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In this case, it's not homophobia (forced or otherwise).

Ruby's more irritated by the fact that Dillon is tricking a straight man into making out with him under the guise of acting lessons (and really, any rational person would be. You just don't use people like that).

Storm-forge mystique wrote:Why is it Dillon puts up with Ruby's forced homophobia, anyway?

What forced homophobia? She was a little weirded out the first time she saw him and Jerzy having sex, but it rapidly became clear that her problem was with sex in general, not with just gay sex, and in any case she was far too polite to actually say anything. Her denial weirdness has continued in that pattern; she's confused about sex, and it happens to be gay sex she keeps getting opportunities to be confused about, but she's just as judgemental about Amber's straight sex escapades or what she thinks Andy wants from her. The "fully wrong" line here was her weak attempt to cover up the fact that she'd just said "really hot".

And she's given him good, honest, useful advice about his love life. That hardly seems homophobic. For a small-c-conservative woman with a negative impression of sex in general, she actually seems very open-minded and liberal, if only out of politeness.

Fluffy wrote:Ruby's more irritated by the fact that Dillon is tricking a straight man into making out with him under the guise of acting lessons (and really, any rational person would be. You just don't use people like that).

Indeed. I generally despise the reflexive "swap the sexes around" way of looking at this sort of thing, but honestly - if Dillon was a straight guy, using acting lessons as an excuse to cop a snog and a feel from a naive woman, the Internet lynch mob would want his balls nailed to the wall.

Except it wouldn't work like that. It would be a lesbian using acting lessons as an excuse to cop a snog and a feel from a naive woman.
Actually I wonder if it wouldn't be even less frowned upon than what Dillon does, since you know "OMG, girl-on-girl is SO HOT!!". A bit trolling here I admit it.

As for forced homophobia, yeah, Ruby pretends to see all sex a inappropritate, even if her hormones thell her otherwise. She probably is even more uncomfortable with straight sex, as it would imply OMG! a woman and she could possibly OMG! identify with her. This risk is taken away with boys' love.

Bambikles wrote:Except it wouldn't work like that. It would be a lesbian using acting lessons as an excuse to cop a snog and a feel from a naive woman.
Actually I wonder if it wouldn't be even less frowned upon than what Dillon does, since you know "OMG, girl-on-girl is SO HOT!!". A bit trolling here I admit it.

So in other words Dillon acting like Zii.

Bambikles wrote:Except it wouldn't work like that. It would be a lesbian using acting lessons as an excuse to cop a snog and a feel from a naive woman.

Depends on how anyone wanted to play this...

Bambikles wrote:Actually I wonder if it wouldn't be even less frowned upon than what Dillon does, since you know "OMG, girl-on-girl is SO HOT!!". A bit trolling here I admit it.

"Even less frowned on"? I don't see many people here defending Dillon. I thought we could all see why (even) Dillon was suffering twinges of guilt.

The analogy to Zii with Sonya is obvious; of course, Zii has taken some criticism on these boards for that (though I'm sure that some people would say not enough). But if one wants to defend Zii, at least by comparison to Dillon here, one can say that Sonya did seem to be getting into what Zii was offering at every stage, even if she was a bit slow to recognise it herself. Zii's gaydar had gone off, and she was bringing out the truth she noticed about Sonya (and Sonya now gets quite sentimental over the incident). It's equally clear that Dillon hasn't sensed anything gay about Ray; all he's doing is tricking Ray into giving him cheap thrills.

So whatever you want to say about Zii, Dillon is being significantly worse.

Bambikles wrote:As for forced homophobia, yeah, Ruby pretends to see all sex a inappropritate, even if her hormones thell her otherwise. She probably is even more uncomfortable with straight sex, as it would imply OMG! a woman and she could possibly OMG! identify with her. This risk is taken away with boys' love.

The basic "Why straight people like porn about members of the opposite sex being gay" explanation, yes.

Spidrift wrote:The analogy to Zii with Sonya is obvious; of course

*Sincerity mode* I didn't thought of the analogy with Zii and Sonya until I read Brasca's post. I was thinking in general terms. Zii annoys me at times (the pettiness of the troll incident will never be forgiven unless appropriate nuclear-level retribution) but I'm not dedicated to bash her at every opportunity.

Neither am I, at all - but once I started thinking about "gay character takes advantage of straight character's naivety to cop a feel", I realised that this was likely to come up. I know how arguments on these boards work.

I don't see Dillon kissing Ray anymore unless Ray is made aware that Dillon is gay and Ray is OK with it. If the lessons continue (big IF at this point) it will most likely include Ruby with one of the guys.

Then again I could be totally wrong.

I agree. Ruby clearly sees what Dillon is doing as fairly seriously wrong, and Dillon's conscience is twinging enough that he can't really argue with her. At which point, Ruby is likely to end up kissing someone as a way of continuing the lesson without giving away Dillon's dubious behaviour to his friend. And it'll happen because it's funny.

Actually, Ruby may end up talking her way into the job in order to distract Dillon's attention from her Freudian slips. Though I also suspect that she might decide that it's a way to get the hang of kissing, and to harden herself to the feel of man-lips, before she embarrasses herself any more with Andy. She's all but admitted, in her wall-of-text explosion at Amber, that she'd quite like to at least try a kiss or two - and here's a chance to learn something about it in a controlled environment.

(I've even been wondering if Ray and Andy will end up competing for Ruby. It'd be a good joke in itself; Ruby, unused to having one boyfriend, and still unsure if she wants even that many, suddenly finding herself in the full torn-between-two-lovers, trying-not-to-hurt-anyone situation, while Dillon and Amber look on in jealous confusion and offer crap advice.)

I kind of like that last bit. It will be funny as she is growing in her sexuality kind of way. Good call sir, good call.