely explanation. Still, even if that is the case, the cat is out of the bag; the comic has acknowledged that Ruby should have an issue there. So I guess I'd just like to see Ruby talk to Zii about this one day -- or, for the sake of drama, shout about it sometime when she's on edge and Zii says the wrong thing.

But that's probably rather less likely than the return of Rudy, the comic's bigger Chekhov's gun.

Whelp, looks like Ruby's gonna have to work this out on her own. Looks like she's already decided to do so, really; the two people she did talk to didn't give her answers she liked or could use, and the only other one she feels comfortable taking to can't talk back.