20-01-15 A few more guy kisses

[zaprzapb]

Amber!

at Ruby.

[JTheCreator]

Amber is going to cheat on Gary

I don't think they're dating yet. That ship is still setting up its wind sails.

[Spidrift]

Amber certainly isn't thinking in terms of dating yet. Her orientation is, to quote the writers, Porn-Casual, and one orgiastic night doesn't make for a serious relationship in porn-casual terms. More seriously, she was last heard hoping that Gary might call her to progress things, which mostly shows that she really, realiy doesn't understand Gary.

Ironic, in that I'm sure that Gary wouldn't mind seeing her again, and all either of them would have to do is say something to Zii and get her acting as a go-between. But no, I suspect that relationship will continue to sputter on the starting line.

Meanwhile, the inked version of today's strip is up, and... I wish that the creators would stop making Ruby's facial expressions quite so deranged. All the other characters are drawn more or less realistically, and they can make Ruby look human -- but she keeps gurning like a clown. It makes her look like a deformed freak alongside the rest of the cast, which I'm fairly sure isn't meant to be how she is.

[Azrael]

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[JoybuzzerX]

As I think on this, I'm starting to wonder if Amber is one of the few decent people in the m3 universe She has her own naivety when it comes to things for sure, but she seems to be one of the few who isn't out just for themselves.

[Spidrift]

And yet, Amber is the one who scammed Gary into giving her blindfold oral sex, which had people round here throwing the R-word around. She's also willing to use sex to extract an apartment worth hundreds of thousands from a susceptible man. Also, her respect for Dillon's feelings for Gary was misguided, and she was able to assuage it by scaring Dillon half to death.

Face it, all of these characters have some normal human level of selfishness, amplified by the fact that they're all sex mad. They're not, most of them, really horrible people, but they all think that they're "good" when really they're just fairly nice to other people they like. The one significant exception is Ruby, who knows that she's inexperienced, and doesn't have many people she likes, so she tries to work out how to be "good" from first principles. But that makes her look priggish, and anyway just now she's high on hormones and hence behaving unusually badly.

[wi1dfire]

She's also willing to use sex to extract an apartment worth hundreds of thousands from a susceptible man.

All the rest, I am with you on it being morally suspect (especially and specifically including the time she tricked Gary into having sex with her, which meets MY litmus test for rape, but I'll not try to convince others to share that opinion), but this one is just good sense. Nathan wanted to take advantage of both her and Dillon, actually DID take advantage of their vulnerability as actors in order to satisfy his sexual cravings. He was considerate enough to value them as people, in his own way, and made sure they were adequately compensated for their compliance, even if Amber did have to prompt him to push out his parameters on what was "adequate."

If anything, I would take her to task on how lightly she took Dillon's trauma through this ordeal. Nathan and Amber obviously were just fine with this arrangement, but Dillon does not seem to be mercenary enough for this kind of action. Further, she didn't explain what she expected him to do, nor what they were getting out of it. He MIGHT have gone along without having his arm twisted if he knew all that beforehand, but I kind of doubt it.

[JTheCreator]

Also, her respect for Dillon's feelings for Gary was misguided, and she was able to assuage it by scaring Dillon half to death.

I don't remember this. Care to link it?

[Spidrift]

All the rest, I am with you on it being morally suspect ...

Please don't anybody think that I have some kind of big moral objection to Amber. She's just another member of a cast which mostly consists of not-very-bright or over-excitable people who keep doing dubious things. I don't mind that, because they're (a) fictional, (b) funny, and (c) sexy. I just don't think that Amber looks any better than the rest of them.

(Plus, being on Team Ruby, I'm especially obliged to note that she's an unthinking idiot.)

...but this one is just good sense. Nathan wanted to take advantage of both her and Dillon, actually DID take advantage of their vulnerability as actors in order to satisfy his sexual cravings. He was considerate enough to value them as people, in his own way, and made sure they were adequately compensated for their compliance, even if Amber did have to prompt him to push out his parameters on what was "adequate."

But looking at it another way, she took a hormone-addled idiot for tens of thousands of dollars worth of apartment. I'm not going to judge most of these characters for taking advantage of each others' idiocy and runaway hormones, because idiocy and runaway hormones are what the Ma3 universe runs on (and I'm not going to judge Amber for engaging in prostitution, because that's not something I believe in judging), but a scam that big goes beyond the "prank" level into the realm of taking advantage of the downright psychologically handicapped, and for all we know making a serious dent in his and his family's financial position.

I wouldn't make a big issue of it, because it's comedy and fiction, but I do put it in the "Amber is as bad as the rest of them" box.

Also, her respect for Dillon's feelings for Gary was misguided, and she was able to assuage it by scaring Dillon half to death.

I don't remember this. Care to link it?

It never hurts to help. Not something I consider a terrible crime, especially as the victim was Dillon, but it does suggest that Amber's sense of morality is a little wonky.

[wiseguy]

shakes head

in the Dillon case

lot of people(myself included) feel it was deserved, as Dillon made Amber think that Gary was his lover and she made sure Dillon gave her "permission" (I am guessing at that time she thought Gary was bisexual) before going for it

now the time she made Gary do the SGR for the first time, now in there I agree that it was underhanded EVEN if she had known that Gary was not gay and Dillon had lied to her(only difference if she had known the truth was that she would have right away offered chanelle instead of Dill after apologizing about tricking Gary)

[wi1dfire]

...but this one is just good sense. Nathan wanted to take advantage of both her and Dillon, actually DID take advantage of their vulnerability as actors in order to satisfy his sexual cravings. He was considerate enough to value them as people, in his own way, and made sure they were adequately compensated for their compliance, even if Amber did have to prompt him to push out his parameters on what was "adequate."

But looking at it another way, she took a hormone-addled idiot for tens of thousands of dollars worth of apartment. I'm not going to judge most of these characters for taking advantage of each others' idiocy and runaway hormones, because idiocy and runaway hormones are what the Ma3 universe runs on (and I'm not going to judge Amber for engaging in prostitution, because that's not something I believe in judging), but a scam that big goes beyond the "prank" level into the realm of taking advantage of the downright psychologically handicapped, and for all we know making a serious dent in his and his family's financial position.

Humor me for asking, but how exactly was this a scam? Nathan went into it eyes wide open. He never thought either Dillon or Amber loved him (which, actually, he quite possibly could have built a relationship with Dillon), never thought the apartment and job security was compensation for anything other than that one night. Amber manipulated both him and the situation (and Dillon), but he could have balked with far fewer consequences than Amber and Dillon faced if he didn't cave.

In short, he got exactly what he paid for. The price was higher than he initially wanted, but Amber hardly forced him or tricked him into paying up. Dillon, yes, but not Nathan.

I am not even sure you can class Amber as "unthinking." Compared to Ruby, yes, but Ruby is one of the few true intellectuals we see in this universe, in regards to personality. Amber is often second-guessing herself and her actions, and usually knows when she's pushing things too far past moral. She does it anyways, but she does acknowledge that she's wearing a black hat as she does so. It's honestly a little refreshing to me, since I have a soft spot for characters that knowingly do the wrong thing. Its a nice change from characters that jump through mental gymnastics trying to justify their actions, like Dillon and Ruby.

[Spidrift]

I'm using "scam" in a broad sense, but not entirely inaccurately, I think. Amber realised that Nathan was gasping to see his sexual fantasy fulfilled, and played him like a hooked fish, putting on that whole act about walking out and not being a whore and being prepared to live on the street until he was begging her and Dillon to stay - and then not walking out, playing his whore, and making very sure that she didn't have to live on the street. Her play there was constructed as a classic con game, making sure that the mark believes your lies and thinks it's his own idea to hand you his wallet.

Now, I don't blame Amber for her rather cynical amorality - as you say, she is at least honest about it, at least to herself - and the Nathan play was her most spectacularly successful demonstration of that attitude. It's probably an almost-realistic picture of a veteran of the porn business. But she does have a rather narrow understanding of human motivations, which shows up in her relationship with Ruby. She's been failing to understand what she's been doing to her own sister for the last seven or eight years, and she still doesn't have a clue. She probably thought, in her porn-casual way, that a fourteen-year-old girl seeing something unexpected in a porn film was no big deal, and she probably assumed that asking Ruby to lie to their parents all that time was equally trivial - after all, it was just what she was doing herself. But Ruby is sheltered and truthful; from her point of view, Amber is a lying whore who made her lie to the most important people in her life.

And that's what I meant when I called Amber "unthinking"; like I said, it's a Team Ruby position. She didn't think what she was doing to her own sister for seven years. Okay, she may think about some things she does, but even then she fails to understand where her actions are leading.

[Qwertz]

Ruby, last panel:
"Did I say that out loud?
...I said that out loud, didn't I? Oh dear.."

- not that I really think that she'll get in too much trouble, if only she can think her way through. Though thinking has been, apparently, put on hold at the moment

[FlashD81]

Her hormones are getting the best of her at this time but she might still be able to figure a way out of this yet.

[Spidrift]

My guess is that either this will be treated as a bunch of comedy asides, and somehow none of the other characters will ever seem to have heard anything that Ruby says, or somebody - probably Dillon - will register all the anvil-sized hints that Ruby has been dropping accidentally since he got home, and will confront her with the fact that, yes, her hormones clearly are kicking in.

The latter would be certain to lead to embarrassment (for Ruby, in this comic, what a novelty), but would at least also be a starting-point for some character development. She's making herself increasingly ridiculous with this denial, and also behaving increasingly badly (if not really so terribly as yet), and she really does need to get her head straighter.