12-08-14 I like someone else

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Robbzilla
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Re: 12-08-14 I like someone else

Post by Robbzilla »

Awesome job of putting the reader in Dillon's shoes. It's also a great way to show how uncomfortable it can be for an in the closet gay person to deal with sexuality, esp. at that age.

I'm straight, and I'm certain that this barely brushes the tip of that iceberg, but thanks for a little insight.

Drakkenmensch
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Re: 12-08-14 I like someone else

Post by Drakkenmensch »

As a gay man, I can confirm that it's still possible for the right woman to arouse you in a way you thought was no longer possible since coming to terms with yourself. The term "closet key" comes to mind here, because it can refer either to that one person who could convince you to come out of the closet for just one day or go back into it after you thought you'd left it behind you for good.

I think Dillon may be heading to a close encounter with his closet key soon ;)

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Spidrift
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Re: 12-08-14 I like someone else

Post by Spidrift »

I'll defer to a gay man's knowledge on this subject in general, but I can see three essentially literary reasons why this seems to me unlikely to happen in this case:

1. Dillon has always been written as, well, super ultra mega gay. Going back on that now would just seem weird.

2. Ruby is not only not ready for a physical relationship just yet, she more or less despises Dillon and wants him out of her hair. Dillon, for his part, doesn't seem the sort not to say anything if he finds he wants something. So Dillon deciding that he wants Ruby is pretty much guaranteed to lead to yelling, Ruby calling Dillon a typical sex-mad man and a lying toad to boot (setting her own emotional development back by about half a volume), Dillon finding himself totally unable to handle his own feelings, and Amber probably ending up just as confused and angry with Dillon for apparently lying to her for months and then annoying Ruby. Now, this comic has its share of drama, but that'd take the amount of soap in everybody's eyes past the point of mere pain.

3. The comic has a non-trivial gay readership, many of whom might be less tolerant of this idea than you. Seeing one of the few unambiguously gay characters in these comics apparently turned and converted by the "right" woman would probably get it accused of being a fundie wank fantasy. I'm not sure just how much abuse the writers really want to court.
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Drakkenmensch
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Re: 12-08-14 I like someone else

Post by Drakkenmensch »

Spidrift wrote:I'll defer to a gay man's knowledge on this subject in general, but I can see three essentially literary reasons why this seems to me unlikely to happen in this case:

1. Dillon has always been written as, well, super ultra mega gay. Going back on that now would just seem weird.
I won't argue on your points 2 and 3 because those are both plausible and depend on the writing directly, so are in the author's hands. But as far as being "ultra mega gay", I'd like to point that in real life even someone who seems like "needle glued to the outermost edge of the kinsay scale" can still meet that one person they would gladly go against their usual grain for.

I've had several uber-straight guys who felt the uncontrollable need to experiment with gay sex in my company, just sayin' ;)

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Artemisia
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Re: 12-08-14 I like someone else

Post by Artemisia »

I think I've pointed out in the past that sexuality has been approached incorrectly. There are a very small number of people who are fixed in their sexuality. That is, people who are absolutely heterosexual or homosexual. That number is sitting around 15% according to many of the estimates and research I've seen. The reality is that most people fit somewhere inside the bisexual/pansexual spectrum. The problem is that our society treats the idea of a man having any attraction for another man as forbidden and wrong. So many men avoid the idea of having sex with someone of the same sex despite being sexually attracted to other men. Even many lesbians admit to having a sexual attraction to certain men, but the vast majority of the time they prefer someone of the same sex. I know a number of women who identify as bi/pan who have never had relationships with men or who rarely ever do.
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wiseguy
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Re: 12-08-14 I like someone else

Post by wiseguy »

Dill might end up attracted to "Rudy" even thought he knows is Ruby

strange things always happen
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Artemisia
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Re: 12-08-14 I like someone else

Post by Artemisia »

That would certainly be an interesting twist :)
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"I'm going to do what I do best...lecture her."- Twilight Sparkle (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic)
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Spidrift
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Re: 12-08-14 I like someone else

Post by Spidrift »

Drakkenmensch wrote:I won't argue on your points 2 and 3 because those are both plausible and depend on the writing directly, so are in the author's hands. But as far as being "ultra mega gay", I'd like to point that in real life even someone who seems like "needle glued to the outermost edge of the kinsay scale" can still meet that one person they would gladly go against their usual grain for.

I've had several uber-straight guys who felt the uncontrollable need to experiment with gay sex in my company, just sayin' ;)
And not bragging at all. But anyway, you've slightly missed my thinking on point 1, because that's actually an authorial thing too.

I'll happily believe that some real, very gay (or very straight) people can suddenly find themselves in one-off situations where their inclinations just flip. People are interesting like that. But Dillon isn't a real person; in fact, he's a character in a four-panel strip comic. That means that he's a bit simplified compared to real people. In particular, he's got a schtick; he's very, very gay. So gay.

So if he flipped orientation, his schtick would suddenly be broken. That's very tricky to write, and might well just not work at all.
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dmra
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Re: 12-08-14 I like someone else

Post by dmra »

Spidrift wrote:
So if he flipped orientation, his schtick would suddenly be broken. That's very tricky to write, and might well just not work at all.
A bit like when Didi turned from a sweet natured Amazon with a shoulder angel the size of King Kong into an orgasm obsessed monomaniac.

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Spidrift
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Re: 12-08-14 I like someone else

Post by Spidrift »

DiDi had been concerned about her Problem for some time already, and was shown as careless of her boyfriends' feelings from early on. Plus, she was always all about the nookie. Nor did the sweet, sentimental side of her nature entirely disappear; it's still there, it just tends to get buried rather often.

In other words, her schticks weren't reversed or broken, they were amplified.
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"Brevior vita est quam pro futumentibus negotium agendo."
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dmra
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Re: 12-08-14 I like someone else

Post by dmra »

A large part of the problem for me was that the whole "never had an orgasm" bit first came up in the mid 300s of the comic and was the first hint that Didi's love life was less than satisfactory. The sudden jump from that reveal to the pursuit of the big o becoming the all-consuming obsession of her life without any other real explanation was, I felt, just too abrupt.

It's always seemed to me as if the authors began to feel that either they'd taken the original character as far as they could or had run out of ideas for her and then decided on a story line and changed her character to fit it.

I could be wrong about that but either way I found the transition from the early Didi to the later one very abrupt and poorly explained.

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Spidrift
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Re: 12-08-14 I like someone else

Post by Spidrift »

Except that the "never had an orgasm" issue was first mentioned in strip #124, and was driving DiDi to weird behaviour even then.
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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.
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dmra
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Re: 12-08-14 I like someone else

Post by dmra »

Which was still 200 odd strips before the problem got mentioned again or before Didi started getting too weird.

Still, no real point arguing about it since we're debating opinions rather than facts. I find the change abrupt and badly presented you seem to find it OK neither of us are objectively right. Besides the Didi thing is one of a small handful of story lines I haven't liked compared to the far larger number I have and I prefer not to dwell on it too much.

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Spidrift
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Re: 12-08-14 I like someone else

Post by Spidrift »

Well, given that the facts in the case are "124" vs. "300s"... But I just think that you're underestimating the writers. DiDi was getting her boyfriends' names mixed up from the first time we saw Erik, and was looking miserable after sex from the first time we saw her having sex. So even strip #124 was just an explanation of what had gone before. Then the anorgasmia got mentioned again in a conversation with Sandra, and DiDi announced that she was used to being disappointed by men before setting out to goink Gary. And so on. That side of her personality - flaky, desperate, increasingly experimental - was carefully set up well in advance. It didn't just come from out of the blue.
Last edited by Spidrift on Thu Aug 14, 2014 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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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.

dmra
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Re: 12-08-14 I like someone else

Post by dmra »

Having looked at the strips you mentioned I'd have to agree that I owe the writers an apology and they laid the ground a lot better than I thought.

But I'd still say not clearly enough. It might be different for somebody coming to the comic new and doing an archive binge but it's asking a lot of the regular reader to remember something that happened in a single strip 6 months or more before and wasn't immediately followed up on or made more obvious that it was significant.

I'm not sure what the answer is. Effectively they're writing for two audiences the existing people who read things as they're published and the new readers who get it in bulk. Not something I envy.

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