10-02-16 Love dessert

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10-02-16 Love dessert

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Error of Logic
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Re: 10-02-16 Love dessert

Post by Error of Logic »

Careful, Ruby. You left the way to your heart open through your stomach... XD

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Re: 10-02-16 Love dessert

Post by Bambikles »

So Andy did notice... was not difficult though. :p

I love the timing of this strip and Ruby's "Oh crap" reaction ! :))

Ruby craves Middle Eastern food, nice bit of characterization. A bit too much for her own good it seems. ;))

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Re: 10-02-16 Love dessert

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Error of Logic wrote:Careful, Ruby. You left the way to your heart open through your stomach...
I don't think that her heart is the organ that she's worried about.

(Sorry, that was a bit vulgar. But actually, for all her naivety, I think that Ruby is smart enough to know the difference between sex and love. I think that she's scared for her dignity and respectability, and her physical comfort, not because she feels in any danger of emotional entanglement.)

And I'd swear that Andy got sneaky there. Though we may yet find that he somehow did mean something innocent. Is there, perhaps, a pastry shop in Montreal called "The Next Level"?
Bambikles wrote:Ruby craves Middle Eastern food, nice bit of characterization.
Ruby really is my kind of girl - or she would be, if I wasn't (a) taken and (b) old enough to be her grandfather (just). That impulsive love of interesting ethnic food -- yep, I get it. In fact, I'd say that one complaint she has against Andy there is that he's apparently ruling out rosewater-scented baklava.

Anyway, she could of course now just say to Andy "Sorry, but I'm just not ready yet". But we know that she won't, because she's too nervous of losing her new friends, and too uncertain about dating etiquette -- and because comedy, of course. (Plus, I'm pretty sure that she secretly rather wants what she's now fearing.) So she'll spend the time between now and Saturday tying herself up in psychological knots trying to decide what to do. Being Ruby, she'll primarily hit Google, obviously, but she may also consult her room-mates -- though she's surely got too much sense to trust Dillon's advice, and she wouldn't want to take Amber's in a million years. Odds of her getting really desperate and going to Zii?

And in the end, well, I don't suppose that Andy has actually turned into a social genius all of a sudden, so he may be confused by the signals he gets from her. I wouldn't be too surprised if they ended up in bed together, because each thinks that the other has suggested this and they're both too polite to say no. Not that this would necessarily work out badly for them.

(Actually -- there's 14 strips left in the current volume, and I wouldn't be surprised if Ruby emotional confusion and the dinner date itself took that long to resolve, especially if we get a few cutaways to Dillon or Amber. The first strip of the volume had Ruby wrapped smoochily around someone in bed; chances of a very symmetrical last strip?)
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Re: 10-02-16 Love dessert

Post by Don Alexander »

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Re: 10-02-16 Love dessert

Post by brasca »

Spidrift wrote:
Error of Logic wrote:Careful, Ruby. You left the way to your heart open through your stomach...
I don't think that her heart is the organ that she's worried about.

(Sorry, that was a bit vulgar. But actually, for all her naivety, I think that Ruby is smart enough to know the difference between sex and love. I think that she's scared for her dignity and respectability, and her physical comfort, not because she feels in any danger of emotional entanglement.)
The problem is she is still probably fixated on the porno of her sister all those years ago. In addition to the shock of seeing her sister there is also the fact that sexual intercourse as depicted would leave a bad impression. Even though pornography is often unrealistic, realistic sex doesn't look any better from an outside perspective. Sex involves nudity, unusual body positions, and facial expressions that are in no way dignified. That's probably why she prefers to see herself replaced with someone else. The fact that it is a man is because of her affinity with yaoi.

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Re: 10-02-16 Love dessert

Post by JoybuzzerX »

Am I the only one who read Ruby's dialogue as coming off as really nasty sounding in the first panel, as if showing she really doesn't care for him? Or is everyone else just smitten by her love of middle eastern food and what "the next level" could mean in a comedy strip?

Second read through, it could be it's supposed to be her saying it a more flustered, bashful, I got caught and feeling embarrassed way, but it just didn't read that way to me.

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Re: 10-02-16 Love dessert

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brasca wrote:The problem is she is still probably fixated on the porno of her sister all those years ago. In addition to the shock of seeing her sister there is also the fact that sexual intercourse as depicted would leave a bad impression. Even though pornography is often unrealistic, realistic sex doesn't look any better from an outside perspective. Sex involves nudity, unusual body positions, and facial expressions that are in no way dignified.
Oh, she doesn't have to be too fixated on the porno thing for that to be a problem. Ruby is, for all sorts of reasons, very hung up on dignity and respectability, and sex just isn't very dignified. But she's not the first person with that problem, and she wouldn't be the first to find a way around it. I wouldn't be surprised if she insisted on having the lights out, the first few times. Which would also be a nice way of ducking the problems with this comic's PG-13 rating, if Giz feels up to writing some speech bubbles to put against a black background.

Or, conversely, well, she's watched a lot of mainstream television, which will mean that she's seen a fair amount of censored, prettified sex. Hoping that things can work that way may get her through.

Or, if she decides that there's nothing for it, she'll just have to get this over with and go for it, she may do a lot of research on Google, and turn up on Saturday with a collection of ideas that will melt Andy's brain. Or Rudy may show up for that date.
brasca wrote:That's probably why she prefers to see herself replaced with someone else. The fact that it is a man is because of her affinity with yaoi.
Definitely agreed that the yaoi thing is all about displacing her sexual urges into a safe space.
JoybuzzerX wrote:Am I the only one who read Ruby's dialogue as coming off as really nasty sounding in the first panel, as if showing she really doesn't care for him? Or is everyone else just smitten by her love of middle eastern food and what "the next level" could mean in a comedy strip?

Second read through, it could be it's supposed to be her saying it a more flustered, bashful, I got caught and feeling embarrassed way, but it just didn't read that way to me.
Ruby always gets spiky under stress or when embarrassed, and yes, she's very embarrassed there. (She's the world's worst liar, remember, and Andy has just challenged her on a lie.) It is one of her less attractive features, certainly, and she's being a bit mean to Andy in that panel. But if he knows her at all by now - and he evidently does - he'll know that she's not being nasty. She just has some sharp edges. Change the subject, and the spikes retract - which is exactly what happens in the second panel. And by panel 3, he's got her smiling, which is worth the effort.
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Re: 10-02-16 Love dessert

Post by rogermart »

Unless he meant a place called "The Next Level", or a new kind of dessert that is better than the previous ones they ate, Andy did a sneaky move there...
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Re: 10-02-16 Love dessert

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He may be using dialogue supplied to him by his friend at work.
You remember her: the girl who gave him advice on what kind of gift to buy a porn actress and helped him measure his wedding tackle? And appears to be interested in him sexually?
She may be advising him based on her expectations of how a girl other than Ruby would react... No malice required, just a lack of familiarity with someone with Ruby's limits.

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Re: 10-02-16 Love dessert

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Error of Logic wrote:He may be using dialogue supplied to him by his friend at work.
That's actually quite possible. Well, he may be either taking advice or just parroting lines from someone he's asked for advice on how to work a relationship, without realising that repeating what they say to Ruby, unfiltered, makes him look like a total oaf.

In which case, Ruby may let him off incredibly likely. Another woman would think that he was being incredibly presumptuous and pushy here, and tell him where to get off. But Ruby is a major character in a comedy plot, so she almost certainly won't do that, probably because she doesn't want to lose one of her few friends, isn't that clear on dating etiquette herself, and secretly wants to give the idea a go anyway.
Error of Logic wrote:You remember her: the girl who gave him advice on what kind of gift to buy a porn actress and helped him measure his wedding tackle?
You mean Gina - as mentioned in panel 1 here.
Error of Logic wrote:And appears to be interested in him sexually?
My read on her is that her interest in him is very casual. After all, she's quite uninhibited, and she works with him; if she really wanted him at all seriously, she could have pinned him to the wall and explained in words of one syllable long ago. Instead, she made suggestions about his first date with Ruby, and then took the opportunity to get her hands on his junk for her amusement. I imagine that she sees him as a sexy idiot boy, far too naive to bother with as a boyfriend but fun to mess around with in minor ways.
Error of Logic wrote:She may be advising him based on her expectations of how a girl other than Ruby would react... No malice required, just a lack of familiarity with someone with Ruby's limits.
I'm sure that Andy will have explained about her understandable Ruby/Amber mix-up by now. If she is responsible for feeding him that last line there (which is possible but unproven), she probably just didn't realise that he'd quote it verbatim. Or perhaps she or someone else told Andy to be totally upfront with Ruby, on the grounds that if she doesn't play along at this stage, she's not really worth the effort.
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Re: 10-02-16 Love dessert

Post by Jean »

Has anyone here ever had middle eastern food? I assume in larger cities you have more options, where I live you only have Turkish Doner Kebab fastfood restaurants in every village. But I don't think that's the kind of place he will take her. Though I had Moroccan once, so I assume it might be a bit like that.

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Re: 10-02-16 Love dessert

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If I was looking for a good Middle-Eastern restaurant, I'd head to a city-sized place for confidence; the British university town closest to me has one or two Arab-style places that are supposed to be okay, and a couple of half-decent Turkish places as well as the greasy kebab joints. I assume that a seriously bohemian city like Montreal would have some good options. I know that Paris had a whole load of good budget places doing North African couscous, last time I looked, and that influence may have carried over to other French-speaking cities.

And yes, good Moroccan food is close enough to Middle Eastern to give you the right idea. There are some regional variations, but it's all on the same cultural continuum.

(Must... stop... drooling... about the Moroccan-style spiced meatballs I had in a French-accented restaurant in London the other night...)
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Re: 10-02-16 Love dessert

Post by Don Alexander »

Great, now I'm drooling too and desiring a Döner Kebap. [-(
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Re: 10-02-16 Love dessert

Post by Azrael »

Well, Alex, as long as you're not craving Donner kebabs. :-=
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