05-08-14 Meow like a kitty

[Spidrift]

I don't think that we're getting another SDB tomorrow. If you look at the date on the thread, this is tomorrow's.

However, I personally am largely unworried about whether and when EC updates, whereas I find a gap of three days followed by Ma3, SDB, and SotR all updating at once feels too much like famine followed by bloat. So getting the SDB early feels better for my digestion.

[Zippy]

Please note the block'o'text at the top:

[Spidrift]

Ooh, right. Thanks. I was confused by tomorrow's date on the thread header, and didn't read that text closely enough.

(Unless this means no Friday update - in which case, oh well.)

[CFT]

Yes, according to this, this week there will be SDB updates today and tomorrow and EC updates on Wednesday and Friday.

[Geeno]

Re: Ruby's sheltered-ness continuing through college.
It's possible she attended one of those christian colleges with very strict behavior codes where she'd be surrounded by other sheltered people.

Also:
Minew is the only one in this comic who makes sense.
Minew and Lita need a strip or two of their own to compare notes. Maybe one household should catsit for the other.

[Whisky-Tango-Foxtrot]

This gives me an idea: perhaps if Ruby and Zii ever wind up interacting with each other, the fact that they both have pussies--er...cats, I meant cats!--might give them something in common to bond about.

As for Minew and Lita interacting: well, Minew is still so young and cute and innocent...I can't help but think that Lita would just be a Bad Influence (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Quote removed. The DAMNed

[Spidrift]

Re: Ruby's sheltered-ness continuing through college.
It's possible she attended one of those christian colleges with very strict behavior codes where she'd be surrounded by other sheltered people.

We've been over this before. There's apparently one (1) all-female college in Canada, and the betting is that even in an all-female or unusually strictly supervised college, she'd have been exposed to Loose Talk and Wild Ideas. And she shows none of the signs of excessive religious enthusiasm. She's no Joyce Brown.

The fact is, she displays a bunch of personality traits that some of us find quite familiar ... from experience of a certain type of teenager. Going away to college or just acquiring a few years of post-school life experience is precisely what tends to knock off those particular sharp corners. She's a 21-year-old being written in a way that some readers think would make her a very plausible 17-year-old. It's a minor oddity, and trying to come up with convoluted backstory justifications for it is pretty pointless. "Ruby is weird" just has to suffice.

Minew and Lita need a strip or two of their own to compare notes. Maybe one household should catsit for the other.

I don't think that would work. Lita is written and drawn as a cartoon cat, with a weird body shape and the ability to understand and mirror human emotions. Minew is a realistic kitten, as the realistic art hints; he's cute and curious, but mostly he just sits there going "alpha is facing me, must face back to bond and get more food" when Ruby uses him as a sounding-board.

Both work fine on their own, but putting them in the same strip would make the different styles rather too obvious. One or both would look wrong.

This gives me an idea: perhaps if Ruby and Zii ever wind up interacting with each other, the fact that they both have pussies--er...cats, I meant cats!--might give them something in common to bond about.

I'm not sure that both owning cats means having much in common. I've known lots of cat owners; they could be very different people. And cat ownership symbolises very different things with these two. Zii is feline herself - solipsistic, sexually incontinent, slinky - and owns an adult cat as an echo or a mirror of herself. Ruby is stressed and abrasive, and needed something to talk to and to show that she had a sentimental side; she got a kitten to look sweet at her.

(Actually, if comics time passes fast enough, Minew's growth into adulthood might be an interesting mirror to and help for Ruby's own character development. She'll probably be a little unhappy at the thought of having to get Minew fixed, or even more unhappy if she neglects that and he starts spraying the furniture and jumping the neighbourhood she-cats, but it might help her acknowledge that maturity involves acceptance of sexuality.)

Anyhow, Lita inflicts herself on Gary at least as much as on Zii these days, doesn't she? And Ruby actually looks after Minew, whereas Zii seems to let Lita fend for herself. (I'm a bit amazed that Lita survived kittenhood.)

[CFT]

You'd be surprised, but it's perfectly possible for people to go through college/university without gaining any "life experience" at all or socially interacting with their peers there. Doubly so in the (rare in the States, less so in my country) case when they go to a college/uni near their place so they don't even have to move from under their parents' wings, though even moving to a place of your own isn't sufficient to get someone to "socialize", if they didn't want to do so already. I've witnessed the above personally in at least 4 cases in 2 different universities in 2 different countries (Greece and USA) that I've been to. Most likely, Ruby just went with a home-attending classes-back home to study-sleep routine, probably talking more with her professors than with her ("sex-obsessed") classmates (of either gender).

[Spidrift]

Yeah, that's basically how I have to visualise her college career, in order for her to make any sense at all. It's something of a triumph of sheer determined unsociability, of course. And if she's that determined, why hasn't she done a better job of telling Dillon to FOAD when he got pushy with her?

(Possible answer; at heart, she now wants to get out of her shell, and Dillon represented the first chance she got. Graduating and filling in a bunch of job application forms may have brought it home to her that she doesn't have much of a life, even if she's repressing that realisation doubly hard.)

It would also imply that any college staff who were supposed to be concerned with student welfare, and probably her parents as well, either screwed up royally and criminally over several years, or were ground down by her sheer determination. One might imagine that sending her to live with Amber was actually her parents' ham-fisted last-ditch attempt to get her some kind of social experience (and to get her out of their hair). If so, they left it a bit late, though.

But this is wandering into the realms of fanfic wankiness.

[themacnut]

I could easily see Ruby going to uni with an I'm-here-to-get-a-degree-not-socialize attitude, and coming off to her classmates as so stuck-up and snotty that they never invited her to parties or out drinking or even to study groups. Even group projects would have been strictly about getting the project done and getting a good grade for her, and no one would have enjoyed having her in their group.

And this could have happened whether she lived on campus or not, though I think it more likely she commuted. End result - Ruby doesn't socialize, graduates with no friends, and ends up with the closest thing she has to a BFF being...Dillon.

[TheEighth]

So Minew is more than just a pet she was "suckered" into buying, he's her confidant.

Good thing too, shows us a softer side of Ruby and now she has someone to talk to who'll always listen, won't judge her, and who'll never tell her secrets.

He's like a furry, little diary.

[Bambikles]

Ruby will soon learn what all women think about is also sex.

From whom?

Ah, I wanted to give a "sooner or later" sense, but I struggled with my English. Idea is, women are not different from men, just better at hiding their urges due to social presure. Ruby is bound to discover this. With women not as obesessed/pervy than her sister and former teacher. She could have a talk with Andy's colleague for example. Though she seems scheduled to become some kind of rival...maybe.

[Spidrift]

I could easily see Ruby going to uni with an I'm-here-to-get-a-degree-not-socialize attitude, and coming off to her classmates as so stuck-up and snotty that they never invited her to parties or out drinking or even to study groups.

This is more or less how it has to be for Ruby to work as a character. The only problem is that it takes her from being merely sheltered and a bit of a loner into an outright tragic figure - somebody who could spend three years at university and not make any friends at all, without anybody even noticing that she had a problem. At which point, we're out of the realms of comedy.

It also doesn't quite fit the Ruby we see in the comic. She's spiky and not great on social skills, but so long as she's within her comfort zone, she's actually a perfectly pleasant person; we've seen her chatting and laughing fairly freely. She also handled bits of the concert scene with some style, especially when she slapped away the guy who was trying to chat up Dilla. Okay, Rudy was clearly helping a lot there, but it still showed Ruby as somewhat socially competent.

End result - Ruby doesn't socialize, graduates with no friends, and ends up with the closest thing she has to a BFF being...Dillon.

Like I said, outright tragedy.

So Minew is more than just a pet she was "suckered" into buying, he's her confidant.

Good thing too, shows us a softer side of Ruby and now she has someone to talk to who'll always listen, won't judge her, and who'll never tell her secrets.

The poor little four-legged plot device...

She could have a talk with Andy's colleague for example. Though she seems scheduled to become some kind of rival...maybe.

I don't think that Gina will be a problem, though if she ever reappears at all, it may involve her giving Andy yet more unfortunate advice. She commented that he never picked up hints, but she presumably sees him every day, and she's quite shameless about getting what she wants; if she really wanted to, ahem, get hold of Andy for more than a few seconds, I assume that she'd just have said so, flat out. My guess is that she's a bit older than him, and she has a boyfriend or two who she doesn't regard as totally clueless. She just thinks that Andy is a good-looking piece of maleness, and as she's an Ma3-universe character, she thinks it's fun to find an excuse to cop a feel of his person occasionally, but he'd be too much like hard work to turn into boyfriend material.

But I doubt that she'd be a very useful friend to Ruby. She's probably a bit too brash and shameless; she'd just come across as being a lot like Amber. My outside bet is that, some time, Felicia will actually make an appearance in the flesh; Dillon has described her as a sweet person, and she presumably has practical experience of wrangling idiotic gay men.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

I could easily see Ruby going to uni with an I'm-here-to-get-a-degree-not-socialize attitude, and coming off to her classmates as so stuck-up and snotty that they never invited her to parties or out drinking or even to study groups.

This is more or less how it has to be for Ruby to work as a character. The only problem is that it takes her from being merely sheltered and a bit of a loner into an outright tragic figure - somebody who could spend three years at university and not make any friends at all, without anybody even noticing that she had a problem. At which point, we're out of the realms of comedy.

And squarely into the realm of realism. I fail to see what is so extravagant about someone cruising through university without making any friends while being an intelligent and otherwise pleasant fellow. I've known plenty of people that didn't socialize at all outside the classroom, may it be out of shyness, sheer asociability, unrelatable weirdness, or a number of other reasons, including people that shared some of Ruby's more naïve traits.

[Spidrift]

No friends? Not even a few people who shared their weird interests?

Maybe opinions differ, but "No friends at all" (as opposed to the routine "Quiet, not many friends") would usually rate as a red flag to me. I remember chatting to someone who handled student welfare at a university who certainly said exactly that.