28-10-14 Out of print

[Don Alexander]

Purple? I'm obviously missing something here.

a) Grape juice.
b) There was also undefined purple stuff in DC.

[zaprzapb]

Ruby's facial expressions are hilarious to me and I don't know why.

[Azrael]

There goes Ruby, crossing that old river again.

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[Spidrift]

Unless the Montreal branch of Dark Matter Games works Sundays, Ma3 has just jumped to the next day or later, and Zii is on-set there. That probably makes it less likely that she'll be appearing in this storyline; having the same character in two different comics at different points in time just gets confusing and hard to manage. But I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

[Don Alexander]

There goes Ruby, crossing that old river again.

Which is experiencing flooding of biblical proportions...

Seriously, I'm like the Anti-Spidrift here. I like Ruby less and less from comic to comic, people like this just totally tick me off.

[Spidrift]

I don't know why denial angers some people so much. I mean, it's irritating, sure, and kind of silly - but in a case like this, it's not really anything that the character can do anything about, voluntarily. It's a sad weakness, not a vice. The natural response seems to me to be to feel sorry for someone whose perception of the world is so far out of line with reality.

Though the problem with Ruby is that she has to be in this level of extreme denial for the story to work, and it just makes her look stupid. If her problem was extreme religious morality (like, say, Joyce in Dumbing of Age), then it wouldn't help much if she recognised her own feelings; she'd still have a long, hard, interesting journey in front of her. And if she was really seriously mentally disturbed (like, say, Hanners in Questionable Content), she'd have a real reason for avoiding sexuality. But as it is, all Ruby has got is this idiotic hysterical denial, which someone as bright as her should be able to recognise and resolve. Take that away from her, and she'd be able to goink Andy, point out that Amber's mistake was overdoing things, and get on with leading a fairly happy life (and stop annoying Don). But then, there wouldn't be any good jokes to be had from her.

So we'll probably get another year or two of strips like this one, before the writers get bored with recycling the one joke and think of something else to do with Ruby, and then she'll do a Gary, drop the denial, get laid, and find some other problem. (Maybe something to do with her new job?) But while I don't get annoyed with her the way Don does, I do wish she could be given a bit more complexity. Maybe the writers can get back to her relationship with Amber? That's at least a slightly more complicated mess.

[brasca]

Joyce and Hannelore are some good examples and while we have yet to get a strip with some good exposition we can only theorize about Ruby. Perhaps Amber was like Ruby at one time too. Even Dillon was once a nerd who didn't have romance or sex on his mind all the time so it's possible that Amber while not as intelligent as her sister was someone her parents thought would grow up to be a doctor. Perhaps there was a lot of pressure for her to excel and be a good example to her kid sister Ruby who possibly wanted to grow up to be just like her and strove to get good grades too. Then Amber had a sexual awakening and while most girls don't end up pursuing a career in pornography the revelation scared Ruby to the point that she rejects even the notion of having a standard sexual appetite. She needs to see that indulging in yaoi or guilty pleasure romance books will not lead to becoming a porn star, but the problem is so many of the people around her are comparable to her at a young age and then compensated big time once they were older that she probably fears that if she ever stops resisting the urges and temptations she'll be taking her sister's place in adult entertainment. Perhaps Jung could set her straight on that, but I doubt he'd be much of an influence in the time they have right now.

[Spidrift]

Jung is quite sharp, and has shown an occasional capacity for niceness, but I'm not sure that he's quite got the empathy and insight to help Ruby much, beyond giving her the space to acquire a few yaoi books without having a nervous breakdown. (I'd be amused to see what might happen if any of the shop's regular teen geek customers walked in right now. Jung should spot the need to divert them.) He is, when all's said and done, a somewhat snarky geek.

The character who could actually short-circuit the whole Ruby mess in about three strips would of course be Kiley - but she's got her own problems just now, and anyway the writers won't want to scratch their one joke here. I guess Ruby's best hope, whether she knows it or not, might be another collision with Matt, who's about the only character in the setting who I could imagine teasing her constructively.

(Long term, my fanboy headcanon has her sharing an apartment with Peggy, who could teach her the difference between being a bad person and cutting loose a little in your spare time, and who could use somebody sane to share rent and cooking with.)

[Mordhaus]

I would be pleasantly surprised if she acted like an adult and simply owned up to her accidental spillage.

[Spidrift]

On the one hand, that's insufficiently comedic; on the other, she's insufficiently mentally stable. So it isn't going to happen, whether you see this as comedy or drama.

Well, until she's put herself through a wringer to replace the book. Then her compulsive truthfulness will probably make her tell Dillon the full story anyway. But really, expecting someone to behave "like an adult" in these comics?

[wiseguy]

I would be pleasantly surprised if she acted like an adult and simply owned up to her accidental spillage.

it was minew's fault