29-09-15 The good news

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TwoWayStar
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Re: 29-09-15 The good news

Post by TwoWayStar »

Hm, I am seeng some good points on hte board about some of Ruby's problems being her own fault. And I also think that Ruby is a grown woman and not a child as some members seem to want to treat her like.

Also Spidrift? You may want to chill on the sex worker talk. Amber not communicating well with her parents may well be just an AMBER thing. I know some ppl that do sex work, and they've talked to their parents (or at least the one theyre close to) about what they do. Also, how is it AMBER's fault that people were showing her porn video at a party?! Unless Amber set it up there for everyone to see, sounds like someone else did it! Will gladly admit if it's Amber that showed it, that's pretty messed up but if she didn't...who is to say that it was put up there by people who wanted to actually be malicious to Amber?!

As far as I know, we DON'T. Amber has her problems, but she is not the be all end all of causes.

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Spidrift
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Re: 29-09-15 The good news

Post by Spidrift »

I'm not saying that Amber doesn't talk to her parents because she's a sex worker (though it's established that she hasn't told them about her career); I'm saying that Amber choosing to become a sex worker suggests that they didn't do a great job as parents. Sorry if it offends anyone (though not very sorry), but I just don't think that porn acting is a great career choice for anyone. The fact that Amber went there suggests to me that her judgement was shaky in her late teens, which has to be partly down to her parents.

And it wasn't Amber's fault, specifically, that someone showed one of her videos at that party; it's clear that she was nowhere nearby at the time. It is her fault that nobody in her family knew that she was a porn actress, because she chose not to tell them. Hence, there was a danger that one of them would find out by accident, which was bound to be a shock for any of them. As it turned out, the one who found out was her 14-year-old sister (a child at that date), and she found out in just about the worst way possible - in a room full of her contemporaries. So by a combination of sheer bad luck and Amber's carelessness, a 14-year-old child suffered a shock that seems to have messed her head up quite badly.

Nobody was malicious, so far as we know, but bad luck was compounded by Amber's bad judgement. Maybe Ruby could have handled things better in the long term, but she had her own problems, and there are reasons why she's ended up blaming Amber for a lot of this.
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Spidrift
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brasca
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Re: 29-09-15 The good news

Post by brasca »

Okay Spidrift you drew your conclusions based on what is established and so will I.

The LaRose family is a typical middle class family with parents who are doctors and presumably 2 daughters. There is the possibility another LaRose sibling exists. As such the LaRose's may or may not be socially conservative, but socially striving. As such they want their children to grow up and do something important with their lives. Perhaps as a child Amber was a great student and they hoped she would be a doctor too. Then puberty happened and Zii not long after that. I would estimate that the LaRoses might be a little naive since they would certainly put their foot down if Amber was taking a boy back to her bedroom on a regular basis, but little Suzie from down the street. Well they can trust her. ;) Amber's fascination with sex and getting paid for it seemed to be her motivation that lead to pornography. There probably is more to it than that, but that remains to be revealed. I do theorize that maybe the LaRose sisters have a bit of an exhibitionist streak since Amber was a porn star and to a lesser extent Ruby took some provocative pictures of herself. Maybe the LaRose household was a bit stifling and there was an urge to break free, but that does not mean abuse. No family is perfect.

Meanwhile there is Ruby. In the beginning I could see a big sister little sister relationship and perhaps Ruby looked up to her, but time changes things. When Amber hit puberty she started hanging out with other friends and had less time for her sister. This would be crushing, but it is not that Amber was being malicious. Things just happen that way. Perhaps to differentiate herself she continued to be a straight A student even if Amber's grades were slipping which of course would not make her many friends at school. She had at least one, Lucy, but she preferred popularity. It is difficult to estimate when that falling out occurred since it might have been before or after Ruby learned the truth about her sister. If it is the former then that heavily influenced her views on sex and people her age. If it is the latter then it probably reinforced her low opinions of people who put frivolous high school popularity and sex before academic achievement. All the while she never had anyone to turn to since talking to her mother might reveal what Amber is actually doing. Her biggest fear is that it could happen to her so she committed herself fully to academic pursuits and ignoring her libido.

Now I could be wrong. They might be stodgy parents who instilled the notion that nothing their children do is ever good enough, but if that were the case I doubt Amber would ever care to see them again instead of just being embarrassed about her former profession. As you stated Pixietrix Comics are very much inspired by classic high school comics, which tend to keep parents off-screen. Now while this tends to stretch credibility with comics like Penny & Aggie it is fairly plausible here since these are young adults who just moved out of their parents' home. Moreover, we cannot observe every single thing they do so it is quite possible that Ruby calls home on a regular basis, but Amber does not. Scenes like that would take time to do and we only get 2 strips per week. Personally I think Giz and Dave can write parents, but the more characters you introduce the more complicated things can get and Menage a 3 is quite complicated as it is. Furthermore it is highly convenient that almost all of the characters are not native to Montreal. They moved there from other places in Canada which means their parents cannot just drop by and visit or meddle in their lives.

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Spidrift
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Re: 29-09-15 The good news

Post by Spidrift »

It's still "Larose", lower-case "r". Giz said so. You can save your shift finger.
brasca wrote:The LaRose family is a typical middle class family with parents who are doctors and presumably 2 daughters. There is the possibility another LaRose sibling exists. As such the LaRose's may or may not be socially conservative, but socially striving. As such they want their children to grow up and do something important with their lives.
No argument so far...
brasca wrote:Perhaps as a child Amber was a great student and they hoped she would be a doctor too.
Possibly, but we have zero evidence of that. All we know is that Ruby seems to make Amber feel a bit stupid. If Amber ever thought of herself as bright, I reckon that would be less likely.
brasca wrote:Then puberty happened and Zii not long after that. I would estimate that the LaRoses might be a little naive since they would certainly put their foot down if Amber was taking a boy back to her bedroom on a regular basis, but little Suzie from down the street. Well they can trust her.
Okay, I'll believe that.
brasca wrote:Amber's fascination with sex and getting paid for it seemed to be her motivation that lead to pornography. There probably is more to it than that, but that remains to be revealed.
The world is full of people who discover that they like sex, and the Ma3 world doubly so - but not all of them go into porn. For an obvious example, Zii is just as enthusiastic and talented as Ruby, but she wouldn't even consider becoming a "dancer". Amber ... lost the plot, as it seems.

Parenting is a notoriously tricky art, of which I claim no great knowledge, but the thing with teens is, I understand, to give them space to stretch their wings and explore, while providing them with a solid base and enough good sense that they don't do too much that's unwise or self-destructive. The Larose parents blew that with Amber. That doesn't prove incompetence - Amber has free will - but it sure doesn't show competence.
brasca wrote:I do theorize that maybe the LaRose sisters have a bit of an exhibitionist streak since Amber was a porn star and to a lesser extent Ruby took some provocative pictures of herself.
I really don't think that taking one or two selfies showing some leg - which she then apparently never showed anyone else - is much evidence of exhibitionism. One of the nice things about Ruby is that she's clearly aware that her looks aren't bad, while refusing to make a big deal of it - but that does tip over into repression sometimes. The scene with the selfies was just a flash of justifiable pride overcoming that repression for a few seconds. "Exhibitionism" would be posting the pictures to social media.
brasca wrote:Maybe the LaRose household was a bit stifling and there was an urge to break free, but that does not mean abuse. No family is perfect.
I never said anything about abuse. That would be a whole different can of ugly worms.
brasca wrote:Meanwhile there is Ruby. In the beginning I could see a big sister little sister relationship and perhaps Ruby looked up to her, but time changes things. When Amber hit puberty she started hanging out with other friends and had less time for her sister. This would be crushing, but it is not that Amber was being malicious. Things just happen that way. Perhaps to differentiate herself she continued to be a straight A student even if Amber's grades were slipping which of course would not make her many friends at school. She had at least one, Lucy, but she preferred popularity. It is difficult to estimate when that falling out occurred since it might have been before or after Ruby learned the truth about her sister. If it is the former then that heavily influenced her views on sex and people her age. If it is the latter then it probably reinforced her low opinions of people who put frivolous high school popularity and sex before academic achievement. All the while she never had anyone to turn to since talking to her mother might reveal what Amber is actually doing. Her biggest fear is that it could happen to her so she committed herself fully to academic pursuits and ignoring her libido.
Okay - but that gives us a young teenage girl with no friends at all. Her parents know what a girl with friends looks like; they've just raised one. But they either failed to spot that Ruby had a problem, or failed to help her. Again, that in itself doesn't prove incompetence - some kids just don't have many friends, and don't talk about the ones they do have - but it isn't competence.

And for a bonus, they either failed to ask what Amber was doing for a living, or fell for her lies. Putting a cherry on top of the whole mess, they gave Ruby the impression that they preferred Amber.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence - but this string of failures is prima facie evidence of uselessness.
brasca wrote:Now I could be wrong. They might be stodgy parents who instilled the notion that nothing their children do is ever good enough, but if that were the case I doubt Amber would ever care to see them again instead of just being embarrassed about her former profession.
It looks to me like the one thing that the two girls did get from their upbringing was family loyalty. Anyway, my pet theory (with no great evidence) remains that they praised each of the girls to the other, leaving both with minor inferiority complexes.
brasca wrote:As you stated Pixietrix Comics are very much inspired by classic high school comics, which tend to keep parents off-screen. Now while this tends to stretch credibility with comics like Penny & Aggie it is fairly plausible here since these are young adults who just moved out of their parents' home.
The trouble is, it seems like the Larose parents did a poor job when their daughters were at home. Plus, they sent Ruby off to live with Amber, without getting any confirmation from Amber that this was okay. Not only are they mostly invisible, in the great tradition of teen comics; on the rare occasions when they do appear, they invariably get everything wrong.
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Spidrift
"Brevior vita est quam pro futumentibus negotium agendo."
-- Motto of Hogshead Publishing of fond memory, and wise words to set your Foes List by.
Avatar misappropriated from the wonderful XKCD.

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Cortez
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Re: 29-09-15 The good news

Post by Cortez »

Now I could be wrong. They might be stodgy parents who instilled the notion that nothing their children do is ever good enough, but if that were the case I doubt Amber would ever care to see them again instead of just being embarrassed about her former profession.
It's never that simple. You can know you're parents are assholes to you and still want their approval.

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brasca
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Re: 29-09-15 The good news

Post by brasca »

Spidrift wrote:It's still "Larose", lower-case "r". Giz said so. You can save your shift finger.
Where did she say this? This is my basis for spelling the name LaRose. http://www.stickydillybuns.com/?module= ... ay&ptid=17
Spidrift wrote:
brasca wrote:Perhaps as a child Amber was a great student and they hoped she would be a doctor too.
Possibly, but we have zero evidence of that. All we know is that Ruby seems to make Amber feel a bit stupid. If Amber ever thought of herself as bright, I reckon that would be less likely.
Some children appear to be smart at first and quite possibly Amber is intelligent in areas we do not know or is absent minded, but can be exceptionally smart when she puts her mind to it. We have seen such evidence with DiDi.
Spidrift wrote:
brasca wrote:Amber's fascination with sex and getting paid for it seemed to be her motivation that lead to pornography. There probably is more to it than that, but that remains to be revealed.
The world is full of people who discover that they like sex, and the Ma3 world doubly so - but not all of them go into porn. For an obvious example, Zii is just as enthusiastic and talented as Ruby, but she wouldn't even consider becoming a "dancer". Amber ... lost the plot, as it seems.
Maybe Zii is a terrible dancer. An embarrassing contrast to her seemingly limitless talents. There is probably more to Amber's motivation than just that, but it remains to be seen and it does not have to be tragic. Some people become sex workers despite having stable home lives and career alternatives.
Spidrift wrote:Parenting is a notoriously tricky art, of which I claim no great knowledge, but the thing with teens is, I understand, to give them space to stretch their wings and explore, while providing them with a solid base and enough good sense that they don't do too much that's unwise or self-destructive. The Larose parents blew that with Amber. That doesn't prove incompetence - Amber has free will - but it sure doesn't show competence.
And how would they know that Amber was engaged in self-destructive behavior? If she dropped out of school and ran away from home that would be a clear sign, but we do not know much of what happened between her sexual awakening and her porn career. As far as they knew she was had frequent sleepovers with little Suzie. What is suspicious about that ?
Spidrift wrote:
brasca wrote:I do theorize that maybe the LaRose sisters have a bit of an exhibitionist streak since Amber was a porn star and to a lesser extent Ruby took some provocative pictures of herself.
I really don't think that taking one or two selfies showing some leg - which she then apparently never showed anyone else - is much evidence of exhibitionism. One of the nice things about Ruby is that she's clearly aware that her looks aren't bad, while refusing to make a big deal of it - but that does tip over into repression sometimes. The scene with the selfies was just a flash of justifiable pride overcoming that repression for a few seconds. "Exhibitionism" would be posting the pictures to social media.
Perhaps the pictures progressed from showing a little leg to showing things that Menage a 3 cannot get away with currently. And like I said it is to a lesser extent.
Spidrift wrote:
brasca wrote:Meanwhile there is Ruby. In the beginning I could see a big sister little sister relationship and perhaps Ruby looked up to her, but time changes things. When Amber hit puberty she started hanging out with other friends and had less time for her sister. This would be crushing, but it is not that Amber was being malicious. Things just happen that way. Perhaps to differentiate herself she continued to be a straight A student even if Amber's grades were slipping which of course would not make her many friends at school. She had at least one, Lucy, but she preferred popularity. It is difficult to estimate when that falling out occurred since it might have been before or after Ruby learned the truth about her sister. If it is the former then that heavily influenced her views on sex and people her age. If it is the latter then it probably reinforced her low opinions of people who put frivolous high school popularity and sex before academic achievement. All the while she never had anyone to turn to since talking to her mother might reveal what Amber is actually doing. Her biggest fear is that it could happen to her so she committed herself fully to academic pursuits and ignoring her libido.
Okay - but that gives us a young teenage girl with no friends at all. Her parents know what a girl with friends looks like; they've just raised one. But they either failed to spot that Ruby had a problem, or failed to help her. Again, that in itself doesn't prove incompetence - some kids just don't have many friends, and don't talk about the ones they do have - but it isn't competence.
You certainly are setting a high bar. Maybe Amber's grades slipped in her last years of high school and the LaRoses did not want to repeat the same mistakes so when they saw Ruby engrossed in her studies they chose not to question it. Ruby is tight lipped about sex, but she might have had a heart to heart discussion about her low opinion of other people her age and given what a lot of parents see and hear about other children her age doing they were pleased that their Ruby was not like those kids.
Spidrift wrote:And for a bonus, they either failed to ask what Amber was doing for a living, or fell for her lies. Putting a cherry on top of the whole mess, they gave Ruby the impression that they preferred Amber.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence - but this string of failures is prima facie evidence of uselessness.
So they should not trust their daughter when she says she is fine and that she is working? Should they have hired a private investigator to verify this? Again you are setting the bar impossibly high on the basis of very little evidence.
Spidrift wrote:
brasca wrote:Now I could be wrong. They might be stodgy parents who instilled the notion that nothing their children do is ever good enough, but if that were the case I doubt Amber would ever care to see them again instead of just being embarrassed about her former profession.
It looks to me like the one thing that the two girls did get from their upbringing was family loyalty. Anyway, my pet theory (with no great evidence) remains that they praised each of the girls to the other, leaving both with minor inferiority complexes.
Perhaps. Some parents have their failings and your theory might be true.
Spidrift wrote:
brasca wrote:As you stated Pixietrix Comics are very much inspired by classic high school comics, which tend to keep parents off-screen. Now while this tends to stretch credibility with comics like Penny & Aggie it is fairly plausible here since these are young adults who just moved out of their parents' home.
The trouble is, it seems like the Larose parents did a poor job when their daughters were at home. Plus, they sent Ruby off to live with Amber, without getting any confirmation from Amber that this was okay. Not only are they mostly invisible, in the great tradition of teen comics; on the rare occasions when they do appear, they invariably get everything wrong.
Perhaps they should have waited for confirmation, but Amber seems to have the problem with communicating regularly and if the last thing the LaRoses heard from Amber was how great her career was going they could reasonably conclude that there was a place Ruby could stay.

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Spidrift
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Re: 29-09-15 The good news

Post by Spidrift »

brasca wrote:
Spidrift wrote:It's still "Larose", lower-case "r". Giz said so. You can save your shift finger.
Where did she say this? This is my basis for spelling the name LaRose. http://www.stickydillybuns.com/?module= ... ay&ptid=17
Bad link. But anyway, Giz says she favours "Larose" here.
brasca wrote:Some children appear to be smart at first and quite possibly Amber is intelligent in areas we do not know or is absent minded, but can be exceptionally smart when she puts her mind to it. We have seen such evidence with DiDi.
DiDi is written so weirdly I now think of her as almost a savant type. But Amber actually displays a working degree of street smarts at times; I wouldn't actually call her unintelligent. She just lacks structured academic intelligence, to the extent that Ruby apparently makes her feel stupid at times, and she can't deduce the meaning of a word like "sororicide" and doesn't bother to ask before changing the subject.

Actually, to be honest, Amber may have been depicted with declining intelligence over her history in the comics. The sneaky hard-nosed blonde who scammed Gary and Nathan has turned into a bit of a fluffy bimbo.
brasca wrote:Maybe Zii is a terrible dancer.
Look at that strip again. She says "No!" when DiDi suggests "dancing", but also "Not funny" when DiDi suggests working in a massage parlour. It's obvious to me that Zii has standards, and regards sex work as way beneath them.
brasca wrote:There is probably more to Amber's motivation than just that, but it remains to be seen and it does not have to be tragic. Some people become sex workers despite having stable home lives and career alternatives.
Call me old-fashioned, but I just can't see it as anything other than a bad choice. Given that Amber felt unable to tell her parents what she did for a living, and also felt unable to give her best friend from school a call until an emergency arose, it's clear that she has at best an ambiguous view of the subject.
brasca wrote:And how would they know that Amber was engaged in self-destructive behavior? If she dropped out of school and ran away from home that would be a clear sign, but we do not know much of what happened between her sexual awakening and her porn career. As far as they knew she was had frequent sleepovers with little Suzie. What is suspicious about that ?
The point is not that they didn't know; it's that Amber went that way, without giving any visible signs. The failure isn't failing to spot the behaviour, it's raising a daughter prone to such behaviour in the first place.
brasca wrote:Perhaps the pictures progressed from showing a little leg to showing things that Menage a 3 cannot get away with currently.
Uh, you really are stretching there. Ruby was cripplingly embarrassed by the recollection of that action, and we saw exactly what was embarrassing her; we got a memory flashback, and all she was doing was showing some leg. If she'd done something more extreme, we'd have seen something more extreme - with scenery or speech bubble censorship if necessary.

Using an incident which has never been shown, and which exists only in your imagination, as evidence for your ideas about Ruby's personality, is ... not terribly convincing.
brasca wrote:You certainly are setting a high bar.
No, my bar is set at "raising kids who are not prone to self-destructive or neurotic behaviour, or who can at least talk to you if their life goes difficult or bad on them". That's my working minimum for "didn't screw up as parents", and the Laroses failed it, twice. Maybe there's a third Larose kid who's sane and well-balanced; who knows? But the evidence we have available doesn't make them look good.
brasca wrote:Maybe Amber's grades slipped in her last years of high school and the LaRoses did not want to repeat the same mistakes so when they saw Ruby engrossed in her studies they chose not to question it. Ruby is tight lipped about sex, but she might have had a heart to heart discussion about her low opinion of other people her age and given what a lot of parents see and hear about other children her age doing they were pleased that their Ruby was not like those kids.
That sounds to me like "Our daughter has no friends! Great! That means she has no bad influences!" If I thought that was how things had gone, I'd really call the Laroses f***wits.
brasca wrote:So they should not trust their daughter when she says she is fine and that she is working? Should they have hired a private investigator to verify this?
Asking "How's your new job going?" is something you can do to casual friends, let alone family. Okay, maybe Ruby answered that with a carefully constructed and consistent lie - in which case, yes, her parents get a pass, but Amber looks even more screwed up.
brasca wrote:
Spidrift wrote:Anyway, my pet theory (with no great evidence) remains that they praised each of the girls to the other, leaving both with minor inferiority complexes.
Perhaps. Some parents have their failings and your theory might be true.
That one is actually a very commonplace, standard error, and it's not even limited to parents. Some teachers and work supervisors regularly make much the same mistake.
brasca wrote:Perhaps they should have waited for confirmation, but Amber seems to have the problem with communicating regularly and if the last thing the LaRoses heard from Amber was how great her career was going they could reasonably conclude that there was a place Ruby could stay.
They could conclude that Amber had a place, but sending Ruby there without even confirming by 'phone that Amber had enough space was extremely rude, at the very least. Heck, they didn't even know that Amber would be at home when Ruby arrived. For all they knew, she could have been away visiting friends or something. This is comedy, of course, but it's not comedy that makes Mrs Larose look at all good.
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Spidrift
"Brevior vita est quam pro futumentibus negotium agendo."
-- Motto of Hogshead Publishing of fond memory, and wise words to set your Foes List by.
Avatar misappropriated from the wonderful XKCD.

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brasca
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Re: 29-09-15 The good news

Post by brasca »

The Laroses may not look good to you, but until I see anything to confirm that they are terrible parents at worst they are the typical conveniently absent imperfect parents that raise imperfect children because it is more entertaining that way.

I will, however, concede the spelling of the Laroses. My basis is this strip: #172 I am a Professional http://www.stickydillybuns.com/strips-s ... ofessional. I thought I corrected the link problem, but whatever.

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Spidrift
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Re: 29-09-15 The good news

Post by Spidrift »

Their flaws may well come from the fact that they mainly serve as off-screen plot enablers, but, well, whatever the reason, they keep doing stuff wrong. It's going to make it hard for Giz to depict them as anything other than idiots if they do come on screen.

And Giz acknowledges that the capitalisation of the name has varied a bit, but she reckons that "Larose" is what it should be, and that's good enough for me.
---------
Spidrift
"Brevior vita est quam pro futumentibus negotium agendo."
-- Motto of Hogshead Publishing of fond memory, and wise words to set your Foes List by.
Avatar misappropriated from the wonderful XKCD.

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