10-03-15 Kiss one of my biggest crushes

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Spidrift
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Re: 10-03-15 Kiss one of my biggest crushes

Post by Spidrift »

Bambikles wrote:Shouldn't she try errr... manually before ? I dunno, between hand, man and sextoy, the more risqué one to me seems to be the sextoy.
Personally, I wouldn't disagree with you. Well, I wouldn't bother arguing. But these comics seem to treat electrical devices as the standard for self-pleasure, if only because characters wandering around with Hitachi boxes or complaining about running out of batteries are funny. So I assume that if and when Ruby gets there, mechanical assistance will be involved.
Bambikles wrote:Teens experiment with hands and... other objects before going to sextoys I guess. And remember how she threw the love egg and wanted to wash her hands afterwards ? Granted, she may had reacted differently if it had been in her "honey pot".
Remember, Ruby is quite fastidious even in matters unrelated to sex (such as toothpaste). That's just her personality. (I suspect that some lucky guy is going to find himself being required to shower and to watch her showering a lot, one day.) So when she found that love egg, she'll have had a severe squick reaction (and really, Amber's grasp of hygiene isn't good), with a twist of incest taboo. It doesn't imply much about how she'd want to do things for herself - although disinfectant cloths would doubtless be involved.
Bambikles wrote:It's hard to imagine she never masturbated before, if simply from curiosity or accidentally, but it seems to be the case given how repressed she is. And there are adult women who are perfectly sexually active and not repressed who yet never masturbate (saw a Frenchwoman made documentary about it once, I was surprised). So Ruby may be that ignorant about self-pleasure.
It bemuses me too, but all the figures I've seen say that much fewer women than men masturbate, and quite a few never do; Kinsey said 38% of women against 8% of men, and a more recent study said that 62% hadn't masturbated during the past year. (Ah, got to love the Internet.) I suspect that quite a few women like orgasms well enough, but find the act squicky enough that they don't bother if they've got any sort of reliably available partner. So if Ruby has never tried it, she's in a minority but she's not a freak.
brasca wrote:Personally I think she needs to take care of business rather than find a man. I find that notion rather sexist.
That's exactly why I'd normally be very careful about saying that any female character "needs to get laid"; it does come dangerously close to saying "needs a man to make her complete". But my gut feeling with Ruby is that she does need a sexual relationship, not just an orgasm - and as she appears to be quite solidly heterosexual, well, it's going to have to be a man.

She no doubt could get the hang of self-pleasuring, and it'd give her some release, but she's already locked into a solitary way of tackling this issue with the yaoi and the fantasies about Dillon. That isn't solving the problem, though; it's just tying her up in knots, distracting her from other concerns, and making her treat Dillon as a fantasy object instead of a person. That failure to engage with other people is exactly why she's been behaving so badly these last few strips.

She needs someone who can turn sex into a mutually respectful process for her, share a few jokes to help her get over the feeling that it's all a bit stupid and ridiculous, and listen to her ranting about her latest lousy job interview in the afterglow.
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Bambikles
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Re: 10-03-15 Kiss one of my biggest crushes

Post by Bambikles »

Spidrift wrote:She needs someone who can turn sex into a mutually respectful process for her, share a few jokes to help her get over the feeling that it's all a bit stupid and ridiculous, and listen to her ranting about her latest lousy job interview in the afterglow.
I'm not sure that someone like this existst, no can exist in the Mà3-verse. The closest would be Kiley or even Zii I guess, but for obvious reasons it can't work.

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Spidrift
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Re: 10-03-15 Kiss one of my biggest crushes

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You forgot Matt. It'd drive half the readership up the wall, but I suspect that if he found himself being somebody's first time, he'd set out to do it right - and Ruby might just be intelligent enough to engage his interest, the same way that Kiley does.

But honestly, this stuff isn't difficult. The mutual respect part can come from being in bed with someone she doesn't hate, the jokes can some from having a a half-working brain (they don't have to be good jokes), and the listening is just "not talking and not leaving the room".

Whether Andy qualifies remains to be seen - frankly, he really doesn't strike me as very bright - but he's nice enough that he'd at least try. He doesn't seem to be much more experienced than Ruby, and I have weird visions of him bringing out her maternal side...
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Re: 10-03-15 Kiss one of my biggest crushes

Post by wiseguy »

usually women are not so "sex driven" as men, they are more into "emotional connections" thus they do not need as many times of sex release

adding to that that women who have a sex partner are greatly less likely to masturbate and women are less likely to be honest about whether they do it or not is what contributed to such a vast difference of percentage of guys who masturbate vs women who masturbate............ also it is interesting the age factor and that if we go by 2 to 4 times per month the numbers for both genders between 18 and early 40s are close (5 or less percentage points) but are vastly different if we go with twice or more per week http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/0 ... 45530.html

but I can guarantee that the number might be even closer if we count just unattached men and women who do not have any sex partner at the present across the whole board
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Re: 10-03-15 Kiss one of my biggest crushes

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Frostbite wrote:Dining at the Y... gonna have to remember that one

A very popular one back in the 70's, but it sorta fell out of favor. Replaced in the 80's by, I think, Yodeling in the Canyon....

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Re: 10-03-15 Kiss one of my biggest crushes

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themacnut
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Re: 10-03-15 Kiss one of my biggest crushes

Post by themacnut »

Ruby may indeed be in desperate need of a good shagging, but considering how she's positioned herself so strongly as the Anti-Amber, I highly doubt she's going to allow herself that relief any time soon. Especially after seeing the way Amber just jumped in bed with Ray, she's probably going to be working extra hard to avoid doing anything even remotely like that, 'cause that's what Amber would do, and since Ruby sees herself as very much Not Like That, well, I see her self-enforced celibacy continuing well into the immediate future (which in this comic could be months real-time).
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Spidrift
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Re: 10-03-15 Kiss one of my biggest crushes

Post by Spidrift »

Yeah, the time ratio is a real factor one has to consider with these comics. Generally, one is doing well if one gets one's lifestyle issues or emotional problems sorted out within a month or two - but a month can easily be two or three volumes in Ma3 or SDB. So if the characters look static sometimes, it may just be realism. Conversely, because static-looking characters get a bit boring, some of these people experience complete turnarounds in their lives with what would actually be implausible speed if you counted the days shown in the comic. Witness the transformation in Gary's life inside a few months, or Dillon's shift from the tiresome twerp of volume 1 to the fairly decent guy doing his best of volume 2, which has actually happened almost literally overnight.

And yeah, Ruby hasn't yet even come close to accepting that a physical relationship wouldn't kill her and might even have its appeal - although the ducks are clearly being lined up. (She's admitted to the interest in yaoi, and she caught herself ogling Dillon, so she can't deny that she has urges - and she's even got a quasi-boyfriend who she can't find any real reasons to dislike and who she admits is cute.) And yeah, Amber is currently busily reminding her of all the reasons why she avoids this nonsense. But what we've now got is a much stronger reason for the plot to move that way eventually.

When she first came along, Ruby's virginity was something she could call her own choice, and to hell with all the pervs who wanted her to change. She was an attractive, healthy young woman in the Ma3 universe, so we all guessed that she'd get there eventually, but she had her own reasons for her decision. She was a bit uptight, but even a virgin can learn to relax when the pressure is off, and at least she could avoid the dumb melodrama that goes with relationships. Now, though, she's more than just uptight; she's getting dangerously flaky and treating people around her badly. She really needs to do something to get over that.

And if she remembers that Amber sees Ray as more or less her first boyfriend, Ruby may even develop a different angle on being the anti-Amber. Somebody needs to tell her that making a success of carefully paced monogamy actually makes her about as un-Amberish as a girl can get outside a convent. If she was a bit more competitive, she might even see this as a way to show Amber up.

Plus, well, seeing Ruby negotiating dating and eventually, further down the line, sex, is going to be funny as hell. Ruby the uptight virgin is a one-joke character; Ruby on dates with a good-natured idiot like Andy, fending off Dillon and Amber's cack-handed attempts to help, and getting into passionate clinches without either party suffering injury, has almost unlimited potential.
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Re: 10-03-15 Kiss one of my biggest crushes

Post by KittyHat »

Spidrift wrote:However, Ruby is being a little uncharacteristically slow here.
I don't really agree with this at all. In fact, I disagree so much that one of the reasons I registered at all was just to give my own two cents' on this very topic, because you on a number of occasions have made much of Ruby's alleged intellectual superiority, but I am just not seeing it at all. Okay, yes, she's arguably book smart, at least enough to accomplish her education, and it stands to reason she's more knowledgeable than Dillon or Amber in her field (which I actually forget now what that is, having slept quite a number of times since then).

But need I remind you of the bit with the skirts? There is very little evidence of Ruby being smarter than anyone else in this comic (I would actually argue that Amber's aggregate demonstrated intellect is at least on par and possibly superior), and by contrast, she's had her share of "dumbest person in the room" moments.

In light of that, I honestly see nothing strange at all about her being slow on the uptake. Looks like par for the course to me.

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Re: 10-03-15 Kiss one of my biggest crushes

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(On the matter of fact - her degree is a BBA. So she's looking for a generic "business" job.)

She's definitely more book-smart than generally intelligent, certainly, and her comedy social stupidity is sometimes quite severe; the short skirt was the worst example of that. But sometimes, her brain fires up and makes the book smarts believable. She worked out how to talk Dillon down from his self-pitying tantrum over Nathan, and she correctly guessed that Ray was an old crush as well as an old friend of Dillon's. She can be quick, too, as when she pulled the boyfriend bluff to protect Dillon at the concert.

(She also seems to be the only character in the setting who knows how to make use of the Internet as an information source, which I guess fits under "book smart".)

She's easily confused and easily manipulated, which often makes her look foolish, and yes, her practical intelligence goes up and down with the needs of the plot and the current joke. But after her stint as Rudy, I could believe in her as the smart one, and I do find that more interesting than the strips which need her to be stupid.

(As to Amber's intelligence, by the way - she displayed one burst of street-smarts long ago, when she took Nathan for the apartment, but we haven't seen much evidence either way since then. She had that unfortunate moment the evening when she tried to block Dillon in his own room, but I guess that anyone can make mistakes. Mostly, she just tends to wander round doing the obvious. I couldn't assume anything about her brain, really.)

But anyway, my tendency to projection aside...

On an unrelated theme, another reason for wanting her to date Andy crossed my mind. After incidents like this strip, she's likely to get irritated with both Amber and Dillon simultaneously, but she has nobody else in town to complain to about them. The question is, how would Andy handle it if she unloaded all her frustrations on him over dinner?
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Re: 10-03-15 Kiss one of my biggest crushes

Post by Don Alexander »

Wow. Dillon is evermore crwling out of the scrap heap - here's the "Gary is Straight" realization Spi was hoping for in the last thread!

Ruby, meanwhile, goes rock bottom... :-L
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Re: 10-03-15 Kiss one of my biggest crushes

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I think he realised that Gary was straight long ago; this is actually admitting it in so many words. But yes, this is good. I do wonder where along the line the creators started plotting Dillon's rise from cute blond twerpitude to being a decent sort of human being.

And actually, I though that rock bottom for Ruby was trying to steer Ray into kissing Dillon, when Ray was clearly feeling uncomfortable about that. That's using another human being for her own gratification. Bad Ruby, no biscuit. By contrast, this is just fairly harmless and silly fantasising about Dillon.

Still, it leaves me hoping that Dillon and Amber are actually allowed to hear what she's saying here and to ask what's up with her. Dillon might even piece the truth together, actually, given that he already knows about her yaoi fetish. She usually tries to be a better person than this, and the longer she goes on like this, the worse she's likely to feel when she does pull herself together.
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crimzontearz
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Re: 10-03-15 Kiss one of my biggest crushes

Post by crimzontearz »

Sigh


Both Amber and Ruby are made to be looking like selfish idiots here....Ruby especially so.

Are the authors trying to make Dillon look good by comparison?

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Re: 10-03-15 Kiss one of my biggest crushes

Post by KittyHat »

You make it sound like this is unusual for Ruby.

Ruby. You know, the same person who showed up at someone else's place (I don't care if it is her sister) seeking a place to stay and has been consistently unpleasant to her host since?

I certainly wouldn't conduct myself the way she does in someone else's home, even a relative's, and I would look poorly on anyone who did. Ruby being a selfish idiot? Looks like par for the course to me ...

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Re: 10-03-15 Kiss one of my biggest crushes

Post by crimzontearz »

Quite

Yet BEFORE she was obnoxious but at least she b seemed intelligent. Now she devolved into unpleasant sexually obsessed and downright dumb. (E.G. she accuses Dillon of being straight when he flat out told her he seduced supposingly straight guys)

It's like the authors thought "intelligence? Oh my blushing buttcheeks....we can't have that now can we? Let's make her dumb and even more unpleasant ( because blackmail of family member is just not unpleasant enough) and stick Dillon next to her to make him look slightly less aggravating by comparison"

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