29-07-14 28 is lucky

[JoybuzzerX]

As for the eternal "if the genders were reversed": it doesn't work, because once you reverse or change genders you change the quality of the situation. Men and women are treated differently and subsequently experience life differently. Thus the same behaviour may be experienced totally differently by men and women.

When a man hits on a lesbian, the issues are very different than when a gay man hits on a "straight" man. Women in general are treated by and viewed by our society as being less than men, and the possessions of men. Thus, a woman actually showing that she can live her life without a man and going ahead and living her life without a man is seen as being outside the norm and something that must be "corrected". Thus, a lesbian is pressured not just directly, but indirectly to center her life around men. With regards to sexuality, however, women are in a less problematic position than men are. Whether or not a woman has sex with another woman is not seen as being horrific or wrong. In fact, our society encourages a certain amount of "experimentation" so long as it is done for 1) the gratification of men, and 2) the women then center their interests on men afterwards.

When a gay man hits on a "straight" man, things are very different. There are a lot of men who are bisexual or pansexual, but who have been forced by societal expectations to align themselves sexually with women. The pressure on men to be straight is also incredibly strong. You end up with situations like with Nathan in Ma3. There are a lot of men out there who have sex with other men without admitting it. The issues there are not about being possessions of men. Instead, the issue is that our society sees anyone who has sex with men as being less than masculine. Thus, the end result is that men are suppose to be ashamed of having any attraction to men. In some ways, Dillon isn't exactly seducing straight men away from their girlfriends. Instead, it would probably be more accurate for him to say that he is having sex with men who are too ashamed to admit to being attracted to other men in some way. Of course, unfortunately, many gay men have a tendency to engage in bi-erasure, and often ignore bisexuals as existing.

These are kind of shortened explanations. There's a LOT involved in the different dynamics.

See, that's wrong. Dillion is seducing men (straight or not) away from their girlfriends. When someone does that to Matt, Dillion gets upset. When someone does that to Jerzy, he gets upset. (Note: whether it's true or he just thinks it's true), Dillion is still doing what he says he hates.

Doesn't matter if the men where too ashamed to admit they like guys.

[Spidrift]

What's amusing me is that, when Ruby first appeared in this comic, she attracted a significant amount of hostility on these boards. I sometimes felt like a lone voice saying "For Heaven's sake, she's one of our own - can't we have a bit of nerd solidarity here?".

Now, all it takes is a bit of adaptability and a couple of sarcastic lines, plus Dillon being written as a bit more of a jerk, and suddenly this thread is full of people saying that they only come to the comic for Ruby.

[Swayambhu]

since SDB still won't load for me - and I'm beginning to wonder if it ever will again on my laptop (for some cryptic reason I suppose) - anyone wanna be super-duper and post the strip here for me?

[Spidrift]

This do it?

It hasn't been a full year in Ma3 time since the very beginning. Half a year and a smidge perhaps? Haven't kept track too closely, but I know for sure we're not in Summer now and it was Summer (in strip) when Ma3 started. In SDB... a couple of weeks?

I don't keep a calender either, but I don't think it's been even that long in either. My best guess from what I recall of admitted time skips is 3-5 months in Ma3, barely more than a week, if that, in SDB. (It's definitely just eight days or so in Sandra, because Domenico has just got back from his one-week trip to London.) This is why Gary's birthday puzzled me, because early on, Zii said that he'd just had his 29th.

Double post merged. The DAMNed

[Zippy]

since SDB still won't load for me - and I'm beginning to wonder if it ever will again on my laptop (for some cryptic reason I suppose)...

I've had the same problem with SotR for months now on my phone. Only that site - not Ma3, the *C sites, etc - and only on my phone.

[Don Alexander]

Alas, whatever I could comment on the comic, I don't think it will make Kate marry me.

[Spidrift]

That's okay; second marriages are always problematic. Especially if they're polyandrous, I suspect.

[Artemisia]

It hasn't been a full year in Ma3 time since the very beginning. Half a year and a smidge perhaps? Haven't kept track too closely, but I know for sure we're not in Summer now and it was Summer (in strip) when Ma3 started. In SDB... a couple of weeks?

I don't keep a calender either, but I don't think it's been even that long in either. My best guess from what I recall of admitted time skips is 3-5 months in Ma3, barely more than a week, if that, in SDB. (It's definitely just eight days or so in Sandra, because Domenico has just got back from his one-week trip to London.) This is why Gary's birthday puzzled me, because early on, Zii said that he'd just had his 29th.

That's what I'd been thinking too. Basically, it hasn't been all that long since we met Dillon.

[TwoWayStar]

Well I was going to remark about the intense vitriol towards Dillon but it seems to have been addressed enough that I don't want to repoke the hornet's nest haha.

Ruby yeesss, never forget that while awful things do happen to people and we should feel empathy..sometimes those people do awful things as well! Never forget who Dillon is. *pats Ruby*

Anyhoo, terrible. Just awful! Cheating is always wrong full stop. Artemisia, TheDude, TCambell and OptimusKAte said it all, I agree 100% lmao.

This is what I feel happens any time SDB updates with Dillon in it:

[Spidrift]

Ruby yeesss, never forget that while awful things do happen to people and we should feel empathy..sometimes those people do awful things as well! Never forget who Dillon is. *pats Ruby*

That's actually a side of Ruby we didn't see at first, mostly because we saw a lot of her difficult relationship with Amber; she not only tries to be a good person, she also tries to be empathetic. She doesn't like to see people hurting, even if they're hurting from things she hasn't experienced herself. We can't assume that she sympathises with Dillon in the early panels here because she's ever been two-timed herself, because it seems most likely that she's never been in a relationship in the first place. She presumably sympathises because she can understand that being betrayed hurts, if only in theory.

People keep saying that these comics are full of awful people, but Ruby actually looks like a picture of a basically good (but very flawed) person. Some might say that she's the first in the setting.

Anyhoo, terrible. Just awful! Cheating is always wrong full stop. Artemisia, TheDude, TCambell and OptimusKAte said it all, I agree 100% lmao.

One thing I'm trying to decode about the Dillon fans; how much of it is because he's cute? Looking at the discussion of the way that the creep who just got thumped in SotR also happened to be ugly, I have to ask; if Dillon wasn't so pretty, would he get cut half so much slack?

Because it recently occurred to me that his behaviour - the manipulativeness and hypocrisy and self-deception - actually makes him very similar to Nathan. And Nathan is one of Ma3's few outright bad guys - but funnily enough, he isn't pretty.

[Bambikles]

I'm not a fan of Dillon per se, but I tend to find the hate he receives exaggerated. To talk quickly, Dillon is so much larger than life that he appears to me as a comical artifact devoid of any kind of realism, so I doesn't expect him to act this way. He's the character in the Mà3 verse with the biggest "fictitious" coefficient, with him everything becomes theatrical, thus much more laughable. Nathan doesn't have this. He's too much, sadly real(istic).

This is probably why Yuki's and Didi's antics grate me much less than Sonya's stupidity. Yuki's craziness and Didi's...everything are actually too much bigger than life to be taken seriously. While Sonya's more low-key's antics are more realistic, then more irritating because I know these could happen, and that there are people like this IRL.

I'm actually writing as I'm reflecting, so maybe it's not very clear nor relevant, but this is how things intuitively come to me.

I also find interesting your post about hypocrisy. I think you're right. I admit that one of the reason's (there are other) I still find Matt likable is that he had that "At least I admit it" moment. What people may deeply reproach to charaecter like Dillon, Didi and Yuki is their lack of self-awareness. Though Yuki has been shown willing to improve once she catch the problem. Didi and Dillon seem impervious to this kind of realization. Maybe Didi gets aways because she's the goddess of fanservice, which brings us back to your question about Dillon's cuteness. But I note that Didi lost a significant amount of her fans since she got flanderized.

[Spidrift]

Ah well, so far as I can see, all of these characters are more or less equally theatrical and cinematic and plausible or implausible. Perhaps it's because I personally am a quiet small-town bourgeoisie, so all of this stuff is slightly alien to me, really. (Guess why I sympathise with Ruby?)

But anyway, I'd say that Sonya really wants to be a theatrical figure; specifically, she wants to be a femme fatale. Shame there's a minimum IQ qualification for the job, but that's life. And her stupidity gets fairly theatrical itself, surely? As in "too dumb to live", when she isn't showing odd flashes of insight?

Conversely, I don't see Dillon as a genuinely larger-than-life figure; as I understand things, some gay men really do take refuge in wild camp theatricality. I've seen The Naked Civil Servant and Tales of the City, after all. Is he really less realistic than an abusive, creepy, casting-couch-wielding movie producer like Nathan?

As for hypocrisy - note that it's not the same thing as lack of self-awareness. The latter is just a flaw, the former is a vice. Most of the cast are a little short on self-understanding, but have twinges of insight when they think. DiDi has a real problem there, but she has a moderately complicated problem, she's really not very bright, and she's been driven nuts by frustration, so she's kind of sad rather than really horrible. Matt, as you say, does actually have some self-knowledge. Dillon, though, is in a situation where things should be blindingly obvious to the meanest intellect, but just completely ignores them because it would be inconvenient. That makes him look like an actual raging hypocrite, which really annoys people.

[Optimus Kate]

Alas, whatever I could comment on the comic, I don't think it will make Kate marry me.

Wait, we're not married already?

[RickSmith]

I just find Dillon boring as a character. What most bores me is that every time he seems to actually change there's a quick reversion to the status quo, at least in terms of his thoughts/beliefs. ...

Hi Odd Man Out,
Actually I could argue that this is simple realism and good story telling. For people to change bad habits, they have to want to change them AND even if they succeed some, they are likely to backslide. It can seem to take forever when we are seeing two or three strips a week, but when you are reading the book, the pacing will seem better.

That said, the pacing at 2 times a week can be SO SLOW... The real cost of a free comic perhaps.

SDB has been riding on the ragged edge of falling off my read list for a while. I trust that the writers will cause good things to happen eventually, but the effort to get there has, at times, seemed too great. However, I didn't like 'Pushy Ruby' at first and I've come to be curious about how she will react and grow, so I will likely keep reading, at least for a while. (I would be happier about Ruby if she showed some effort to get a job and stop sponging off of Amber and Dillon.)

It seemed Gary would never get laid, then he did. It seemed he would never grow a spine, then he dumped Senna. I am sure Gary will backslide, but I see a real chance that he will improve some. I am not that surprised that Gary seems to be stuck right now, since he seems to be doing OK, with minimum effort on his part. And if things are working, why change? Things will have to get really bad before Gary is motivated enough to seriously try to take his life in hand.

In SDB, everyone is unhappy except Angel and Amber. I suspect things will get crappier for a bit, and Dillon will be presented with a hard choice. He will dodge, weave, duck... basically do everything he can to avoid confronting some real character growth, and then ALMOST avoid it. Rinse repeat.

It is tough storytelling to keep people involved with an unlikeable set of main characters. The thing is, it is easy for the comic writers to be thinking of a set of cool events that will be happening 300 strips in the future, while the readers are stuck in the here and now. Will they lose readership? Almost certainly. Will the comic survive, if readers abandon it en-mass? Maybe not.

Partly because of MA3, I am willing to stick with SDB a bit longer, but I confess it has been a slog at times.

Warm regards, Rick.

[Spidrift]

(I would be happier about Ruby if she showed some effort to get a job and stop sponging off of Amber and Dillon.)

We don't see the employed characters in these comics at work much, unless something funny or important to the plot happens there. (Gary's 'phone conversations, Sonya's conversations with Ally, Zii's skirmishes with Jung.) And events depicted in this comic have mostly occurred in the evenings and weekends. I've taken it for granted that, while Amber and Dillon are at work on the film set, Ruby is out talking to agencies and sitting in interviews.

She said, perfectly plausibly, that the job search could take a few weeks, and she certainly wants it to be over as much as anybody (so she can get a bed for herself). And I don't think she's been in the flat for two weeks yet. I don't see any sign that she's being lazy - and we know that she's claimed a section of the fridge for herself, and shopped for stuff to go in it, so I assume that she's not freeloading for food either. Presumably she had some money in the bank when she started.

It seemed Gary would never get laid, then he did. It seemed he would never grow a spine, then he dumped Senna.

By accident, it has to be said, and without knowing he'd done so at first.

In SDB, everyone is unhappy except Angel and Amber.

As of right now, I guess that's true. But Angel isn't in an inherently happy situation, and Amber really needs to get her reality filters sorted out. (I was pleased to see TCampbell confirming what I thought was her big ongoing plot point.) So there's plenty of misery to go round.